The Answer Will Surprise You!

May 9, 2019 11:08 AM

On many websites, the "chumbox" [previously] features a Top Gut Doctor exhorting Americans to "throw out this vegetable now!" But who is this doctor, and what vegetable must we expel?

Journalism's Do Or Die Moment spawns the scourge of chumboxes that bombard us with ads

posted by the man of twists and turns (52 comments total)

What vegetable must we expel?

The answer may surprise you.

If you can find it.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 11:12 AM on May 9, 2019 [11 favorites]

The Crystal adblocker on my phone really, really doesn’t want me to see that Vox article. So now of course I really want to find out.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 11:13 AM on May 9, 2019

Didn't it used to be a cardiologist? I swear it did. Did they notice that he was giving advice about the gut, and, so, a gut doctor was called for? Maybe it's one of those Bronowski Bears things.
posted by thelonius at 11:15 AM on May 9, 2019 [4 favorites]

Hilariously, I used some of my copious spare time to try and track this answer down also! And like people referenced in the article, I finally got to the video that could not be fast-forwarded and eventually gave up out of boredom.

There are no rewards to gain from clicking on any of those things at the bottom of the page. I knew that, but did it anyway.
posted by 41swans at 11:18 AM on May 9, 2019 [9 favorites]

I’m beginning to worry Peter Watts was right and the Internet will become unusable as it fills up with these autogenerating auto-replicating memescams that become the first automatous digital lifeforms as they compete for clicks and bank account numbers. It’s like watching the first pitcher plants and Venus fly traps evolve in hyperfast time.

Like big chunks of the mobile internet are just unusable now thanks to hijacking sites and no one seems to care?
posted by The Whelk at 11:18 AM on May 9, 2019 [32 favorites]

Spoiler alert: corn.

But also weirdly-timely-on-Metafilter endorsements of kimchi and fermented foods (but not soy) and disapproval of Roundup.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 11:20 AM on May 9, 2019 [14 favorites]

[Taboola CEO] Singolda informed him that he had never heard the term “chumbox,” and that he did not like the word “ads,” but that Taboola serves about 20 billion “recommendations” per day.

I read on breathlessly, waiting for the part where the intrepid journalist burns the building to the ground and salts the earth as a warning to others who would worship at the altar of late-stage capitalism. I was very disappointed. Luckily, my day was saved when the chumbox at the bottom of the article had the ad from the article, presented unironically.
posted by Mayor West at 11:23 AM on May 9, 2019 [26 favorites]

What's a "functional medicine certified practitioner"? Am I one for using OTC remedies?
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:29 AM on May 9, 2019 [3 favorites]

I visited a page recently where every single ad slot had the same "gut doctor" ad. There were no ads for anything else. It was a restaurant review, so the juxtaposition was especially unnerving.
posted by me3dia at 11:31 AM on May 9, 2019 [7 favorites]

Spoiler alert:
Japanese Knotweed. Unless it's young and tender.

And it's Biglebowski Bears.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:32 AM on May 9, 2019 [25 favorites]

/r/savedyouaclick
posted by hypersloth at 11:36 AM on May 9, 2019 [15 favorites]

Like big chunks of the mobile internet are just unusable now thanks to hijacking sites and no one seems to care?

Yesterday my Timehop showed me a picture from 11 years ago that showed a table in a restaurant I ate breakfast at once with a friend and it had both our dumbphones in it and I was like yeah that was a better way to live

Anyway my point is I guess I don't care if the mobile web becomes unusable?
posted by Automocar at 11:41 AM on May 9, 2019 [4 favorites]

It was Dr Cutler and gruts, wasn't it?
posted by scruss at 11:50 AM on May 9, 2019

Metafilter: I think it's corn
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:53 AM on May 9, 2019 [11 favorites]

I don't get the gut doctor one (I'm not in U.S.) but I get a lot of "17 Things That Happen to Your Body When You Eat/Don't Eat This Food" (where "17" is some number that seems impressive). I never click through to find out what food, but maybe it's all corn.
posted by taz at 12:04 PM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

Like big chunks of the mobile internet are just unusable now thanks to hijacking sites and no one seems to care?

Three ways to fix a browser hijack in iOS.
posted by leotrotsky at 12:07 PM on May 9, 2019 [6 favorites]

It's true that a lot of the web, especially the mobile web, is functionally unusable. But I rarely feel the need to use much of the web, especially the mobile web. There's a handful of sites outside of social media that I routinely interact with, most chosen because they're not filled to the brim with bad advertisements and chum boxes. Usually the only time I find myself on those sorts of sites is clicking through from Metafilter.

