>it's going out of your way to subvert the site's business model

When people sneak snacks into a movie theater they are not thinking "I am going to subvert this theater's business model". They are thinking "The normal way of getting snacks at the theater is unacceptable to me".

The same is true with AdBlock. Nobody thinks "Mwahahaha, I'm going to financially ruin some content creators." They think "if I see one more punch-the-monkey ad, I'm going to punch an actual monkey".

I mute TV commercials, I change the station on the radio when the commercials start, and I use AdBlock by default. If I really like a site, I will turn AdBlock off and see if its ads are acceptable. Usually, though, I turn it right back on.

AdBlock(afaik) directly blocks loading ads at all. Therefore, they are not counted as a view, because it isn't. I think it'd be a lot scummier if it loaded them, but didn't display them. That would wreck havoc with ad statistics and would drive down ad revenue.

I can relate to that feeling. I usually don't start enabling Adblock until a site I frequent does something particularly noxious.

One example was my local newspaper, which put this flash overlay of a local bigmouth car deal floating in the middle of the screen -- in a area that you typically click on.

I click it by mistake and end up with a high-volume "it's huuuge" booming across my office. Screw that... adblock=on.

Personally, I like Adblock Plus (Good Karma Edition). By default, it allows ads through, but blocking them on a website that uses them badly (which for me means flashing or making noise) is only a click away. My reason for using adblock is aesthetic, not paranoiac, so I'm willing to give sites the benefit of the doubt.

Project Wonderful is worth whitelisting simply to see the ads for everyone's exquisitely terrible webcomics.