We’ve reached the point where the Internet — once a tool that offered us the entire world of information at our fingertips — is now completely unusable.

The root cause is adverting, and it’s gotten so bad that it’s being called the ‘adpocalypse.’



Almost every website I go on now is bursting at the digital seams with adverts. It’s bad enough on desktop; on mobile it’s a nightmare. There are banners along the top, bottom, and down each side of the page, often animated to maximize distraction. Websites use parallax scrolling so they can add an entire layer of adverts that sits below what you’re reading, popping in and out as you scroll.


We get the random pop-up one’s that interrupt you and then make you wait a designated amount of seconds before you can click away or try to prompt you to add your email address for a shitty PDF download of some bullshit productivity hacks. We get blasted with ads begging us to click, telling us we’re “missing out” or that we “won’t see this deal ever again,” a practice known as Confirmshaming. There are the infuriating ones that open the App Store in a separate window. The other day, I reched a whole new level of ad rage — I encountered a full-screen video ad that started playing automatically and offered me no way of escaping. There was literally no option to exit it or go back to what I was reading. It seemed like the tipping point. All I could do was lose my temper, consider destroying my laptop, and close the website