What did I ever do to deserve those “worms coming out of the body” ads?
A while back I noticed that I was getting disgusting ads on several ordinary websites. I mean really revolting, most of them featuring hundreds of worms coming out of parts of someone’s body such as, most often, feet. At first I thought it was a fluke. But they kept coming and coming.
I had no clue as to why. It’s not like I’d clicked on anything even remotely connected to such a thing. I finally managed to block them; I hope for good.
And doing some research, I found this:
Have you ever wonder WHY IN THE WORLD do you keep seeing those disgusting ads on websites that just make your skin crawl? Well, I do, and I’m going to tell you all about it.
Those grid-like ads composing of disgusting, repulsive images are coined by theawe.com way back in 2015 as “chumbox ads.” What is a chum box, you ask? Here’s what they wrote:
“A Chum is decomposing fish matter that elicits a purely neurological brain stem response in its target consumer: larger fish, like sharks. It signals that they should let go, deploy their nictitating membranes, and chomp down blindly on a morsel of fragrant, life-giving sustenance. Perhaps in a frenzied manner.”
I’m not going to show you these ads because we’ve all seen it. Those “hair growth” banner ads or “small balls pressed on fingers or knees” (sorry to give you those image — nightmares). But the question is, WHY? It’s rather simple, really.
First of all, it’s business. Websites that offer these ads get paid by the network. The network collects money from these so-called “Advertisers” by impressions or clicks. These “advertisers” gets money when people visit their page from chumbox ads. It’s now a whole loop. You can’t leave. Everything is connected. …
Still, the question remains, why would anyone click on these ads? Turns out, humans are weird. Going back to the chum box analogy, a lot of us are drawn to these disgusting ads because we can’t look away. We can’t figure our why it irks us, so we just keep looking. Remember, they also make money off of ad impressions — so by just you looking at it already counts.
Even worse — we click on the ads to find out what the heck is going on, only to find even more disgusting ads. …
In summary, these ads are, unfortunately, working. They are making money, paying a lot, and we all know money talks. They are disgusting and immoral to the core, but just like the war we’re waging on clickbaits, it’s not going to be an easy feat.
Did I ever click on one? I doubt it; but maybe, just maybe, at the start when I didn’t know what I was seeing and I got curious? If so, I don’t recall doing so – I’m ordinarily very careful about that sort of thing. But consider yourself warned.
I don’t click on icky ads, but I will go click on the “X” to close them, if available, and I will also go over to close any ads which wiggle or change all the time, no matter what they are.
I know exactly the sort of thing you’re talking about, and will not give examples.
I’ve never heard of this. Is this really a thing? Maybe I’m out of the loop because I cancelled my cable (old fashioned I know) and streaming services. Now I only watch DVDs. No worms.
I read a lot of books. Still, no worms.
Or you could try this: https://youtu.be/ZGv8oAHxekU?si=NOpbJf3SXAepGKuI
RE: Things are all going the wrong way.
A late 2023 poll found that some 76% of those polled thought that things here in the U.S. were going in the wrong way.*
And from where I sit, indeed, everything is going the wrong way—in every area of our lives, those in charge have exactly the wrong priorities, and are doing their damnedest to destroy the fabric of our country, and to drive us into the ground.
Crime—don’t arrest, just let em’ go and, if you do arrest them, impose light or no penalties; revolving door justice at it’s best.
Rule of Law—what rule of law, what equal justice?
Education—WOKE indoctrination, even math is racist.
Sexual relations—there is no real male and female, its all fluid; your gender is what you happen to think it is at the moment. Don’t bow to the pronoun gods, or allow your kids to be butchered, and they’ll take your kids away.
National defense—queer the military, and open the borders wide—come on in, no questions asked, and here is your $10K welcome card.
The Presidency–An all too obviously senile–and getting more senile by the minute–Joe Biden is supposedly the President, supposedly considering and setting national and international policies, and directing our government, with the power to order the launch of nuclear weapons. But what Biden is apparently really focused on is, “which flavor of ice cream am I having today?”
