Bellarmine Web Art Spring 2018

Monday, October 15, 2018

Wiech Final Project

For my final project, I want to explore the concept of "click bait". This is a term typically used to describe ads whose whole purpose is to link people to another page, product, service, or other web location, with the intent of gathering some kind of information or installing some program onto the person's computer without their knowledge.

To keep within legal restraints I won't be stealing anyone's information or installing anything onto their computers. Instead, the site will feature a number of "too good to be true" ads designed to grab the viewer's attention. Juxtaposed amongst these ads will be a number of obviously fake pop ups that will more directly convey their disingenuous intentions. These pop ups will appear in response to the viewer clicking on one of these ads, and include links of their own.

If the viewer clicks on one of the ads after the pop up appears, they will be redirected through a number of different pages before landing on a final page that says, "Thank you for providing your credit card information", "Your social security number has successfully been posted to auction", "Your subscription to (insert disturbing webpage URL here) is now active", and more disturbing things that the viewer would not want to have happen while surfing the web.
If the viewer clicks on one of the pop up links their screen will be filled with additional pop ups until their screen is covered. Clicking on any of these links will direct the viewer to one of the landing pages from the ads. There will also be one ad, that if clicked on, will redirect the viewer to a page on safe web surfing practices.

My hope is that as the viewer explores the website they will also think about they explore other web pages. Some pages pose obvious dangers that most people know to avoid; however, even websites that appear legitimate on the surface can pose unknown dangers. Additionally, I hope that this project will serve as a safe place for the viewer to make their web surfing mistakes without any of the real repercussions of clicking on a suspicious ad on another site.