I was trying to watch the trailer for the upcoming Twilight movie the other day (don't ask why--it had something to do with Riley), and I noticed an interesting and alarming new phenomenon. After I clicked on the trailer link, a message popped up to tell me that I needed to watch a short message from Downy before my video would play.

Irritated, I went back to the original page and tried it again. This time Cover Girl needed thirty seconds of my life before I could access the video. I tried going back and re-clicking one more time: Microsoft. Several other websites forced the same thing on me. Disgusted, I slammed the laptop forcefully shut and threw it from me.

Is this what we've come to? In order to watch what is, when it comes down to it, an advertisement for a film, we now must watch ANOTHER ad to earn it. Really? The logic (and implications) of this are mind-boggling.

Later, as I pondered this and browsed the "new laptops" section of Amazon, I thought about the movie I went to this summer that had 24(!) minutes of ads and previews before the movie started. I paid full price for the film, which means I actually spent money to watch almost a half-hour of advertisements. I spent even more if you count all the blatant product placements in the film. There's no giant remote in the movie theater to switch the screen over to another channel.

These are just two more examples of ad creep infiltrating our lives. It's only going to get worse, I'm afraid. Maybe I should just give up and become like this guy. It's where the world seems to be going anyway.