The internet is mostly awesome. You can find so much educational material for free, or if you just want to relax, you can sit back and watch YouTube videos. But not everything on the internet falls into the broad categories of useful or entertaining. Sometimes there’s crap that’s just plain annoying. Here are some of the things that I’ll click away from immediately:
1. List articles with multiple pages
You know the ones, the “23 celebrities who murdered someone”. That may or may not be a real article, I don’t know, I haven’t checked. These lists are usually mind-numbingly inane but that isn’t what makes them annoying. What makes these list so damn annoying is that every article has it’s own separate page.
2. Pages with sound
Sound isn’t necessarily bad. But it is universally bad when a webpage automatically starts playing sound. This used to be a much bigger problem back in the days when MySpace was popular. Back in those days getting a website to play sound had a bit of a coolness factor. Even then it was annoying and the novelty quickly wore off. Which is why, in 2017 I have no idea why there are still people setting their website to play sound automatically. To make it worse, it’s done quite often by big-name website, people who should know better.
3. Laptop Entrepreneurs
I have no problem with people owning laptops or being entrepreneurs. It’s even true that some people make their livings solely on business they do online.
What I do hate is the scammers.
“Hi, I’m Chris and I’m here in my backyard in Perth”
If you’ve watched videos on YouTube you’ve likely seen this ad or one very similar. Seems like these guys just keep multiplying. The ad will tell you that you can live a life of freedom, you just need your laptop and you can make a heap of money.
Notice how none of them never seem to say what they do? Just videos of them going swimming or skydiving, doing fun stuff but never of them actually working. Reality is all they sell is a package where you can sell to other people how they can be “laptop entrepreneurs”. Possibly the worlds worst disguised pyramid scheme.
4. Country based restrictions
Sometimes TV shows are put online for free. So if you want to watch the latest Rick and Morty episode, you can. Unless you live in Australia. In which case you’ll often see a “This is not available in you country” message. There are ways to get around this but setting up a VPN to watch Tv isn’t worth it.
5. “You have 24 hours to buy at this price”
If you’re selling something for a limited time and there really is a time limit, that’s fine. However, some of the sites with these timers aren’t all that trustworthy. Next time you see one of these either clear your browser cache or use a different browser. If the timer has magically reset to 24 hours or whatever the original time was, don’t buy from them. They are not trustworthy.
6. Aggressive email subscription pop-ups
“Subscribe now for my awesome newsletter”
Some websites will have these pop up as soon as you land on their page. I understand that it’s important to build up an email list, just let me actually see the site first.
7. Unskippable video
If there’s no option to skip parts of that 25 minute sales video, I’m not sticking around
These are just the ones that came to mind, but I’m sure there are a million other annoying things on the internet. Is there one I’ve left out that needs to be on this list?
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