Unfortunately, I have to adblock The Escapist. The ads are often intrusive, badly mess up the formatting, and outright crash my browser a lot of the time if I leave them on.

I do my best to keep my most visited sites unblocked, but advertisements really are getting worse and worse overall. I'm slowly having to block more and more sites because the ads outright interfere with my ability to even see the content on the internet. I don't understand why people would be PROUD of blocking ads, though. It isn't special or anything worth declaring loudly.

Can mods give clarification on how we're to discuss this? Normally adblock threads are instantly closed with participants warned and if there's to even be a comments section for this video they'll have to be some sort of exception.

EDIT: Holy shit these are a lot of warnings. Thread may as well be closed, difficult to discuss something that's expressly forbidden to discuss.

I do block ads. They screw up the formatting, they are noisy and they try to make you click there even if you do not want to. I could live with a couple of silent banners. I could dead with this *click to watch video* windows pops up with embedded video.

What I can absolutely fucking not accept is trying to watch a video, with an add being louder than the video and I have to invest work to close this add to enjoy my video. Or that you want to watch a video and have to watch another advertising video first.

I especially want to address you, Jim. In a way (yes, logic is flawed) the piracy offers better service than the legal way to obtain content (you will recognize this one).

I actually *WANT* to support content creators, but the ads that are made are...dear god.

I stopped 'allowing' that guy with the glasses to run ads when I got a THREE MINUTE AD from blip that it didn't even autoplay, forcing me to press play, instead, and this on a five minute video...but then, blip's been in a state of 'open war' with adblock for awhile...in a sense that they punish people who don't use it >_>.

I *DID* turn it off for the escapist here. Because Jim asked nicely, and he's cool.

"If everyone blocked ads from running, there'd be no show."

But... But... I'm a pub club member!

I don't use Adblock, nor do I plan to, nor do I advocate its use, but by god, The Escapist hasn't been making it easy for me the past few months. Video ads, which play on the sides and bottom of the page, starting themselves, with SOUND, which I then have to close everytime I open a new page, have occasionally made browsing the site a downright pain in the ass.

There is no threat here, I've been visiting this site for over 5 years, and have been a member for almost as long, but please Escapist, contact whoever is responsible for the advertisements placed here, and get them to stop it, because in the long run, I'm sure it is in fact the kind of thing that will drive people away, and I'd like this place to continue thriving. Thank you.

I never use adblock, because if I like the video enough to watch it, I will watch an ad to see it.

There are some ads that are terrible and I really, really would love to block only certain ads.

I put up with these dreadful, dreadful ads attempting not to sell a product or service but to render me death. Because I feel that the hard work behind this site is well worth help funding, albeit only with my battered ear drums.

It is hard sometimes. But I know better than to talk about it.

Excellently put, Jim. I don't use AdBlock, but I totally understand why someone would, so I don't judge them, but it would be nice if everyone that enjoys their "free" online content, to support said online content with a little inconvenience. Personally, I sometimes enjoy/appreciate ads, but more often than not, I mute them and/or click to another tab to multitask until it's over.

Before I used to be adblock free. That changed for me when a huge site I frequented and trusted let in numerous ads that infected and fucked my computer numerous times. I assumed at first that it was simply a link. But nope, it was the actual ads on the site. Now I'm paranoid as hell. Especially since then I continued to have close call. In general a lot of websites don't monitor what kinds of ads grace their site. The constraints in quality control has steadily dropped.

I dont use ad block jim but i have to say most recently on the escapist i am considering it. add's constantly replaying in the back round with sound with out a mute pause or stop while i try and listen to the very content on the site. massive pop up for assassins creed with music while a add for it plays before the video and then its also playing in the small window on the side of the screen that just blasts music and shit at me.

most recently this level of annoyance is driving me to consider it.and i have been a member for years with out ad block watched a huge amount of content and never have they been as bad as recently.

I make sure the whitelist sites I frequently visit like The Escapist, Screwattack, and Destructoid. Everything else is SOL. That said if a particularly annoying ad is running I may turn it back on for a while, at least until the ad is replaced with something more tolerable.

On a side note, if there is an ad for a company I hate that shows up, I click it. I will click the ad, because I know it costs the advertiser more money every time someone clicks it. It's a great way to give content providers a little bit more money while sticking it to people you hate.

Also, as a tip for Jim, don't look at poor on the internet. Download it from usenet and browse it off your hard drive. (Or use a flash drive so you can keep it away from prying eyes.)

I don't use ad block because I know that's how people get paid. However, it's a daily struggle to not cave in and be selfish. I don't actually deal with external advertisers, but I've always wondered why it appears that sites have absolutely no editorial control over the types of ads on their page. I assume they have no control because, if they have any control, why would they have video-based ads running at the same time as their content that only serves to negatively affect the content I'm trying to consume? and that they are trying to publish?

I begrudgingly put up with it, but a site would really win me over by exercising more control over the ads it uses to prevent the content itself from being affected (wink wink nudge nudge). A picture ad is fine, but when you're streaming video ads while I'm trying to watch video content, the site turns into a mess.