I guess it's sad to watch a once-great thing spiral into irrelevance and disfunction, but I was on Usenet from the late 90s to early 2000s so it's nothing I haven't seen before.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:15 PM on May 9, 2019 [5 favorites]

I'm always impressed by the seemingly endless variety of pictures that go along with this box. Just today I saw what looked like a dome shaped gelatinous of mass of what looked like chicken soup. Another time is was what looked like cooked broad beans. I've seen an image of a cut open paw paw. Weirdly you never see corn or anything on glyphosate (which gets blamed for all kinds of things some of which are legitimately concerning).
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:19 PM on May 9, 2019

somebody should write a country song about chumboxes

wait that somebody is me

"My Outbrain Got Taboola'd"
by PBO

well there's hot singles in the zip code
I visited yesterday morn
and the gut doctor's beggin' me please
throw out that wicked corn
but I got me a miracle skin thing
and there's secret laws in my town
and if I can't click through to some answers
I'm gonna burn the damn internet down

yes I got me the trypophobia
but it might just go away
if I take a dose of CBD oil
and learn Spanish in a single day
but there's a sea slug here and a jackfruit there
and a child actor all grown up
I miss the good ol' days of the interweb
with just two girls and one cup

ya-hoo-oo!
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:47 PM on May 9, 2019 [30 favorites]

Perhaps there's finally a market for my hand-crafted artisanal chumboxes.
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 12:50 PM on May 9, 2019 [7 favorites]

Corn
posted by sammyo at 12:54 PM on May 9, 2019

Are you sure it is corn? My gf says I should not eat peppers bc they are too hard to digest.
posted by AugustWest at 12:57 PM on May 9, 2019

For a minute I thought a "chumbox" was going to be one of those monthly subscription box things for people who like to fish and I was like being a UPS driver just got a little bit worse
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:04 PM on May 9, 2019 [27 favorites]

Sara hates corn, which is not a vegetable. Mark loves Sara. I beg you, America, click on chumboxes and you will feel better. I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel. I love you, America.
posted by kozad at 1:06 PM on May 9, 2019

Bell peppers are terrible and awful, and if the shady ad doctor is telling people to throw them out I will become his disciple for life.
posted by Pallas Athena at 1:24 PM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

Pallas Athena, we cannot be friends. Though I'll reconsider if you send those tasty peppers to me instead.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:33 PM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

Not gonna take culinary advice from someone who by all accounts likes wine that's been poured on the floor.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:36 PM on May 9, 2019 [6 favorites]

Green peppers can be hard to digest, but ripe ones are fine unless you have a food sensitivity.
posted by rikschell at 1:38 PM on May 9, 2019

That "Saved you a click" reddit is amazing! So many clicks saved!

Seriously, for most of the posts, I was thinking, "oh, that's interesting, but I'm glad someone just told me and didn't make me click through internet ads to find it out."
posted by jb at 1:46 PM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

did...did you just save me a click on /r/savedyouaclick
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:50 PM on May 9, 2019 [17 favorites]

In the last few months I've worked up a personal rule that serves me pretty well. I have yet to codify it into one of those named internet aphorisms like Godwin's or Betteridges's laws, or figure out how to make it into a greasemonkey thing or a custom adblock rule. It mainly came out of using the iOS & Google news apps on my two phones during lunchbreaks. But it's as follows:

If a headline contains the word "this" it does not deserve attention.

In the last 6 month this rule has been approximately 99.99% effective. I think in that time I've seen maybe one or two headlines out of thousands containing the word "this" that were not obvious bullshit clickbait.
posted by glonous keming at 1:52 PM on May 9, 2019 [18 favorites]

Pinterest is giving me a ton of ads to address my nonexistent concern about my dog licking his paws. It goes to a video, and I hardly watch videos, so it's going to remain a mystery. My dog doesn't seem to care.
posted by theora55 at 1:58 PM on May 9, 2019

if I was gonna break your balls, I’d tell you to go home and get your chumbox.
posted by thelonius at 2:02 PM on May 9, 2019 [3 favorites]

I never see any of this stuff, ever.

Why? Because I mostly avoid going online, from anywhere but home. And on my home network I have a Pi Hole.

Seriously it works great. It's like a whole different internet. I do own some mobile devices, phone, iPad, etc. But they are blessedly free of crap.

