Articles You Should Never Read on the Internet

Despite its many shortcomings, the Internet is still overall the best way to find information. Even with occasionally incorrect and deliberately deceptive content, it is hard not to appreciate the tremendous value in being able to find virtually anything at the click of a button. Nonetheless, there are some practices that go too far in my book. One of the most annoying is the concept of list-based articles that lure you in with topics like:

• 10 things you should know about the IRS
• 12 reasons why you should never retire before...
• 100 amazing pictures from Hubble

While list-based articles can be informative, they are often plagued by advertisements and require you to click once and sometimes several times just to see the next part of the list. Do you really have time to wait for 25 slow loading pages that require you to also scroll down each time to see the "Next" button? Even worse, if you do continue to press "Next", will you have to click 25 times again to go back to the referrer page? Sites like answers.com use this trick to lure you away from news sites. If going back to the referrer site is too cumbersome, many visitors will stay on the target site. While this approach may work for advertising firms, it can be a real drag. Personally, I rarely read these types of articles anymore because it just encourages bad presentations that are so slow and annoying, to me it's not even worth it.

Careful analysis of such lists also reveals that often these same articles just provide common information simply repackaged. The author may see a topic like advantages of biobased products and reword it as "7 reasons why you should buy biobased products". In the process, they not only steal content but also turn good presentations into monotonous ad driven presentations. Good sites do not have to employ such awkward tactics and sites that use this practice only diminish the value of their content.