Funny And Upsetting At The Same Time

Five things that atheists don’t want you to know:

This is an experiment in PuffHo/BuzzFeed/Thrillist clickbaiting. So, here goes:  “Five Things That We Atheists Don’t Want You to Know About Us.”

If you are curious, then click the above link. It's worth your time. You need to see it, to see what I think is funny. Kudos to Jerry Coyne. I think he might have another career as a humorist specializing in parody.

The reason I think that this is upsetting is because it is all too real.

On the one hand is the fact that some people (too many people) actually believe the five things.

On the other hand is the fact that there are way too many internet sites that use all kinds of gimmicks to try to get people to their site, and click, click, click... Sites like these make me run, not stay. (10 Things To Improve Your Sex Life.) I don't bookmark them. I really hate the techniques that they use. Jerry Coyne mentions three sites. There are probably thousands and things seem to be getting worse. Thank Ceiling Cat for Mr. Coynes site. It tends to be very civil there, and it actually has words that you can read. Lots of them. I don't know how he does it.

Let's set content aside for a moment. There are some horrible religious and right-wing sites out there. I mean this from a design perspective. Pop-up crap, java-script crap (I don't go to marketwatch.com anymore because without java-scipt all you see is a blank page), ads and other stuff that gets in the way so much it becomes hard to find the content. Another thing that is irksome are pages that refresh every half second. Also all kind of moving things that take your attention away from everything else. I find it hard to read when something on the page is moving. Things slide out from the side, and things slide out from the bottom. This is all very annoying to say the least. When I look at the content I tend to think that it's all crap as well, but that's another story.

Many religious and right-wing sites are full of ads that simply promote themselves. As an example try Anne Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. Gee, you would think that the world revolved around them.

Try religionnews.com or rightsidenews.com to see an example of an annoying pop-up that wants you to subscribe to them. To be fair religious and right-wing sites are not the only ones to do this.

I wonder how many people are driven away from a site because of its bad design?

How did Google ever become successful without all of this crap, I'll never know.

Other than mine, do you have a unfavorite crappy site suggestion that fits this description?