By SJ Otto

One thing I really hate about the capitalist system is advertising. It is everywhere. I turn on my TV and for the pleasure of watching a 30 minute or one-hour show I am interrupted with lots of messages telling me I need to buy some product or service or my life will just be incomplete. It may be insurance to keep me from dying and leaving a lot of bills to my children. It may be a message about a new kind of car that will make my hum-drum life complete if I just go and put no money down for a car that cast almost half of what I paid for my house to live in. It may be about an expensive drug that will cure a disease I probably have and may not know it.

Advertising today is in your face. You can't hardly get away from it. It's obnoxious.  And the key to successful ads is to create a perceived need where none really exists. They try to manipulate us. The bottom line to all those messages is that my life will be missing something unless I give some of my money to some one else.

There is also advertising in the newspaper and the magazines I get. When I go on line, many of the sites I go to have advertising. I even see big ads on buildings along the street where I live. But the worst advertising of all are the uninvited ads that sneak into my computer without my permission.

There are many mornings when my day starts as I click on my computer and see how many messages I have on Facebook, or how many, if any, comments I have received from one of my blogs. I enjoy the silence of sitting in front of my computer when SUDDENLY!—I hear this horrible noise from some blathering ass-hole trying to sell me something I don't want. And even if I wanted it, I don't want to hear the spiel of some jerk blathering on and on about what ever it is I supposedly can't wait to buy.

I hate those same ads when I go to someone else's site, but people have a right to put what ever they want on their own site. But no one has a right to force me to put ads on MY sites or worse, my private home screen.

Some unscrupulous company is putting mal-wear into my computer and forcing pop up ads on me when ever I go on line. A company called Map Scout (http://www.mapsscout.com/) has put such malware into my computer and every time I go on line, this noisy ad pops up in the corner of my computer. It does have a sound symbol where I can silence the damn thing. Then it has a count down, 10 seconds, so I can click it off. I usually click the sound off then wait for the count down and click on the "X". It is time consuming. It is also annoying. Worst of all it is an intrusion on my privacy. It is as if someone has broken into my home, and forced me to watch an ad spiel that I don't want to see or hear. As far as I'm concerned Map Scout is a criminal company. It's extortion. They have stolen space in my computer to force me to watch and hear something I don't want. Unlike the ads on TV or magazines, where the ads are contained in the product, Map Scout, and other such criminal ad companies, such as Pluto TV (http://pluto.tv/embed/) and Spotlight (https://spotlight.xumotv.co), have not provided me with any product to go with their ads. They had no permission to place that ad there. They have simply invaded my privacy and taken up space on my computer without my permission. They are thieves.

I will lodge a complaint about these companies. I will get advice from my brother John on how to remove the soft wear these creeps have imbedded in my computer. Complaints will probably do no good. These companies will just ignore them. And such companies will try very hard to find new ways to invade my private computer and my private space.

It's an on going war. There is not much I can do about advertising today. But this last kind of advertising needs to be fought. We need our privacy and some corporate slime bags have gone to far in taking that away from us.