Who is actually running the Presidency, who knows? Is it Dr. Jill, the White House Chief of Staff, Obama, Valerie Jarrett, John Pedesta? It sure ain’t Kamala “Horse Laugh” Harris.
Congress–forget about “regular order” and passing the budgets, or vitally necessary legislation, just dither around, pass a lot of commemorative legislation–i.e. the “national week of the elbow,” or “Broccoli day,” spout a whole bunch of lies, and preen for the cameras.
AI—full steam ahead, and don’t worry your little head about that ol’ SKYNET thing.
Etc., etc.—what sure looks like the deliberate ruination is pretty much global in scope.
* See https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/americans-country-headed-wrong-direction-poll/story?id=104633234
“F l u k e”
Deserving of sumpin’ on account of that, I reckon. Applause, mebbe?
I never clicked them either. Only saw them using Chrome as I have ad blocking on Brave and Mozilla.
Yes, quite disgusting.
I click on some pretty ‘nAsTy‘ stuff at times—get warning to go back, but I click continue. Sometimes another warning – click continue. Never got these “chumbox ads” tho. I use uBlock Origin extension (Firefox & Waterfox), and Win11 Pro’s Windows Security is the only virus protection I use any more.
I have never seen such ads in the margins of news sites or on YouTube. The YT ads are mostly for gadgets.
Except one does see ads featuring youngish women of a certain physical type dressed in low cut sheath dresses, on the rare visit to a rightwing political and quasi-news and opinion site of the kind you sometimes credit with a heads-up.
There were a couple of times in the last year when I gave in to clicking on what appeared to be a soft news article concerning the death of this or that action star which led not to an article but a page of boxes of links promising the news of say Clint Eastwood’s demise or sad fate. No damage was done though apart from anger and frustration at being cheated by my own weakness.
You would think that if they were tracking what we look at, one would see ads for whisky, firearms, cars and motorcycles. Oh wait, I have seen ads appear for the retro styled Royal Enfield bikes still made in India. And for guitar sales chains. Kind of nice looking, at least. And lasers from China that will light paper at 50 yards too.
I do need to get one of those.
Oh yeah I have gotten a car ad or two.
Several times recently I came across an advertisement touting model year left over compact SUVs as being virtually given away.
Only 15k or thereabouts. Must have been true because there was a picture of a giant parking yard full of them. And since they were not Toyotas or Hondas or Fords, but less popular types like Subaru, Nissan, or Hyundai, what reasonable person would doubt it? No lying cynic could be so clever.
However when I clicked to get my near free offbrand SUV at 70% off, something went wrong and all I got was shuttled to seemingly random auto dealers offering nothing like last year’s brand new surplus unsold inventory being given away at blow out prices.
I must have waited too long
It sounds like you may have come across Guinea Worms in your research somehow. Have you been bumping into Jimmy Carter in your internet wanderings?
https://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/index.html
ps. I realize I may now see Guinea Worm ads now by posting the above.
They can snag all kinds of data even without clicking through.
Did the ad load? How long was it on screen? How’d your mouse cursor react once it was?
You can get plugins to keep your browser from sharing at least some of this stuff, but it all gets saved to a profile which they then try to link to other profiles they already have; this is easier if you have cookies from wide-ranging sites, like Facebook or Google, which commonly have widgets all over the web (or in ads) which effectively phone home every time you load a page with them embedded in it.
Yeah, I’ve seen the same ads on one of the main news sources I look at each day, and I don’t know how to eliminate them.
Snow on Pine:
I can’t recall exactly how I blocked the ads, but I think it had to do with my privacy and security settings on my browser.
Boobah:
It wasn’t a pop-up ad, it was just part of the page. I don’t recall anything related to the mouse.
I use a network ad blocker. It uses a dedicated raspberry pi.
https://pi-hole.net/
An interesting choice of topic, very offbeat! I find these worm-expulsion ads a little bit intriguing. Once in a great while I’ve been moved to wonder if there are any such residents about which I should be doing something. I do find it quite weird, though, that these ads always seem to show them exiting from the soles of the feet or something like that; that’s not how I generally envision the process.
