Pop up ads make me cry

I usually like the technology section of the Guardian: there’s that man with the pipe who looks like a less paedophilic kind of granddad, who could probably help you mend more than the punctured tire on your bike and then there's that guy who looks slightly odd that they send to all the technology expos (probably because they don’t like to have him around the office.)


But pop ads threaten to destroy all the love I have for it. That is to say not just on the Guardian site but all over the interweb. You wouldn’t stand for it in ‘real life.’ You don’t have billboards that fall off the side of buildings crushing you under the weight of their message. Your TV doesn’t attempt to mount your face during every commercial break. And you don’t have Nicolas Cage jump out of a magazine stuffing that tacky watch he’s sponsoring into your retina. So why is it that you can’t visit some of your favourite sites without some obtrusive ad pop up and chase you around the screen like some drunken psycho you accidentally started talking to on the night bus.

Not so much a pop up but annoying none the less: a man receiving the data love juice from a PC tower or maybe it’s the other way round or maybe they’re swapping like some new genre of niche web porn.