In Slate, Farhad Manjoo has what is, overall, a boring article about some new version of the AdBlock software. However, he has a statement near the beginning that (A) I find highly interesting and (B) helps explain why I'm not interested in the rest of the article. After glossing the obvious appeal of ad-blocking, he writes:

I've heard many convoluted justifications for ad blocking—"it's my browser and my computer, so I can choose what I want to download"—but it's hard to make an honest claim that these programs are ethical. The Web is governed by an unwritten contract: You get nearly everything for free in exchange for the hassle of a few ads hovering on the periphery—and occasionally across the whole screen for a few seconds. Advertising probably supports a huge swath of the sites you regularly visit. It's obvious how rampant ad blocking hurts the Web: If every passenger siphons off a bit of fuel from the tank before the plane takes off, it's going to crash.

Um, really? I'll be honest: I don't buy Manjoo's argument at all. I disagree with it almost point by point.

• "I've heard many convoluted justifications for ad blocking." The argument presented immediately following is (A) not at all convoluted and (B) a straw man anyway. Amazingly, it's a straw man that the author manages not to refute. When you set up a fall guy, and the fall guy comes across better than you do, you might want to rethink your tack.
  
• "It's hard to make an honest claim that these programs are ethical." Really? I have a simple one: no one would make the argument that people watching network television be forced to watch the commercials, right? Do you think it's unethical for someone to get up and go to the bathroom or get a drink during a commercial break? Is that not, in fact, what most people assume they're for? It's the business model that's broken, not people's ethics.
• "The Web is governed by an unwritten contract: You get nearly everything for free in exchange for the hassle of a few ads." This is totally fabricated. I never agreed to any such thing, nor did the vast majority of users. I can make at least as sound a claim that the "unwritten contract" is something like this: "It's the responsibility of sites, not of users, to make money for sites." Given that I work for a highly profitable business that's primarily Internet based, I think I can say that, in general, Internet advertising is a boondoggle. TV advertising is too, but everyone gets to play pretend there because the numbers aren't as easy to see.
• "and occasionally across the whole screen for a few seconds." So a site blocking its own content with an ad is a good idea, but me blocking the ad is unethical? Got it!
• "Advertising probably supports a huge swath of the sites you regularly visit." That's not my fucking problem, is it? Don't cry foul on me just because you don't have a business model that works. This is like blaming me for the decline of the daily newspaper because I don't answer the door when those sales kids knock.
• "If every passenger siphons off a bit of fuel from the tank before the plane takes off, it's going to crash." What a hyperbolic load of horseshit. If airlines tried to make money by getting everyone on free flights and then asking that they watch ads, they'd be even more broke than they already are. And if airlines tried to make money by getting everyone on free flights at 40,000 feet and then saying "Oh, by the way, you all need to pay us, or the plane won't have enough fuel," they would be (A) still broke and (B) un-motherfucking-ethical. Let me make it perfectly clear: no one is siphoning fuel off the plane. The plane was not fueled in the first place. Fueling the plane is the airline's job, not mine.
  

This article just made me angry. I hate scolds, but if it's going to happen, at least make it about something you can do a good job of justifying. The hilarious thing is the people in the comment section at Slate who are shouting down legitimate points by calling dissenters "freeloaders," as if the mere act of not blocking ads makes them philanthropists rather than slacktivists. Sorry, people, but if you put content out there with no real idea of how to make money off it, it's not at all unethical for me to ignore your shitty, shitty advertising.

The biggest irony here? I don't actually ad block.