I do not mind removing adblock, after all it is a small price to pay for something that I enjoy watching. What is a short ad for a video that comes out once a week. The only time I use adblock and will admit it is when I twitch, the reason is that I will not run ads to something they refuse to fix. Other than that unless the ads are extremely intrusive or just make the website unbearable I just don't run it. It is free content, half a minute of our time is nothing for something which is free.

I don't use adblock, it was awful tempting when internet advertising wasn't quite so widespread, but I have gotten used to it.

I do wish there was a way to say fuck you to just the advertisers who use auto-play and pop-ups without actually hurting the sites I want to support or making the problem worse.

I don't adblock anything I like and respect so all of Jim Sterling's, the Escapist's and Destructoid's work isn't ad blocked for me and never will be.

Having said that the Escapist ads are appalling. My computer isn't great and I don't have nearly enough money to get a new one, so the ads and the Escapist make it very difficult to watch content. Crashes are frequent and just typing out this comment is really laggy. I'll never adblock this site but I'd love it if the adverts aren't so bad that trying to access this site an ordeal. I don't have these problems anywhere else I don't use adblock by the way.

I use flashblock instead of adblock. Flashblock allows you to select when running anything using Adobe Flash, so if I play a video it allows everything in the video to play, including the ads, but it stops anything else on the page that could potentially play audio as you need flash to do that. And yeah, I plan to keep using it, way I see it I'm "paying" for what I watch by clicking to play it and letting the ad go, but that's it. If that gets me "warned" or banned then I'll just reset my router, but as I said I think it's fair to "pay" a minute of ads for a 4-8 minute video, but no more.

Jimothy Sterling:

Briefly discussed with a moderator yesterday that exceptions would have to be made here. I cannot speak for the admins, but I would like to believe they understand that, in order to comment here, an armistice is gonna be needed.

That's good, although a direct answer from the mods will be nice.

Personally I think the ideal scenario is Adblock Plus' Acceptable Ads initiative where sites which hold their ads to a specific standard can have their ads show up by default on users with Adblock installed. Notably Reddit ads are white listed by default. The majority of ad block users would probably be ok as long as the ads aren't annoyingly intrusive, although I do understand forcing ad companies to a baseline standard will be easier said then done.

I have AdBlock. I do not have the Escapist white listed. I wouldn't mind, I have several of my favourite sites white listed, but The Escapist has some awful ads at times. Auto playing videos, format screwing and other issues. I would happilly whitelist it if this stopped.

Disabled! At least for now. The trouble I had with The Escapist is that ads would play... and then not redirect to the video afterwards. It would just get stuck. And if I refreshed the page the ad would play again and same issue!

As long as I can actually, you know, watch the actual show after an ad has run, I'm happy to keep it disabled.

I prefer a little discrimination in my ad-blocking. Specifically, I don't use ad-block. I just don't watch content loaded with ads that I feel are contemptuous of my intelligence (like the sessile ads on this site -- I just don't scroll down to them). But the majority of the video ads here are relevant and tolerable (being products or services that I would use), so I muscle past them to get to the good stuff.

I'm guessing that I'll get banned for this, but as a rule, I do use adblock. While I can appreciate Jim's stance on it, and, since he asked very nicely, I may try to add his videos to my white list; the ads that are placed on here and other places are getting worse and worse. It's clear that marketers and corporations think very low of the average 'Murican and loves to just plaster every page possible with loud screaming ads. It is even worse for people (like myself sometimes) to look at these sites on a tablet, as the ads become virtually impossible to turn off, or even automatically take you to whatever, crap filled, virus laden "Link" they want when you tap anywhere on the screen.

Sorry, but until there is a better way to advertise a product without forcing you to go to it, adblock will be on every computer and every browser that I use. Sorry guys.

I can certainly see how more people using adblock would cause adverts to make more intrusive ads. Above all, I hate the ones that autoplay in some discrete corner of the site I'm on, or the one where if you accidentally wiggle your mouse pointer on the slightest corner of the ad window, the window opens up ALL over your screen and plays so screamingly loud I'd almost rather a grenade went off beside me. I'm tired of having to play Minesweeper on almost every website where the punishment for losing is a loud ad trying to sell me a fucking Jeep at prices I couldn't even hope to afford right now.

I've never used adblock though, nor do I really want to go out of my way to do so. YES, I hate ads just as much as anyone, YES it's incredibly inconvenient, but everyone needs to make a living, and as long as the content from the people I'm watching is enjoyable enough to me, I can wait 15 seconds. If it isn't? Then I stop watching, and then don't give them the money from sitting through the ad. It's that simple.

Well, I do use adblock. Like most people, I installed it because one particular site decided to force hundreds of adverts on me that ruined the whole site and slowed my browser to a crawl and because of that one terrible example, others have ended up 'suffering', for lack of a better term. Think I'll experiment by putting all the sites I regularly frequent (including the Escapist) on the white list and see how it goes.

Still, advertisers need to learn some restraint. More often then not, forcing an advert in someone's face makes them less inclined to buy the advertised item/service, or at least I always feel less inclined.

Hmm, we need a post on this thread to show people how to white-list pages on firefox and chrome.