There was a bear rescue in Russia. I think. A mama bear and two cubs were stranded in the water. The problem is I may never know how the story turned out because I got too irritated to complete reading it. Like everyone else, I typically flip through the feed of stories on my browser, but I rarely click to read things from sources I’m not familiar with. Because I know what could happen. But I’m a freaking sucker for stories about animals, so I took the bait and clicked this one open.
They parceled the bear story out a few sentences at a time. Each tiny installment was surrounded by dozens of ads literally placed all around the words. To keep reading the story, I was forced to click to go to the next page and search through the ads for the next lines. Rinse and repeat. And again. And again.
I hung in there for a remarkable amount of time. The writer ended each short installment of the story with an enticement to keep reading! The installments came with pictures, but I got the sense that some of them were fillers, not even related to the story, but just a picture of a boat in the water, on the way to the rescue site!
Why do you do this! It’s a turnoff! This is ad placement gone amuck. I hate sites that do this. For every ad running on these pages – most all of which I actively ignore, they have paid money. They are all playing the lottery hoping someone spies just that something-something that interests them at a particular blink in time.
(Hmm. Kind of like this blog on twitter. Maybe I shouldn’t complain? And God knows I love to play the lottery…)
I’ve got to know what happened to those bear cubs. I’ll google it and be right back. Okay, a slightly less annoying article explained that the rescue in Russia happened two years ago. A mother bear dropped the cubs off her back as she swam off, having underestimated the conditions of the lake. A ship saved the two bear cubs and dropped them off on the island where the mother bear had successfully swum to. The end.
The big google machine in the sky and Russian hackers now have further intel that they can reach me by showing animal rescues stories. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out how they’ll use it against me. Are the republicans or democrats closing national parks? Making endangered species okay to hunt? If I see those claims out there placing blame on a specific party should I believe them?
They know I’m weak. Right now, someone is out there is plotting an algorithm for use against me and my ilk who share this particular Achilles.
And they were Russian bears, too. Coinkidink? Hmm. Why is the world so complicated? All I wanted to do was see bears saved and now I’m building a bunker. Argh!