Click Here, Sucker!

It's funny how many lessons of my youth are re-lived each day by millions of people here online. The old adage "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" might be a helpful to keep in mind when clicking on things.

"Make up to $300 an hour taking online surveys!!! click here! [moron!]"

How does this work? How can someone fall for this? Well, they have to WANT TO BELIEVE that they can get the $300. Their want has to outweigh their good sense. This is the gateway.

At some point you're going to find out that before you can get the $300, you'll have to pay them $49 'discounted! today only!'.

Someone is paying to put up an ad which you will click on- if you really made $300 off of the survey, what do they need your $49 for? They could just take a cut of your $300 after the survey, right?

That'd be too easy, though.

The unfortunate truth is the people who need be saved by warnings like this will not be saved- because they will not bother to search beforehand. If they had the foresight to do so, they would not need my warning. If they were able to yank themselves out of their loop for a second, they wouldn't get duped.

Oh well.

It's funny that people have little appreciation of how finely tuned advertising is becoming. How perfectly focused. When a chair maker studies the way a person sits in a chair, they gain information which will allow them to possibly create a more comfortable chair. When advertisers make online ads, they learn who will click on what, and when, and why, and how long attention can be held.

The psychology of what kinds of ads work on the target audience is getting more and more precise. Like a dog that can't help but chase a ball, YOU, hapless clicker, are being forced to click on things because you can't help yourself.

Where is this all going? What is the end result? A paradigm shift in user mentality, an advertising-proof user? A constant train of fools, all learning the same lesson over and over? Is the 100-year old saying, "There's a sucker born every minute" going to remin true- is it a truism of human behavior, or something which just happened to fit back then?

See also: "FNG"
See also: "Firefox + AdBlocker"