T w e n t y S i d e d
A reader expressed their irritation with the IMVU ads that have been running in the sidebar recently. I was actually glad to see I wasn’t the only one. They have a trashy, lowest-common-denominator feel to them. Kind of a “Welcome to Hoochie World” vibe. The ad has been running for over a month, and I’ve never seen a picture of a single male avatar. It’s either the quasi-jailbait in a bikini, or a couple of skanks in a pseudosapphic embrace. Using a pretty girl to sell your stuff is perfectly reasonable, but doing it with such a lack of class gets on my nerves. I’ve never used the software, but the ads make me think their chat software is a world inhabited by l337-speaking teenage boys that would make the average FARK thread sound like the Mclaughlin Group by comparison.
This reminds me of the comments Georgina Bensley made about “Girl” games a while back. These ads, by trying to create an image of a world that is wall-to-wall with girls, is actually doing almost nothing to attract them. It might even be alienating them.
All of this, coupled with the fact that we’ve all been looking at the same 3 images for over a month now, has finally persuaded me to “block” the IMVU ads in the Google adsense controls. Although I notice they are still showing up. Maybe it takes a while to kick in? I dunno.
LATER: I’m at a loss, here. The block has been in place for six hours and I’m still seeing these ads. This is starting to annoy me.
LATER LATER: All gone now. Yay.
