One of the first things you might notice when visiting this site is what’s missing.
Where are the advertisements?
Where are the banner ads, pop-ups, autoplay videos, affiliate links, sponsored articles, and endless reminders that somebody wants your attention, your data, your money, or all three?
The answer is simple.
I chose not to put them here.
Now, I realize that means I’m probably giving up some amount of revenue. How much? I honestly don’t know. Maybe one day I’ll find out. But for now, I enjoy being able to publish something without surrounding it with distractions.
I like being able to sit down and read an article without being interrupted every few paragraphs by something trying to sell me a product, collect my email address, or convince me that this one simple trick will change my life forever.
That might sound unusual today, but perhaps that’s the point.
Most people arrive at a website expecting a transaction.
They may not consciously think about it, but they’ve been trained to expect one.
A popup will appear.
A newsletter signup will appear.
An advertisement will appear.
A sponsored recommendation will appear.
Something, somewhere, will ask them for something before they’re even finished reading the first paragraph.
When none of those things appear, it feels strange.
And maybe that should make us wonder why.
Why does a simple webpage containing nothing more than an article feel unusual?
Why have we become so accustomed to every available space being monetized?
In some ways, the absence of advertising is part of the message.
No popup.
No autoplay video.
No countdown timer.
No urgent demand for your attention before you’ve decided whether the article is worth reading.
Just the article.
Part of this comes from understanding the difference between physical publishing and digital publishing.
In a newspaper, every square inch matters. Every photograph, headline, article, and advertisement must fit into a limited amount of space. Space has value because there is only so much of it available.
Digital publishing changes that equation.
Most of what you’re reading right now is simply text. The actual article takes up very little storage. In many cases, the code required to display the page is larger than the article itself.
The limitation is no longer paper.
The limitation is attention.
And that changes everything.
Modern publishing is often designed around capturing and holding attention for as long as possible. Clicks, watch time, engagement, retention, impressions, conversions, subscriptions, and every other metric imaginable become part of the equation.
I understand why.
People need to pay bills.
Businesses need revenue.
Websites cost money to operate.
There is nothing wrong with that.
What concerns me is how often the pursuit of attention becomes the purpose instead of supporting the purpose.
Part of my frustration with modern media isn’t advertising itself.
Advertising is honest.
An advertisement knows it’s an advertisement.
What bothers me more is when promotion pretends not to be promotion.
“I’m not trying to sell you anything.”
Then comes the sales pitch.
“I’m not asking for support.”
Then comes the reminder to subscribe, join, donate, review, purchase, and share.
“I’m not fear-mongering.”
Then comes twenty minutes explaining why you should be terrified and keep watching for updates.
At least a billboard is honest.
A billboard doesn’t pretend to be your friend first.
It simply tells you what it wants.
The internet has become increasingly filled with content that wants to be both an advertisement and not an advertisement at the same time.
That strikes me as far stranger than simply saying, “Here’s an advertisement.”
Maybe that’s another reason I prefer keeping things simple.
Here’s the article.
Read it if you want.
Agree with it or disagree with it.
But at least you know what it is.
That brings me to another point.
Many of the articles on this site are longer than what most publishers would consider practical.
Some would be broken into multiple articles.
Others would become a short video, a listicle, a social media thread, or a collection of bullet points.
That’s not really what I’m interested in creating.
Sometimes an idea takes a thousand words.
Sometimes it takes three thousand.
Sometimes it starts with one observation and ends up wandering through newspapers, history, technology, work, publishing, culture, and personal experience before arriving at a conclusion.
That’s not a flaw.
That’s often the point.
Understanding requires context.
It’s easy to show somebody a result.
It’s harder to explain how we arrived there.
It’s easy to present a conclusion.
It’s harder to explain the reasoning behind it.
It’s easy to show the joke.
It’s harder to explain why the joke is funny.
One of the reasons I often think about the movie Idiocracy isn’t because of the crude humor.
It’s because some of the satire is surprisingly effective.
One of the most famous jokes in the movie is a world where entertainment has become so simplified that audiences happily sit through a movie called “Ass.”
Most people laugh at the absurdity.
But the question that interests me isn’t why people are watching it.
The question is why it’s there in the first place.
Who put it there?
How did culture arrive at that point?
What happened between the beginning and the end?
What assumptions had to be made along the way?
Those questions require context.
The movie’s world is also covered in advertising. Brands are everywhere. Corporate messaging becomes part of everyday life. People wear products, consume products, identify with products, and are surrounded by products so constantly that nobody even notices anymore.
That’s what makes the satire work.
Not that advertising exists.
But that it has become invisible.
People have become so accustomed to it that they stop questioning its presence.
Sometimes I wonder if we’ve reached a similar point online.
Every visitor becomes data.
Every click becomes a metric.
Every interaction becomes a potential transaction.
We’ve become so accustomed to that reality that a page without those things can feel unusual.
Maybe that’s worth thinking about.
Maybe there is still value in places where ideas are allowed to develop.
Places where thoughts can take the long route.
Places where context matters.
Places where understanding why something happened is considered just as important as knowing what happened.
I don’t expect every visitor to read every word.
I don’t expect every article to appeal to every reader.
But I do hope there are still people who enjoy following an idea from beginning to end.
People who want to know not only what happened, but why.
People who understand that sometimes the journey to a conclusion is more important than the conclusion itself.
So where are the advertisements?
For now, they’re somewhere else.
The article is the point.
Everything else is just there to help you read it.
This article has been brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
Carl’s Jr. — Fuck you, I’m eating.