Anonymous asked: HOW CAN PEOPLE STAND NOT HAVING ADBLOCK? I've been on someone else's computer for a few days and holy shit, ads have become intrusive as fuck. And the amount of people I know who don't use AdBlock perplexes me. Why would you not use it? Do YOU use it? I know you're the boss of a popular website, who partially depends on ad income, so I'm wondering how you feel about it. (If it helps, I was a subscriber for a couple years... <3)

I think between Flash security issues, the rise of ad exchanges that don’t always properly vet the ads they’re placing onto various websites, and increasingly invasive ad placements appearing on sites, one could make a pretty strong case for blocking ads these days. As much as I wish we got a billion ad impressions and made a ton of money off of ads that we could use to reinvest in the business by hiring people, those days are over. Display advertising is kind of dead.

The ads you see these days are flying out of an exploding, shambling corpse that refuses to go down without a fight. In some ways, that shambling thing can still be really lucrative. But it won’t last forever. As it explodes, the on-site experience for many sites will get worse, inspiring more people to block ads, and so on down the line.

We’re lucky to have a growing number of people who are willing to pay us to directly support what we do. If we were simply attempting to be another ad-supported video game site we wouldn’t be here, largely because of the high rate of ad blockers we see. But I’d never blame those people for, like, denying us some chunk of money or whatever. Business changes. Either you keep up with it and find a way to make it work or you don’t.