You are not in the minority, and I find it breathtakingly hard to believe that you think you are in the minority. Virtually everyone in the circles I run in (reddit, hackernews, etc.) believe the same as you. If you want a true minority opinion, read on.

From a practical standpoint, I don't care. Leeching can't be stopped and any web business obviously has to understand that. Clearly, businesses are able to be built despite leechers.

What I find incredible is that ads are really that much of a nuisance for people. I've never had the slightest difficulty completely tuning out any manner of ad. I sometimes get the feeling that folks who go out of their way to ad block are actually a little bit offended by banner ads in general. And that makes me think they're a little bit creepy. In real life, no one would repeatedly take favors from someone and not feel a certain obligation.

What I find even more incredible is the pure, uniform rationalization that comes from communities that otherwise pride themselves on their logic. Would you take a cookie from one of those cardboard vendors some office buildings have and not pay? "If they didn't want me to eat their cookies, they should have stopped me from taking one."

It's just that the "crime" is so trifling and anonymous. No single raindrop blames itself for the flood.

Like I said, I don't care about ad blocking per se. It's the collective and willful rationalization that irritates me.

(Incidentally, your edits imply that you would be willing to automaticaly be blocked from sites that serve ads. That's nice, and makes you consistent, but the vast, vast majority of ad blockers would not be willing to live with an Internet hamstrung to that extent.)

I think your perceptions of other people, what you think they think, are misguided.

I block ads and flash because I find ads distracting, animated ads in particular. When web sites use interstitial ads before content comes up (such as javascript popups, or delayed redirects) - I normally close the page and don't bother with the content. The fact that you don't find ads distracting is not proof that I don't find ads distracting. I have the same feelings towards TV; so I don't own one. I have similar feelings towards radio; so the ones I own are multi-purpose devices, like my phone or alarm clock, and are not used for radio listening. I have similar feelings towards magazines; I don't buy them. I have similar feelings about going to the cinema, so I always turn up late to avoid ads, especially trailers, which almost invariably ruin the film before it can be seen with fresh eyes.

Now this has nothing to do with "obligation". Me having my attention degraded by advertising, my focus and concentration broken, is harmful to my being. I resent it, and I would resent the products presented in such a manner, in just the same way as I never buy products from door to door salesmen. I actively seek to avoid those products that were presented persistently enough to lodge in my mind. If anything, I'm doing the advertiser a service by preventing it from harming me. I have a little economic suspicion in my mind: if the advertiser has sufficient margin to try to buy my attention, there's probably a better value option available somewhere else.

Coming back to "obligation", the content producer who believes that viewing ads is payback for producing the content, is confusing their chosen payment mechanism with their self interest. The mechanics of advertising is that the advertiser pays the content producer for the number of eyeballs that the content producer can deliver. The content producer, having bought an eyeball with some content, thereby feels robbed when the eyeball exhibits free will and doesn't do as it's told.

The only advertising that I don't find offensive is that which is extremely relevant, such as affiliate links discussing the product at hand, but simultaneously don't require tracking my behaviour, but rather rely on my being interested in that niche.

In other words: advertisers, don't come to me, I'll come to you.

Most people that I've talked to about this (maybe 10 people?) think that it's bad to block ads on the grounds that we browsers collectively owe the content providers a means of revenue. Maybe I didn't talk to a representative sample-- I'm not sure. I generally don't hang out with many people who read HN or Reddit. But I think something like "I think granola contains meat," is a better example of something "breathtakingly hard to believe" than that I think I'm in the minority. [1]

Your example with the cardboard vendors is an interesting one. I'm not familiar with those things-- are they like an honor-system cookie jar or something? It's an interesting comparison, because I wouldn't steal from an honor-system cookie jar. Also, I think the raindrop/flood analogy is pretty good, except I totally accept that I'm part of the flood. I just don't care at all if the content providers want me to look at ads. They didn't build the internet, they didn't buy me a computer, and they didn't pay for my connection. They're trying to leverage a public good, like putting a billboard next to a highway, and I don't owe them my attention.

Thinking about it a bit, maybe it's because I do actually remember the internet before ads. It was kind of nice. If I hadn't experienced that, maybe ads would seem more palatable.

[1] I did actually know a kid who thought granola was made of meat. He was 12.

uhm, if we browsers do owe something and then all ads business shifts from pay-per-view to pay-per-click model does that mean that we will be obliged to click the ads? I do not use ad-blocker (to be fair I do use clicktoflash plugin but the main reason is subpar flash performance on OS X) but I don't click on ads either.

If you don't click on those affiliate ads often enough and buy stuff, you're no different than the worthless lurkers and adblockers as far as actually funding the site go.

Advertising is a nice "turbo boost" for a trickle of revenue. It is difficult to impossible to be the sole source of revenue for a business. All the guilt in the world won't prop up a bad business model.

There are (at least) two advertising strategies that I've seen:

1. Small(ish) adds on the periphery of a web site. Some of these may be Flash, some of them may be annoying animated GIFs, but they never attempt to take over your screen, nor do they automatically try to open pop-ups. 2. Large, flashy ads, often with video and/or audio, many of which take over the screen or spawn pop-ups.

I can deal with sites that use #1. #2 is unacceptable.

When using Firefox, I have AdBlock (among other things) installed, but now that I'm using Chrome a bit more for daily browsing, I find myself avoiding sites that use method #2 for serving up ads.

I see your view, but my problem is, I really like free content.

I can accept that to produce and distribute that content costs someone money. The ad based revenue model aligns very nicely with the quality of the content produced (assuming greater quality == more readers).

The problem with the pay per read model is that you don't know if you want to pay before your read. Now that probably works for larger publishers of quality work (e.g. IEEE), but for those random one-hit-wonder bloggers (and there are many of them), how would you know if yesterday's highly linked post was worth the 50 cents?

Some times a three paragraph blog post is insightful enough to be worth the nickel, sometimes I wish they paid me for the 2 minutes it took to read.

With a book or a larger volume of work, it's easier to briefly browse and make a purchase decision.

For the informal survey, I don't use ad blockers, but I just don't get bothered by the ads (with the random access afforded by a visual page they are rather simple to avoid). The onerous ones click-throughs and pop-ups), yeah, those are annoying.