The last ad I recall that had this was the one with scurrying cockroaches… more than a decade ago.
I did not click on it (to the best of my knowledge) and generally did nothing to encourage them. In fact, where practicable — it was more common back then to be able to reach out to the web page operator — I would send them a diatribe about such ads, and make it clear that their existence on this page made me unlikely to “hang around” to read their content, as I’d also be helpless to not watch the cockroaches out of the corner of my eye. So they basically lost an eyeball they had otherwise earned.
I also became more and more aware of ad-blocker software… I’ve been using uBlock Origin for a good while, now, and generally refuse to turn it off when requested or demanded… Just because all too many web sites do a shitty job of vetting their adverts, and making sure there are none of these “chum box” adverts. Feels like there is probably a market out there for a company to provide a “safe” zone for advertising which avoids such drivel… Probably by insisting that all ads be whitelisted, with the only rule for rejection being if it’s ugly, revolting, or inherently offensive. Or if it “steals eyeballs” when clicked on to some other site and disables “back”.
That may be the same group that shows neuropathy and skin diseases as beans or as something like one of those 1970s beaded car seat covers. Not gross, but strange.
Or the bunch that tells you that John Doe thought his life was wonderful until he came home and his wife was [click for more].
Or the people who tell you to always put a red solo cup under the toilet seat, or wrap aluminum foil around doorknobs, or spread liquid soap or detergent in the kitchen sink before you go to bed.
I went to one of those sites. Basically they just what you to keep clicking and clicking your way through page after page before they get to the point.
If you’re really curious you can do a web search and find an non-commercial web page that usually tells you that it’s all nonsense.
Chases Eagles–
Looked at the pi-hole.net website, and it looks interesting, but I did not have a complete understanding of what they were saying, so, probably a little too technical for my pretty meagre computer skills.
Thanks Neo. Because there is a small “Sponsored ad” notation in the upper right corner I thought those disgusting ads were part of Ace of Spades HQ page. Because of this post, I compared loading Ace through Chrome and via Brave. No disgusting ads by way of Brave. Problem solved!
@ Abraxas > “Basically they just what you to keep clicking and clicking your way through page after page before they get to the point.”
Yep.
I quit going to those bait-and-switch places eventually.
And Adblock is your friend for filtering out the icky chumbox ads.
RE: UFOs, disinformation, and Men In Black
As I have written here before, there is ample evidence that the government has been running a sophisticated and wide-ranging UFO disinformation campaign for a couple of generations now.
This campaign includes salting bits and pieces of the truth among a whole bunch of bull shit, fantasy, craziness, and nonsense which appears in science fiction stories, on TV, and in the movies.
A case in point the “X-files.”
I’ve also noted that many serious UFO researchers are now coming around to the idea—based on the very wide variety of UFO sizes, shapes, behaviors, and colors which have been observed–that we are likely not just being visited by one species of NHI but, rather, being visited by a number of different species.
There are also the huge number of UFO encounters which are reportedly followed by visits by the “Men in Black,” trying to intimidate witnesses into not disclosing what they have seen to others, so it looks like the “Men in Black” series is another example of this disinformation campaign at work, as was “Independence Day,” with it’s secret DOD UFO reverse engineering program, and it’s captive NHI.
(About a year or so ago I ran across–I believe it might have been Bryce Zabel–recounting how he was told by a movie producer that the producer was approached by someone from DOD, who offered to help “improve” his movie by adding certain details.)
I have often wondered about those disgusting “worm” ads! Thanks for the information!
There were a lot of these ads at Ace of Spades. I try to support sites I enjoy by not blocking ads, but those were the last straw. Truly revolting stuff.
Calls to mind the formerly popular children’s “Hearse” song–“The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms crawl all roundabout…”*
Then, of course, there is the children’s rhyme of “Ring around the Rosey” which is reportedly a survival from the time of the Black Death as “they all fall down.”
