Itzoe.net

Gluten-free since 1996

Will the real prostitute please stand up?

Sunday, September 30, 2007

I'm not sure whether to file this under hypocrisy or stupidity or what. I signed up with an advertising affiliate network to place some banner ads on the site. Thinking I'm most willing to support advertisers who I myself have purchased from in the past, or who offer products or services that align with my own personal views, I applied to about a half-dozen dozen companies, all promising a "review" of my site.

All but two turned me down (both of which are displayed to the right). Each e-mail I got from each respective company contained a litany of reasons why I was rejected, from "too little traffic" or "site not accessible." Bull. The real reason is because of my Kung Fu Hustle post and it's use of the word porn.

Gimme a break.

This site does not contain porn. This site does not espouse or encourage porn. There are no dirty pictures. This site was not designed for prurient interests.

According to Wikipedia, pornography comes from the Greek porne, meaning "prostitue," and grapho, meaning "to write or record." So I guess technically this site is pornography in the sense that I'm prostituting my thoughts and ideas as I write them down. Or maybe it makes me a prostitute to want to run some ads on a site created to display my words.

Whatever. Seems to me these companies are so scared of the PC bullshit rampant these days that they use their little bot programs to scan a site and automatically reject it based on one word used, in this case, twice. Sheesh, it reminds me of all that hullabaloo when sites about breast cancer were being censored from search results. So instead of investigating further to find out the context of the word in question, they let their knee-jerk reactions rule the day.

By the way, I don't buy the crap about "too little traffic" or "too few visitors." What the fuck should it matter to them? Whether I have one visitor or one million, their advertising only pays me for click-throughs. What are they afraid of? Only one person will see their ad? God forbid. But it's okay for them to prostitute themselves by plastering ads in places no one wants to see them. (You know what I'm talking about.)

For those who are interested, here's a list of the companies (so far) too sqeamish to advertise on a site with the word "porn," regardless of the context. My estimation of them and the likelihood of my continued patronage have gone down considerably.

Hey, fellas... Porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn, porn!

Stick that in your ass.