Register, sign in, sign up, join! (And by all means "tweet" about it all)...What has happened to the web these days? Every time I find some interesting content and click to learn or read more I get hit with what I call the "Registration Wall." I get asked to sign up or join something to get at the content I was wanting to browse. If I do get through the wall to the content, now buried in an avalanche of tacky ads that all want to know my age or some other tidbit of personal info to learn their dramatic secrets, I invariably get asked to "Like" something. I get asked to tweet, post, or otherwise spread the word to everyone I know so that they can all go through the same fifteen minutes of Internet torture I just went through to read an article of interest to me. If you are much of an Internet user at all then you know exactly what I am talking about. You probably already have fifteen or twenty usernames and passwords. God only knows how many I have by now. And the net just keeps asking you to sign up again and again and again.
It's no mystery. Facebook popped the cork on its champagne bottles by registering users in massive numbers, so registration seems to be the name of the game these days. Sites want to build a big, active database of registered users, which they somehow hope to associate with their net worth. I wanted to list a client web site in Bing's local listings the other day: BAM! Bing immediately wanted me to use my Windows live ID to sign on, and lacking that I had to sign up. OK...this was for a client... so I went through the unusually nosy registration process struggling with the Captcha at the end, including the arm twisting "I accept" process that puts up links to all their policies and forces you to read and accept them. (Who EVER reads the technical details of those policies before hitting the accept button?) I did happen to catch, with a grimace, the phrase that "from time to time" MSN would be sending me emails of interest to me," which actually meant "we're about to start spamming you big time, brother!"
I finally finish only to find that Bing was having "technical difficulties" and I was asked to return and go through the whole sign up process again later. Meanwhile...I have the odd feeling that my email and other information has already been harvested. They got what they wanted. I got nothing but the 20 minute signup headache and a "see ya later, bud." Well here's my news for Bing this morning: It's over. The end. Yup. That's as far as I'm willing to go with Bing now. Goodbye, and I won't be back. Send me your junk email at your peril forever hereafter.
Frankly, there's nothing that prompts me to hit the "close tab" button faster than hitting the Registration Wall on a web site. What happened to good, old fashioned, ad-free CONTENT? ...Free content on a free Internet? Answer--the same thing that happened to Free TV shows. You get the show, but you have to put up with six minutes of 30 second commercials for every six minutes of programming. The Internet is getting far, far worse than that.
OK...I may sound unusually picky today but I also like to have TWO interior pockets on all my jackets, (because my wallet and cell phone just don't fit comfortably into the one standard pocket most jackets get.) Yes, I'm picky. I really like good Pinot Noir, and I'm NOT drinking Merlot. I like Honda Civics, and I hate Chrysler--especially the minivans. I don't watch Football--EVER. I read. Yes, these odd preferences put me into a certain category in life. I dare not venture to express what it might be.
But dear Internet, now hear this: I DON'T WANT TO SIGN UP! I just want to browse my content in quiet anonymity, OK? I don't want to register, become a member, fill out a profile, upload a photo, give blood or DNA samples or anything of the kind, dear Big Brother. I don't want to "Like" you or "tweet" about you every day. Just get out of my face and let me browse in peace! If I like what I see happening on your web site, I'll find you again if I decide to join...OK? If your content is good I'll tell others about it in my own way. Fair enough? Sigh...
If you can read and understand the following poem, you're probably on my side. And to get the text to post it here I had to fight my way through a massive pop-up ad on birth control, a strange entity dancing on a Warcraft banner ad, and about five other annoying sidebar advertisements. But I got it... all for you. I read it again, and now I feel so much better. Do you?
THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
William Wordsworth, 1888
