Lost in a world of popups and weird pictures

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I googled some starlet’s name and found a picture on a site called mgid.com

Clicking the link to the picture pops up another mgid page, that has another link on it.

Clicking that takes me to nuffy.net, which has another link to retrieve my picture.

This launches another popup on a site called manofest.com

However, some weird link at the bottom catches my eye and I click it, which pops up a site called funzu.com

Naturally any links on funzu pop up a new page that holds a link that pops up another site - this time vizboo.com which actually contains the content I was interested in.

Sadly, my curiosity is piqued by another link on funzu.com, which spawns a page on wahoha.com. Within 2 minutes I have 19 tabs open, covering such other sites as getyourlol.com, 2leep.com, picsxd.com, dontpanic.co.uk, weirdworm.com, englishrussia.com - and have closed down a similar number.

Each page has so many other (unattributed) weird or sometimes sexy links - e.g. bikini photobombs - on them that I can’t stop clicking. And I’m drowning in new tabs.

What on earth are these sites? What are they for (presumaby advertising $$)? Are they all interlinked? Who collates the weird stuff? WTF?

2

Click here for your answer.

3

I have nearly escaped… only two tabs open now. But there’s a link to a really cute picture of a kitten cuddling a teddy bear and suddenly… I’m off again. Because hey look, beautiful portraits of random strangers.

Help! :frowning:

4

I know that not everyone uses adblockers, but there are seriously people who do not run with popup blockers? Heck, even Internet Explorer has one built in, now.

5

They’re not popups, they’re “open in new tab/page” links. For the HTML-savvy: target="_blank".

ETA: I finally escaped. But not before perusing “hot women with guns”.

6

I was just on a bunch of those sites not 2 days ago. Still have one open, in fact. I dunno why they all open in new tabs, either. Seems like it’d be more streamlined to at least go to page of content with other articles prominently displayed on the side, rather than to page with no content with other articles prominently displayed before getting to the actual content. But maybe that’s the point.

It’s kinda like escaping from Cracked, or TVTropes. Or hell, sometimes even wiki.

7

They get paid for everytime they trick you into opening up a given website. So what they do is they lure you in with some eye catching picture or headline that opens up another page of lures which opens up another page of lures, rinse and repeat, etc, etc, ad nauseum. And they never actually deliver on what any of the healdines or photos actually promise. It is a bait and switch routine laced with a feedback loop. And the only beneficiaries are the jerks that get paid everytime they trick you into wasting your time. And just like pop up advertisers, and any other unsavory business tacticians I will not purchse goods or services from them or their business partners just on principal.

8

Hmm I was just wondering what their business model is. I must say their articles are very good at attracting people.