Things I Hate About The Internet

The Internet has reached a point where I can't really live without it. All my communication between teachers & other students is online (how did anyone ever do Grad school without the internet?!). Without Facebook I'd have no friends anymore. Wikipedia is the greatest invention of the century (not to mention the 10,000 other easy sources of information). It makes banking and shopping 100 times easier. Google Maps is the second greatest invention of the century. But despite it's convenience and necessity, there is still a lot of stuff that really bugs me. Here's a few highlights:

#1 - Ads that don't make sense.
I'm sure you've seen an ad that looks like this somewhat recently. Can someone explain to me why there is an animated .gif of a girl jogging on an ad about refinancing your house? Also, why is there a colon (:) after the 9/10? Clearly they're trying to say "9 out of 10 homeowners fail to take advantage of government refinance plan", but the colon makes it look like homeowners failed to take advantage of government refinance plan on September 10th.

The ad that REALLY bugged me was the one that looked just like this but said "Obama wants moms to go back to school" and had an animated picture of a girl doing sit-ups on it. Since when are sit-ups a requirement to to school? If they are, I'm about to be expelled. (Thankfully, that ad doesn't seem to be circulating much anymore. I actually looked for it an couldn't find it.)

#2 - Methods to verify your humanity.

For some reason, Ticketmaster, MySpace, and millions of other sites live in fear of being taken over by robots. So, in an effort to reduce spam, they make you type the oddest assortment of words you've ever seen into a box.



Where do they come up with these words? Moray 5,897-yard? (yes, I'm a human) And have you ever seen one that was so difficult to read that even humans can't verify their humanity? I have. I wish I would have saved a picture (in actuality I can't even remember what site it was on), but one time I seriously had to try writing the jumble of letters 17 different times before I finally got it right. So annoying.

#3 - Those pop-up text-boxes in YouTube videos.

Can't I just watch my videos in peace? I'm grateful to you, random person (or perhaps robot who was clever enough to read a jumbled word in the verification box) for uploading your video to YouTube for my viewing pleasure, but I really don't want your opinions about things to pop-up in the middle of it.

#4 - The weird glitch in my Blogger Dashboard

For those of you who don't have a Blogger blog, there is a convenient little place called a Dashboard that lets you keep track of updates to your friends' blogs by showing you the title of recent entries, as well as the first few lines of the text. It's a great way to keep track of what your friends are saying. Unless your friend is Jenn, because whenever she posts a blog, I get this:
Yes, it seems every time Jenn posts a blog it is about strange prescription medications and breast-related issues. And as exciting as that sounds, I click on the link and it just sends me to her regular ol' blog. I follow 7 blogs, but for some odd reason, hers is the only one that does it to me.

So there are some of the things that bug me online... what would you add to the list?