&gt; here at WIRED, where we do all we can to write vital stories<p>I genuinely read &quot;viral stories&quot; the first time I read that sentence, and thought to myself: that&#x27;s awfully honest of them.<p>Speaking more seriously, I&#x27;ll repeat what I&#x27;ve said before: I have only started blocking ads in the past 6 months or so, because while in the past I would simply not visit websites with obnoxious advertisements, there is now nowhere to go.<p>And I understand that you need money to pay your staff, and I understand that the public is not paying you, so someone has to, so that naturally falls to advertisers, as it has done for a hundred years. But clearly the public isn&#x27;t going to let you do that, at least not traditionally.<p>So I don&#x27;t know where this is going to end up, but no where good I imagine. More paid promotions, more &quot;native&quot; advertising, more catering to people who haven&#x27;t worked out how to use ad block, more viral &quot;you&#x27;ll never guess who farted in the senate&quot; style non-content-- the top two articles right now on Wired are literally reporting about advertisements. There is advertising sponsoring them writing about advertisements. My head is spinning.