* See https://genius.com/Harley-poe-the-hearse-song-lyrics
P.S. Other parts of this apparently very old rhyme talk of (dead) people with a “pocket full of posies” who are then burnt, “ashes, ashes,” to stop the infection from spreading.
I had no idea that that was not just something made up by the local neighborhood kids. [ Odd how there was a kind of kids’ cultural package passed along by and among 6 to 10 year olds without noticeable adult or older adolescent intervention]
Our version was different, as might be expected. As best I remember …
“They put you in an electric chair
They push the button while you are there
They wrap you up in a dirty sheet
And throw you in a hole nine feet deep
The worms crawl in
The worms crawl out
The worms crawl in and out your snout …”
The rest went on to end in a lost cadence or metre stumble about the corpse’s tongue used by worms as a diving board and a reference to liquifying vocal cords.
Probably all of the beginning and end were made up by ten year olds to fill in what was forgotten in transmission or misremembered.
I have to say, that this reminiscence has made me somewhat rethink my views about the unmitigated annoyingness of poetry and of poets and of the boundry transgressing offensiveness of public recitation and emoting.
Apparently I have not always been averse to verse; and, even somewhat enjoyed it as a child.
“Honors flysez / Income beesez / Onchess nobbez / Innob keysez”
Of course that came from an old movie on TV, and might not count as an authentic poem, even if emphatically recited several times in succession by kids traipsing down the sidewalk.
Snow: AI—full steam ahead, and don’t worry your little head about that ol’ SKYNET thing.
Actually, that’s still in the distant future, so it’s of no concern.
THIS, on the other hand, suggests that within about a year, two at the outside, you may well not be able to trust ANY video you see… Yet most peeps will not be aware of this fact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXpdyAWLDas
RE: UFOs–
I’d imagine that the Secrecy faction gets a lot of laughs from–“hiding things in plain sight,” by salting little nuggets of the truth throughout popular culture.
Some aspect of the truth about UFOs and NHIs is right there, in plain sight–described or pictured in that movie, book, or TV series–but it’s set out within a specifically constructed context–presented to a deliberately created mindset–which makes you immediately discount that information or image.
It could never happen, it’s just a crazy fantasy, a bunch of crap and nonsense, right?
I
secondthird Karmi and OBH’s suggestion of using uBlock Origin. My browsing’s much cleaner now.Sorry to mention it, but I was previously haunted by an ad which I think showed two raw egg yolks and read “Use this simple trick to empty your bowels every morning!” 🙁
I stopped visiting American Greatness, and emailed them that it was because I didn’t need to see 20 pictures of buxom women when I was just looking for conservative news and analysis.
Finally someone else has brought up this phenomenon!
I have been visually assaulted by foot-fungus or dermititus pictures for at least six months now. Not simply a mild green area between the toes, but hard-core images of the most revolting afflictions I have ever seen. These are on the main pages of news sites like Bongino Report that have no business displaying this medical pornography.
One poor sap was featured with a foot that looked like a miniature pier pylon at low tide, covered with barnacles and mussels. I am not prone to nightmares, but I had three of them in the month after viewing this horrible image.
I do not care if these images are available on the internet, but they must be accessed by actually seeking them out, like on medical websites, not traditional news websites. I do not wish to see them and find them offensive in the extreme.
I have thought about this at length, and I can see no financial reason that Bongino Report or Breitbart news would host these ads. I went so far as to write an e-mail to the editors of one of these websites complaining about it.
Thanks for broaching the subject Neo, it has been bothering me for over 6 months.
Erronius
Assume it is done on purpose by leftist trash trying to damage those sites.
well they seem to have spent much time and money, chronicling nonsense, but they can’t even effectively disprove much of it, although when I was watching the Project Blue Book show back in the 70s, they hadn’t come up with the majestic 12 folderall, which keyed off a number of details, like Director hillenkoetter’s future interest in UFO
investigations,
of course they picked the fellow who had played major flagg as the lead investigator
so they were already spiking the ball,
I don’t think “truth” means what he thinks it means.