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Sounds like a real pain They Pop Up. He Pops Off.By Rick Horowitz
The thing about progress is... The thing about progress is it's a matter of opinion. That shiny new mall on the edge of town -- civilization's latest step forward? Or one more sign of its imminent collapse? It all depends. Are you a seller? A buyer? A downtown competitor about to be made irrelevant? An old-timer who used to enjoy walking through fields that have suddenly sprouted diagonally striped asphalt? See? It all depends. Which is why I'm willing to accept the possibility that there are actually people out there who consider computer pop-up ads a good thing. Of course, most of these people don't have anything you or I would consider a life. Naturally they think pop-up ads are neat. In their spare time, they look forward to calls from telemarketers. Then there are the people responsible for pop-up ads, and not just the companies selling their particular products and services online, but the techno-wizzes who've made it all possible. Which is to say, who've made it next to impossible for the average Joe or Jolene to leave the Web without enduring a total commercial assault. These wizzes certainly see pop-up ads as progress. These wizzes probably do have a life -- an active, inventive, rewarding life -- and they should spend the rest of it in a Home for the Criminally Annoying. But that's not what I want to talk about. Not exactly, anyway. What I want to talk about is even worse. Pop-up ads with sound effects. My first time was just a few days ago. I was surfing through cyberspace, minding my own business. (Which is to say, minding everyone else's business.) I'd just finished doing all the bouncing around I cared to do and was thrashing my way back to the non-pixelated side of things when I heard it. It sounded like a distant breeze, gathering strength and then whooshing across the prairie. This was strange. My desk is nowhere near a prairie. I didn't think much about it at the time, just kept Ctrl-W-ing until my screen was clean. I figured I must have been imagining it, some runaway special-effects loop dancing through my head. It happens. No big deal. Then it happened again. I think it was the very next day. I was doing more surfing, more bouncing, more thrashing -- and then here it came. It still sounded like a breeze, or maybe an onrushing train. I knew I wasn't imagining it this time, and just as I was trying to nail down the where and the why of it, another ad suddenly raced into view. (Had it been there the previous day, too? Somehow I hadn't noticed.) And it wasn't one of the standard pop-ups-in-a-box either; it just floated there, no borders, no restraints. It was an ad for -- Actually, I don't know what it was an ad for. I know it had something to do with speed. If I bought whatever it was they were selling, I'd be able to move much more quickly. (A sports car? A broadband connection? A laxative?) But I just don't remember. Maybe I was so traumatized that I blocked it out of my mind. Or maybe I didn't want to give them, whoever they were, the satisfaction of knowing they'd gotten their message across. After all, if they think this kind of stuff works, they'll only do more of it. And even if I did remember, the last thing I'd want to do is mention them here and give them free advertising, right? On the other hand, if I could remember, then maybe I could track down the highly creative folks who did the deed, and find an appropriate way to express my appreciation. Nothing too lavish, you understand -- maybe hire a few kids to ring their doorbells every ten minutes or so, day and night, for the rest of the year. They like sound? They'd have sound. Now, that would be progress. Posted 8/20/02. You
can read Rick silently, or you can laugh out loud. (It's a free country.)
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Rick Horowitz
