People who use AdBlock Plus are filthy scum bags

Robin Scott the owner of NexusMods wrote this on his blog in 2007. He clearly states his opinion on anybody who blocks adverts when browsing the internet. Here is a quote directly from his blog.

People who use AdBlock Plus are filthy scum bags

November 10th, 2007 | Category: Personal, Web development Editor’s comments: some people, mostly Americans not used to my personal flavour of humour, have taken personal offense to this article. The idea when reading is that, with most blog posts (and especially mine) you take the article with a big pinch of salt. All is not as it seems.. Lets not beat around the bush on this one; if you’re one of those people who sings the praises of AdBlock Plus, the plugin for FireFox that allows users to broadly disable advertising on all the websites they visit, then you’re a filthy scum bag. But we’re all filthy scum bags really. Only the other day I was bored in my Marketing lecture and managed to amuse myself by flicking bogies at a nearby sloan girl (the skill is aiming for those girls that have that deliberate “out of bed” frizzy style hair that just screams “define me”). But still, if you use AdBlock Plus, you’re scum.

I’ve had pretty hard-line views on the subject for quite some time now. As the owner of TESNexus (nexusmods), a popular video game site that is very resource and bandwidth intensive, I began taking personal offense to the members of the site forums who would openly suggest using AdBlock Plus, or similar applications, to circumvent the advertising on the site. As offenses go, I’d say it’s up there with those gimps who work behind the tills in nightclubs who think, just because you’ve drunk too much, you can’t count your change.

I’m willing to be realistic about this; I can see certain uses for an ad blocker. One of those uses doesn’t include financially raping those webmasters who run an honest resource for community members with good quality advertising. In the interest of keeping the peace, what I advocate is a more subjective use of adblock programs, rather than a “fuck them all” approach. These programs allow users to specify whether all ads are blocked, or just ads on specific sites. So here’s a clue, why not block sites that you subjectively view are taking the piss when it comes to advertising? I’m sure we’ve all been to those sites that manage to trigger massive brain hemorrhages with their epileptic flashing colours, ads that scream out in some tard-tastic yank accent that you’ve won a free iPod or ads that bounce around the screen, and even when you click that tiny little “x” in the corner to close the ad it seems to think you’re interested in what they’re selling. OK, that’s lame, and no one wants to experience that, so at this point, why not block the ads for this particular site? Then again, the only sites that do that these days are porn sites, or sites with nil content, so you’ve got to start questioning your own browsing habits if you’re experiencing this shit regularly.

If you’re one of those Adblock users who has this retarded idea that advertising has no effect on them and turning off the ads is perfectly acceptable, I’m going to be blunt: you’re an idiot, and you’re wrong. Use the internet or go do some psychology night classes. Irrespective of whether you think you pay attention to advertising or not, the whole point of it being there is to provide revenue to the webmaster, revenue used to help pay for the site you are using. There are plenty of blog articles and internet bitch fights on the net about this shit that normally revolve around some headline grabbing, middle-aged codpiece referencing the concept of adblocking = theft, and I’m not going to do it here (you dirty thieving shits). Instead I’m going to take the high-ground and avoid all the name calling and hype phrases and get to the point: using ad blockers in your browser is your prerogative, in the same way that downloading the latest episode of Lost to satisfy your bleak concept of imagination via bittorrent is also your prerogative. Just don’t start whining like a bitch when the original sites you use start limiting your bandwidth, or doing similar things to screw you back.

I’ve been toying with the idea of limiting the download speed of users on TESNexus who are using adblocking programs. Rather than completely screwing them over by blocking them completely, or doing something ridiculously thickwitted, I’ll continue to provide the site for the entire community, including the dickheads and thick shits who blanket block all advertisements on all sites irrespective of circumstance, but simply limit the download speed for files to something rather small, say, 20kb/sec. No problem for those hill-billies still on dial-up, but those guys are so backwards already that I’m sure any reputable advertisers wouldn’t want their interest anyway (yes, haha, except broadband ISPs).