UPDATE: I've learned something, and have a suggestion. Scroll down to see.
This site is putting me between a rock and a hard place here, with their attempts to shame me into turning off AdBlock. I'm one of the many Americans laid off due to the economic downturn, and still out of work due to the "jobless recovery", and they've got me thinking in ways they probably didn't anticipate. Follow me over the fold, and I'll elaborate.
The first thing I see on dKos, at the top of the front page, is an essay with the title I've quoted as the title of this diary. It explains that:
If you use ad blocking software while viewing Daily Kos, you're getting all the benefits of our site but we're not getting any of the advertisement revenue associated with your visits.
It goes on to explain the benefits I get from the site, and basically tells me that I'm a freeloader if I reap these benefits and don't look at the ads that support them. Well, maybe I am -- but I'm out of work. I won't be buying anything from their advertisers anyway, so how does it help the site that I look at them?
"But snazzzy, [you might well ask] what's so bad about looking at the ads? Why can't you just suck it up?"
I'm not afraid of ads. In fact, advertising fascinates me: it grabbed me in the 60s during the creative revolution, and ever since then I've studied it as a barometer of society. However, I draw the line at ads that make me physically ill, such as the ones for teeth whiteners and cures for "belly fat". Why should I have to look at extreme close-ups of yellow teeth and cellulite, just because I don't currently have a viable income?
Note that word: currently. I will not be unemployed forever. I will ultimately return to the workforce -- if not in the profession that I have loved for the past twenty-five years, then in something that pays less in money and satisfaction but does pay the bills. However, until I get there I will be economizing. I have been living a no-frills lifestyle since March, and compared with some of the things I have already cut out, a subscription to this site would definitely be a "frill".
I'm not going to stop coming to Daily Kos. It sustained me through the darkest times of the bu$hco mal-administration, and it continues to sustain me when the wingnut vitriol (enthusiastically spread by the mainstream media) threatens to bring me down. But every time I look at that "Subscribe or exclude from AdBlock" essay, it makes me feel bad about being too poor to buy a subscription. It makes me feel like the site is telling me that if I can't afford to pay, I should have to look at whatever their advertisers put up, or else feel the shame of being a "freeloader". It makes me feel like I'm being lectured by a Republican, in the one place I thought I could get away from that.
UPDATE:
Spathiphyllum was kind enough to educate me on something I didn't know. Namely, that it is possible for a site to get ad revenue just from having ads load along with the site -- rather than only when a user clicks on the ad itself. Clearly that changes the situation! If I can support this site just by letting those ads load, I will definitely do it.
As I said in my reply, I wish the "Subscribe! Or Exclude" essay would include this information. To the more Internet-savvy it may go without saying, but I'll bet I'm not the only "oldster" out here who didn't know it.