The entire internet ad business has never made sense to me. Have you ever clicked any of the links? The landing pages were always confusing and not at all designed for you to engage with them.

I used to think, okay, I guess they don't care about visiting their sites and just want to get eyeball impressions to stay relevant in the cultural zeitgeist.

Then I learned how ads worked in the print industry, where it is assumed in the calculation that every magazine changes hands through at least twenty people who all look at all ads. So maybe everyone was just already used to getting screwed over paying for ads.

Then there's the fear of missing out angle. People paying for ads don't know whether it makes a different, but are too scared to find out. I also once read about a small business that took that risk and found out not paying for internet ads made no difference whatsoever.

Maybe it's time for an entire country to decide to just straight up outlaw all internet ads for a couple years and force everyone to find out what happens.