Soured on Wired

I had gone to Wired magazine’s Threat Level blog to read about what Gonzales knew or did not know about Patriot Act abuses. Already in the masthead position was one orange-and-green ad banner shouting for attention. Seconds later a full popup window began to spawn before Firefox squelched it. Kind of already pissed, I began reading the article’s lead sentence just as an entire Flash movie appeared in the middle of the page, with racing, jarring, three-dimensional imagery. Each time I clicked the ‘X’ to close it, I was redirected to olympus.com. I think it would’ve been just as subtle if the page in question had actually taken human form, leapt from my monitor, pulled me out in the street and kicked me in the nuts for a half hour.

I respect that Wired online needs to make money, but it’s like someone in a boardroom asked, “Seriously, what is is the most obnoxious thing we can add to someone’s reading experience to the degree they may never visit our website again?” The three-pronged advertising assault was enough for me to say goodbye.

(In truth, my company has a subscription to Wired already, and Threat Level doesn’t really feature anything you couldn’t find on Talking Points Memo or Political Animal, and with a lot less nut-kicking, but still, it’s the principle.)

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