Mapprehension Octagon

Dumping irrelevant garbage on your home page dilutes the brand. That’s inarguable. Linden Lab appears to believe the benefits outweigh the dilution, and that the money outweighs the classiness. Mostly it feels like sad desperation and gross cynicism. My first acquaintance with advertising on the Second Life home page was a shady “alert window” banner ad attempting to lure me into clicking the top right corner of the ad (which so cleverly imitated an ugly Windows close-window icon—on my Macintosh) in order to magically clean up my computer of the kind of garbage that clicking the ad would infest my computer with. I understand a lot of people love being manipulated by advertising. Personally I’d rather pay directly for what I use rather than subsidize services with advertising. Everything is a lot cheaper that way. But I don’t even have the choice because so few people think the same way. Instead, so many gullible souls delude themselves into believing they’re getting something (an Internet service) for nothing (because it’s paid for by advertising). By that behavior we’re all exposing our lives to exploitation, malware, blackmail, and insecurity. AND, ironically, we’re paying more for everything in the end anyway because companies that advertise must charge higher prices for their goods to pay for the advertising—which we then allow ourselves to be manipulated by when we shop. We are sheep. Baaaaaaa. — Mapprehension Octagon