Once in a while, some site just won't work. But that has always been true. In fact I think more sites fail under their burden of garbage, than fail when stripped of garbage. And I know which ones I prefer to just give up on!
posted by elizilla at 2:07 PM on May 9, 2019 [4 favorites]

I've worked up a personal rule that serves me pretty well.

My own rule has become, avoid clicking any link that starts with a digit, like
"The 5 Best ___ ..." or "23 ____ that ..."
posted by Rash at 2:27 PM on May 9, 2019 [3 favorites]

Here to also praise pi hole. Pi hole is the best.
posted by salt grass at 3:02 PM on May 9, 2019

I could've sworn it was tomatoes. Must've been a different doctor.
posted by clawsoon at 4:54 PM on May 9, 2019

Thanks to Pi-hole, these articles are like a portal into a strange parallel dimension for me. All hail Pi-hole.
posted by Bugbread at 5:01 PM on May 9, 2019

Alright, we got to the bottom of that. It's corn.

Now, we gotta know:

Is corn grass?
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 5:07 PM on May 9, 2019

I like the idea of Pi-hole, but the list of supported operating systems is just six icons I have never seen before.
posted by snofoam at 6:02 PM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

They're all operating systems that run on the Raspberry Pi. It's not really meant to be run on your main computer (though of course that can be done if you feel like fiddling with virtual machines or the like).
posted by Bugbread at 6:54 PM on May 9, 2019

I haven't looked into it too deeply, but I get the impression that it's a very hands-on DIY type of project - though if someone's got a hundo to blow, at least one (relatively) turnkey solution is available. I've never bothered because I already have time and effort invested in device/browser-based solutions that seem to give enough of the same result to make me reasonably satisfied.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:29 PM on May 9, 2019

I just use ghostery and ublock. I have never seen these ads, but I remember similar ones.
posted by iamnotangry at 7:35 PM on May 9, 2019

Greg_Ace: "I haven't looked into it too deeply, but I get the impression that it's a very hands-on DIY type of project"

It's fairly easy, if memory serves me. Basically "install and forget" on the Pi itself, and then change the DNS settings on devices that connect.

Greg_Ace: " I've never bothered because I already have time and effort invested in device/browser-based solutions that seem to give enough of the same result to make me reasonably satisfied."

What's great about the Pi Hole is it's an ad-killer for your entire house network. I already had ads killed on my desktop computer using uBlock Origin, but once I got the Pi Hole set up, instead of just having ads blocked on my desktop computer's browser, they were also blocked from my phone's browser, and my wife's phone's browser, and my kid's phone's browser. And not only were they gone from the browsers on everyone's devices, but also all the other apps on our phones, even the games.
posted by Bugbread at 7:49 PM on May 9, 2019 [4 favorites]

And that totally makes sense in that context, but I'm a single geezer so we're talking a total of 3 devices I've already set up pretty strictly, so...ehh. But that's just me.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:10 PM on May 9, 2019

Also, I was responding to snofoam's comment, who already didn't seem inclined to go the DIY route.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:13 PM on May 9, 2019

Oh, no problem, I'm not trying to convince you to get one, just pointing it out for people who don't see what advantage it might have over just installing uBlock Origin.

Even in my case, it's not like I got the Pi for the purpose of running Pi Hole. I bought the Pi to use as a media center, and Pi Hole was something I found out about quite a bit later.
posted by Bugbread at 8:34 PM on May 9, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm intrigued by your Pi Hole and would like to see more.
posted by bongo_x at 1:45 AM on May 10, 2019

Three ways to fix a browser hijack in iOS.

The third one will surprise you!
posted by DreamerFi at 1:55 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

High fructose corn syrup and highly processed soy beans FTW
posted by DJZouke at 5:32 AM on May 10, 2019

bongo_x: “I'm intrigued by your Pi Hole and would like to see more.”

I got a Pi 3 and this kit from Adafruit because I thought it would be cool to have little 2.8" screen that displays a bunch of cool graphs and statistics about what's going on with your Pi Hole. Can confirm it's cool. And it all just snaps together. No soldering required and detailed instructions right there on the Adafruit website.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:37 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

I like the PiHole and run one at home, but I feel like either I have it misconfigured or we're not going to the same sites. Because running with just the PiHole and without browser-based adblocking still results in a ton of ads getting through.

Maybe I need to go poke at its blacklists a bit or something.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:28 PM on May 10, 2019