Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for April 27, 2024

“But wait! There’s more!”

I have a strong suspicion the powers that be send ad links based on your search history. I want to know what in world Arlo’s been looking for.

I think there is an internet rule that if you follow that link, that specific item that you clicked on will not be discussed.

Time to turn on that VPN and use a different search engine.

I didn’t resist. But you have to go thru a lot of other tips before you get to that one. If it shows up.

I fell for it…once…it sounded good. A man sees a cabin in the woods, look what he found inside. After 10 minutes I gave up.

I have seen that one too. So far, after the same reaction as Arlo, I have resisted clicking.

To date I have gone a couple of months keeping clean of the bait. Yet sometimes an enticing glance brings up that entrapping thought of “maybe this one is different”.

Curses on you pusher adman!

You won’t believe what (fill-in-the-blank).

And get scammed!

I so much admire the utter ridiculousness of the example you cooked up, Mr. Johnson! Wow!

“The hard life and sad end of [person who is alive].”

Yeah, and according to YouTube ads, drinking ice water before going to bed will cure toenail fungus, too. Riiiiiiiiight.

It used to be if you see a plastic bottle stuffed between the tire and wheel well, watch out. When you move it makes a loud crackling noise and when you get out to investigate, a thief jumps in and takes off with your car.

Number four really astonished me.

Who why do you put a bottle on your tire when you travel?

I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal a bottom me.

“Live forever by learning this one simple trick”.

Another weird click bait is “Put a red Solo cup under the toilet seat when you stay in a hotel”. I can’t imagine any reason for that and it would scare you when you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Has anyone gone down that rabbit hole far enough to find the answer?

Snopes does read these click baits for research. One article said they clicked through 41 pages (!), but never did find the answer to why you would put a cup or toilet paper roll under the toilet seat. Some advertiser is just trying to see what headlines will get people to click the most often.

Been there, done that. Next page is fake Microsoft virus page.

Resist, Arlo, it makes no sense.

Try this one weird trick to tell us how to target our advertising!

Top 20 photos of [insert string of random words here]. Number 15 will shock you!

Because of all the poop before you got the answer, if there, if I’m intrigued i bypass the clicking on the link and google it.

Advertising scam. If you read anything that quickly gets your attention like that, it is a scam. Ignore it, your life will be better and safer.

Every now and then some lovely soul in the Comments will tell everyone what it is, so you don’t have to go there.

“It’s Genius!”

I tend to ignore anything that is marked “paid partner content”, “ad”, “From our friends at….”, “Temu”, or any other indicator of fakeness.

And they don’t even tell you why if you do click on it. I’m still waiting to find out why I should put tinfoil on my door knob when I’m alone.

“…and then forget you put it there, drive away, and get a flat tire”…

Don’t click. Just do your own search.

…and the photo of a woman’s breasts have nothing to do with the words in the ad.

“She was beautiful then but you will not believe what she looks like now.”

Item presently sold out in retail stores but a few remain available at a special price if you click HERE. But hurry — these final few are going FAST!

Arlo needs to install an adblocker.

“click” Ha-Ha…made ’ya look!

Let me know when you find out. I have been wondering for a few years now. But I suspect a trick distrustful thing that I am.

Worst ever was: How to remove a rim cuff from your vehicle. 27 minutes gone from my life and last of my TracFone Gigabytes…

Saw one the other day that was something about a pregnant animal that gave birth to something that made the vet call the cops, accompanied by a bad AI image of said animal. I have started reporting the most annoying ads and telling Google to stop showing me such things. Still waiting for THAT to work.

Co-pilot AI tells me these articles will give pages and pages of talking about this subject, but in the end not really give a reason why. It’s just to get you to see the pages and pages of advertisements.

I enter the key words, e.g. “bottle tire hack”, in my internet search engine. Somebody will’ve answered without all the clicks. In this case: the bottles will fly off when the wheels turn. If a wheel is stuck, or if the brakes are stuck, the bottle will stay on the tires. Handy if you’re pulling a long trailer that hasn’t moved in a while.