They advertise

To advert our eyes

And insert lies

That God's alive

And you need this tie. [1]

So resolve to swat the fly,

Evolve to read between the lines

And question why

If money's involved,

what's our bottom line? [2]

It's odd to me

That the Odyssey

Is a commodity

When the community

Is of students like me,

Who do this for free;

Just to be heard

You let us out,

Just to earn

and drown us out. [3]

In this herd of flies

I cant find the guy in the tie

Who monetized our time,

And earns nickel and dime

From listicles to articles

to those few in rhymes:

Are you not mad

About all these fucking ads? [4]

[1] - Nothing really deep here this is just what advertisements do.

[2] - I was thinking of advertisements as like a shadow 'cause it follows you around, but a friend mentioned they are more like flies: they follow you and annoy you. It's hard to read between the lines when its full of ads for pharmaceuticals. Also, there has to be somebody who sold these ad spaces to companies, and what is our bottom line, as an Odyssey community, for having ads within our writing? Also financially, bottom line, we're not making money as contributors, so where is the money going?

[3] - This expands on what I was saying above: that this site is treated as a commodity by somebody; while students, like me, have no power to say anything because this is usually the first time we are putting our writing out to people. I just think it sucks we can't have a place to publish our work without an unbearable amount of advertisements.

[4] - This is a call to arms. How will the Odyssey respond?