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| Be careful. |
1. Pop-up ads
2. Ads that suddenly emerge when you’re in the midst of
reading an article
3. Did I say pop-up ads?
4. “Answer a survey question to continue reading this
content.”
5. Autoplay videos
6. Ads that take the form of social media posts
7. “Sponsored content” that almost looks like real stories on
news sites
8. Not being able to download something unless you first
download no-name, suspicious software
9. Viruses
10. Spyware
11. Spambots
12. Spam
13. The fact that the food brand “Spam” is forever tainted
by 11 and 12
14. Child porn
15. Bestiality porn
16. Worrying that you will unintentionally encounter 14 and 15,
but also worrying that if you ask how likely that is, it will sound suspicious
17. Gonzo porn
18. When the porn you watch isn’t porny enough
19. Finding out just how far Rule 34 can go
20. Goatse
21. Comments that start, “I make $6500 a week working from
home...”
22. People who pitch their own/their friends’ products in
comments
23. People who use racial slurs as insults
24. People who use sexual slurs as insults
25. People who use homophobic slurs as insults
26. People who can’t tell the difference between 23, 24, and
25 and the use of such slurs as a point of discussion (i.e. “Should we teach
books which contain the word “nigger”?)
27. People who can’t tell the difference between 23, 24, and
25 and the use of such slurs as reclaimed in-group terms
28. People who ignore context altogether
29. Articles/comments which paint entire groups of people
with a broad, negative brush (and that includes
straight white men)
30. Misogyny
31. Misandry
32. Thinkpieces that start with, “Dear White America...”
33. Thinkpieces that start with, “Dear Black America...”
34. Articles which assume that the only two races in America
(or even the world) are black and white
35. Thinkpieces that turn molehills into mountains (i.e.,
“Gender-Reveal Celebrations For Babies Help Explain Transphobia”*)
36. Thinkpieces that contain very little thinking
37. People who think 9/11 was a false flag
38. People who think the Sandy Hook shooting was a false
flag
39. People who think the Boston Marathon bombing was a false
flag
40. People who still think that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is
innocent of 39 (he said he did it at
his sentencing!)
41. Your friends asking you to play stupid games on Facebook
42. Your friends sharing stupid memes on Facebook
43. Your friends sharing horrifyingly violent photos/videos
on Facebook
44. Your friends guilt-tripping you into sharing posts on
Facebook
45. Finding out that a friend has noxious political views on
Facebook
46. Getting a notification of a deceased friend’s birthday on
Facebook
47. People you never heard of making friend requests on
Facebook
48. Thinking of deleting your Facebook profile – and
deciding not to because that’s the only way you know what your friends are
doing
49. When your favorite sites make improvements but not the
ones they really need (still waiting for the edit button, Twitter)
50. When your favorite sites make updates that make them
harder to read/navigate
51. Stormfront
52. Return of Kings
53. Free Republic
54. Blackfootsoldier
55. Everyday Feminism
56. The Huffington Post
57. /b/
58. /pol/
59. Anything on BuzzFeed that’s not a longform story
60. Lists that take the form of slideshows (increasing those
ever-important clicks, natch)
61. “Someone Did X. You Won’t Believe What Happened Next.”
62. “20 Amazing Instances of Y (#11 Will Shock You!)”
63. “You’ve Been Doing Z Wrong All Your Life!”
64. “We Need To Talk About...”
65. When clickbait headlines misrepresent (or outright lie
about) the story underneath
66. The fact that clickbait articles are almost never
educational or entertaining enough to be worth the effort you spent reading
them
67. “First!”
68. When videos that you liked on YouTube disappear for
copyright reasons
69. That @$#%&! “Circle of Doom” in the center of videos
that have stalled
70. The fact that too much historical, classic fanfic is not
available online
71. The fact that too much disgustingly BAD fanfic is
available online, with more coming every single second
72. When the writer of a fanfic that you’re really into
stops updating and leaves you hanging
73. Reports of a celebrity’s death which turn out to be
false
74. Reports of a celebrity’s death which turn out to be true
and then make entire websites crash
75. Everybody and their dog feeling the need to pay tribute
to a dead celebrity, no matter how tacky the “tribute”
76. Spending more time on websites discussing a TV show than
you do watching the show itself
77. Craigslist message boards
78. Craigslist personal ads
79. Craigslist ads for jobs that pay peanuts
80. Craigslist ads for jobs that pay nothing
81. Communicating in ALL CAPS
82. Giving someone an opposing viewpoint in the gentlest
possible language, and receiving in response: “Educate yourself, shitlord”
83. Realizing that “educate yourself” means “start agreeing
with me”
84. When people are told to kill themselves
85. When people are told that someone should kill them
86. When people are told that someone should rape them
87. When people are called gross names simply for posting a
picture of themselves online
88. People refusing to follow the Golden Rule (Seriously!
It’s! Not! That! Hard!!!)
89. Realizing how goddamn ignorant your fellow humans can be
90. When your computer says
you’re connected to the Internet, but you really aren’t
91. When your Internet connection decides to “not respond”
at the worst possible time (i.e., sending an important and time-sensitive
e-mail)
92. Having an e-mail inbox so full of junk it will take
hours to clean it out – and that’s why you keep putting it off
93. Accidentally deleting an important e-mail
94. Forgetting why you subscribed to an e-mail newsletter –
then forgetting to unsubscribe
95. Your computer slowing down when you have more than three
tabs open
96. Asking yourself why you have more than three tabs open
97. Distracting yourself with one tab when you need to pay
attention to another
98. Not being able to close a tab when you want to
99. You’re always – always
– preaching to the choir
100. Realizing that this list I just wrote is clickbait
