The Internet is amongst the most amazing creations of man. Imagine a world without social networks, downloadable movies, YouTube, porn and 9GAG. Next to unthinkable! (Unless of course if you are from North Korea). Yet, there are some things out there on the Information superhighway that will make you cringe, puke and make you swear to self that you will never come back to using this god damned thing ever again – until the next morning. These are things that will give you headaches and will haunt you even after you log off and come back to the real world for those brief moments of sanity. Here ladies and gentlemen, I present some of the most irritating things that I have come across on the Internet.
5. Rollover Ads
As a person who makes his living off advertisements, I should not be saying this – but what the heck! While I am certainly not against the Interweb being used to promote products, I have some serious issues with people who use roll over ads to force feed their products. Whoever introduced this piece of Internet junk – may he roll over and die. Roll over ads are like lurking predators. You, the nonchalant user are often caught unaware. You never know when this will strike you. One moment you are happily browsing the web and the next moment you would be doing theatrics with your mouse trying to dodge that small square blob which you need to avoid at any cost. Even a slight error in judgement will lead to the entire webpage being filled by an unwanted on-your-face ad. It is probably ironic that you might be seeing a similar ad right above this paragraph.
Yeah. A punch to the face of the guy who invented this.
4. Pop Up Ads and Installation Windows That don’t minimize
A distant older cousin of the aforementioned roll over ads, pop up ads have largely seen a hasty retreat following the arrival of some formidable weaponry known as the modern browser. Before we got excellent anti popup capabilities built-in within browsers, there were separate pop up blocker apps that did the job. But, the old timer refuses to die. Popups are still around and I am not talking just about porn sites where they are still mainstream.
Another “pop up” that I have some serious issues is with the kind that pops up when you decide to install something online. Most of the times, when you install a program, it is a few clicks affair with the actual installation happening in the background. There would be a window showing you the status of the installation with the progress bar and all. You can easily switch Windows, continue your work and not even bother to look at the thing. Some applications however do not like the fact that they are not being given due importance. You click install and it pops up a box that simply won’t minimize! You can move it around and try to ignore and that’s just about it. Why? Why do this?
3. Facebook Game Requests, Unnecessary Tags
While social networks on the whole have become irritating of late, I am not prissy enough to consider them a pest. In fact, I like most of you happen to spend quite some time on Facebook and Twitter – currently the most dominant social networks out there. But what ticks me off the most are those requests you receive from your friends who want you to join them in harvesting crops, crush candies and kill rivals by joining their Mafia gang! I know people who spend hours doing this and am yet to know how they find time to do all this.
Thankfully, you can block things that tick you off and concentrate on more “important” things… like viewing photographs of you uploaded by your friends where they have tagged you! This brings me to the second most annoying thing I observe on social networks – unnecessary tagging. I am sure you have at least one friend who goes on a tagging spree, tagging you in images where clearly you were not present. Then there are the wishes where a single Christmas or New Year card is used to wish all 575 friends that they have – by tagging them there!
2. Spam Emails
Spam emails, apart from being a serious resource hog and a major security concern, also happens to be one of the most irritating things I have come across on the Internet. I am not talking about the usual spam stuff here – the kind that promises you millions in lottery winnings and guarantees you would be finally able to satisfy your woman thanks to your increased..erm.. girth. I am more concerned about my so called friends forwarding me e-mails that warn me to forward the same to my other friends WITHIN 10 minutes or prepare for grave consequences. Then there are the ones that promise to pay a poor victim – usually a sick child a penny for each forwarded mail! This used to be quite an in thing back in the mid 2000’s – but there are still some people around who religiously follow instructions found on such e-mails.
1.These Websites
For most of us, a website IS THE Internet. A web page is the easiest way to navigate around the vast worldwide web and gather information. Over the course of the evolution of the Internet, we have developed some standards for web design. Most websites at least try to conform to these standards. And then there are some which simply do not care. Take a look at this, this and this! (Make sure your volume is turned down once you click on that last link!). The design on that last one is fine – but it plays back an audio file without warning. A strict no no in my books.
I am sure there are way too many other annoying things on the Internet – but these are the ones I could think of right now. Maybe you can come up with your own list?
