One late school night, I was downstairs in my house's office room, a room I was often in at the ripe age of ten, on the Cartoon Network website. I was an avid follower of several of the show's online games, and on this specific night, I was playing one of the games for the show "Kids Next Door" (which I hear is coming back, but what isn't these days, am I right?) After getting three strikes or getting eliminated (honestly, I don't know the specifics of a game I played nine years ago), I got a pop-up that changed my life.

"Mom!" I yelled, running up the stairs into her room. I woke her up because sleep wasn't not as important as what I was going to tell her. "Mom! I was on the computer, and it said I just won a free MacBook!"

"It's a scam. You didn't actually win one; they just want your personal information. Now let me go back to sleep."

Remember when I said that pop-up would change my life? Well, it didn't the way I thought it would. It would open me to a world that wants your money and will try anything it can to get it from you, and the centerpiece of that is marketing.

The way we market products is the third most annoying thing about this country, next to intolerance and country music (not that intolerance is better than country music, but I had to adhere to the rule of three). We are bombarded by advertising every day, whether it be driving on the highway on the way to the earth, listening to Pandora during work, or watching TV after work, and advertising will try anyway to get you to buy a product. If it's a commercial for vodka, it will be an attractive looking and vaguely European guy at a poorly lit bar getting all the ladies, so it will mean you will do the same if you drink it. If it's a Carl's Jr. commercial, it would be a bulimic model in a swimsuit taking a bite out of a greasy burger to link the looks of a woman to the looks of a burger (did I mention that advertising is supremely male-dominated?). Advertising is, in a harsh sense, tricking us, and calling something free is the best example of that.

Since we are exposed to so much advertisement, we are actually sucked in to all of it, but put off (even if we're not totally self-conscious about it.) We start learning, and, when someone says something is free, we ask "what's the catch?"

And who can blame us? There is always a catch. It might be that you have to pay something later, or you need to buy something with it, or, in the case of the infamous pop-up, it's to steal your personal information.

That one pop-up seemed to change not only my life but everyone's life, as us Americans are not a gullible kind, and, when a candidate calls for free programs, we metaphorically close that pop-up, get AdBlocker, and vote for an oligarch or fascist instead. Hey, look, another Rule Of Three, but this time it's no joke.