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Despicable Cork Soakers
Yeah, this is a hate post. I hate these two muddy foyers. I really do.
As a matter of fact, I hated them as an abstract concept long before I hated them as specific human (mostly) beings. For a year I’ve had an image folder on my USB drive titled “Asshole Marketing Clickbait Images.” Every time I saw a bullshit photo in a web banner, I screencapped it. I researched to find out what the images really are.
You know what I’m talking about. This ubiquitous shite:
You don’t give a shit about testosterone boosters. Nobody does. But you’ll click the image just to find out what the hell that thing is. And you probably know what happens if you click on those strange images. Bait and switch. The content has nothing to do with that photo. In point of fact, I’m pretty sure that photo on the left is actually a sheep’s cornea .
NOTE: Reader Dane points out that these pictures are two types of jellyfish.
I’ve spent way too much time researching these stupid motherfucking pictures that have nothing to do with the articles they link to. They are merely interesting and unique perspective images that do not yield results if you run them through a reverse Google image search.
For instance, these:
Skinny Pill? More like melted sugar gumdrop. Probably yet another jellyfish.
That “device” might just hold up your hanging ficus. This is really a dude who used to work for a New Mexico company that makes oil drill bits. The pieces of iron are examples of two overlapping “torsion springs” that have nothing to do with the drilling process that the company is trying to attract investors to dump their money in. The web site makes no explanation of how torsion springs work with their drill bits. So… clickbait. Evil bait-and-switch clickbait that never pays off on your click-curiosity.
This is an African Cucumber and it has nothing to do with memory.
This is probably a kiwi that had its stem sanded away
.
On the left is (I think) a plate of fried squid. The thing on the right is either a rambutam seed or a lychee seed.
Don’t know, and don’t know that I even want to know.
(DANE KNOWS, and it’s a beef tapeworm.)
And who is behind this bullshit clickbait marketing? It started with this pathetic cork soaker. Yaron Galai, the clickbait king.
He founded a company called Outbrain. Outbrain sells big blocks of clickbait to fill in the whitespace on a website. Little shifty bait-and-switch spammy scammers pay him for the redirects. He packages them in standardized graphics blocks and pays the top internet companies to place his filler in footers and side banners somewhere in their whitespace. The websites would have been negligent not to take the free money that was being thrown at them by Galai. It was way easier than the previous marketing model where they had to individually sell their own adspace and track/bill click-thrus.
Galai pays cash up-front to use his advertising plug-ins and packages them for easy placement. Websites love this.
Because the British version of the BBB came down on Galai’s head with an endless string of suits about false advertising and spam, the despicables behind these bullshit ads must now tag their company name somewhere in the blocks of images. And now we know the Devil’s name. When you see Outbrain, you’ll know those deceptive ads are paying a hefty mortgage note for this evil buttcrust.
Then along comes an even bigger, less-ethical bag of douche, Adam Singolda and his upstart company, Taboola.
It’s not enough for Singolda to use fake clickbait pictures for a bait and switch spam scam. No, he actively fakes slanderous Photoshops of celebrities to make his nut.
So, just in case you ever wondered who was behind the bullshit marketing evil that you see every day, know their names. Know that it’s these two despicable cork soakers. If I had my way: Feet first into a woodchipper.
10 comments
Dane Tyler
I have a few peeves too. I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who hates this sort of con.
Thanks for the PSA, ShaMack. It’s a good thing you’ve done, IMHO.
Dane Tyler
BTW – the one next to the thing you thought might be a sheep’s cornea is a handful of hythe jellyfish.
Here’s the original image, I think.
Dane Tyler
Oh, and I found the second image too. Not a sheep’s cornea but another jelly:
Here’s the pic.
Shawn
You ROCK, Dane!
I know this is weak cheese, but something in the back of my head was saying “jellyfish” but I couldn’t remember how/why I came upon that particular brain ping. I abandoned the thought and moved on to cornea. You are correct, of course.
Also, you’ve got WAY better image Search-Fu than I do! So, those stock photo sites are not searchable through Google image reverse search? And they DO have some kind of reverse image search of their own?
Consider me enlightened. Thanks man.
Dane Tyler
Glad to help a brutha out, m’man.
But, I don’t have any special Search-Fu. I literally grabbed your images and stuffed ’em into Google’s image search utility, and it found a few. I clicked on the matchies, picked “Visit Page” and gave you the links.
So there you have it — when you can snatch the image from my hand, it will be time for you to leave, Grasshoppah.
Shawn
YOU DID NOT FIND THOSE WITH GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH!!!
I searched those ten times and got no hits. Who do you know in Palo Alto?
Dane Tyler
I so promise I did. And the only person I ever knew in Palo Alto graduated Stanford in 1988 with a psych degree and is now a lawyer. Hand to God.
Dane Tyler
The worms might be beef tapeworms, but this web site is going to give me the creeps forever. So here you go…enjoy:
Ick.
Angela
I don’t even wanna click on the jelly link. That sheep cornea thing I originally thought was some kind of ring worm parasite or something and it always turns my stomach just looking at it. Don’t forget the one where it looks like eggs are coming out of a woman’s breast but it’s really (spoiler alert!) a type of flower super imposed on top of a breast. No matter, it’s still disgusting yet you can’t look away. And that’s how they suck you in.
Great post! Brought attention to a couple I hadn’t already seen. Ugh, those jelly things…
:]
Vanessa
Gah, I hate those ads! I loathe pages where you get a “slideshow” and have to click to the next page in the article and it takes for-effing-ever to load because of all the stupid ads.