Friday March 29th, 2024
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Religious Webucation

All of a sudden youporn comes up on my tab (by itself of course).

Staff Writer

Imagine my surprise one late October night when, as I was doing my usual half-baked web browsing – switching between streaming Champions League matches,  NME festival line ups, Scott Fitzgerald quotes, David Firth cartoons and wikipediaing the word ‘Bloviate’ - all of a sudden youporn comes up on my tab (by itself of course). Now that isn’t the surprise as this seems to keep happening quite a lot. I think my computer is a porn addict. What’s surprising is when I clicked on the youporn tab (by mistake obviously) a strange ad banner popped up. I scrolled over the ad, and in full volume the ad bellowed, “ALLLAH-O AKBAR.. ALLLAH-O AKBAR.”

Now having never experienced an ad that is also a Sheikh before I had no idea what was going on. For a second I was pretty sure it was a voice from above telling me to sort my life out. I almost had a heart attack. Since then, I’ve seen these banners pop up more and more, literally preeching and urging me to click on them.

I understand that a lot of these banners are based on an algorithm that takes information from what you usually browse online and presents you with something you might be interested in.  But I think the last time I was on any sort of Islamic site was a year ago when I was checking when Ramadan finishes. I hope whoever is behind this ad campaign – whether it’s IkhwanWeb or some rogue agency trying to manipulate the general masses in Egypt  - understands how wrong it is for these ads to appear in such abhorrent contexts.

Anyways, I’m quite curious, has anyone else been getting these Islamic banner ad pop ups? I’m all for a bit of mindless consumerism being forced upon me online, but it makes me a tad uncomfortable for a banner ad to question my spiritual and religious existence when I’m looking for boobs. What do you think?