Rant Against Background Music and Other "Cool" Things
     It is common on the internet to have things such as background music and other "cool" additions. However, when the vast majority of people put up these things, they don't think of their readers. Have you ever heard the saying in restaurants, "Think of the customer"? The same thing truly applies here. Let's say you're at a restaurant and you order a medium-rare steak and a baked potato. Let's also say that your steak arrives medium-well. Would you not be annoyed or upset with the way your meal was cooked? Well, when someone reads your webpage and it has background music, it's likely that they came to actually read something and not to listen to music. Since this is out of place and abnormal, the reader is likely to get annoyed, making it non-user-friendly.
     With background music, a reader of a webpage is probably going to get irritated. First off, some people typically have their volume up extremely high without using it, especially if they never use it for anything else. To suddenly open up, for example, a friend's weblog, and become blasted by their music, is not only very startling and disturbing, but it is annoying. To put my own experience into place, it's only been countless times that I've been browsing websites like Xanga, reading someone's journal, when I suddenly get bombarded by some piece of music. It's also likely that someone reading it when they hear the loud music, will quickly close the window in order to keep it from playing. That's probably one less reader you've got now, pal. Plainly, getting blasted by any loud song is just plain annoying (not to mention startling).
     Another consequence of background music happens if a reader is already listening to music. Again, it's been a great many times that I've had my own music playing on my computer while reading other websites. Then, the two mix horribly badly and I have to stop/pause my own music as well as turn my volume off. See, look there, pal. You've just made them stop their own music, too. That's sure thinking about your reader.
     Now, a very simple, flawed argument to this is, "But this song is awesome and how could anyone hate it?!" There's a very simple moral that can respond to this. Everyone has their own opinion. Just because YOU like a certain song or a certain genre of music, doesn't mean anyone else will. Take me, for example—I have a very strange musical preference. If some rap song (just as an example, no offense meant to those who like rap) started playing on a website, maybe you, the creator, would enjoy it; however, I wouldn't. Again, this would force me to turn my volume down or off and make me take the time to do so. I know that makes me sound lazy to do so, but if I'm listening to my own music and something else comes on, and I have to turn my volume off just to read something, well, I get irritated. Put yourself in those shoes. This is all the more reason that background music is annoying.
     I'm seeing more and more, nowadays, a "music player" generated by some programming code. These contain play lists, pause, stop, and start buttons (and sometimes, variably, other things to select). These are sometimes placed at the top of websites. As you can guess, these let you "stop" what's playing, if you so desire. Often, though, someone won't notice these unless they're in a very obvious place, and they will still have to deal with it for at least a small amount of time. Also, the creator would have to go through the trouble of finding the code to input the media player, as well as having to have the player obstruct the look of their website. Considering these, would even having a media player with playing options be worth it?
     Aside from this whole "background music" issue, there's several other things deemed "cool" by the internet population that are irksome to the reader. This is mainly applied to free webhosting services and weblogs such as Xanga. Skins on websites are often flawed, and in several different internet browsers, may not appear correctly. It's possible that text becomes the same color as the background, such as white on white. Other times, text is placed over other text, or sometimes, load times are horrendously long. To some, it may look "cool," but often it can be flawed when viewed by other browsers. And that's not user-friendly either. Does anyone want to have to switch browsers to view a website? No. It’s just common courtesy to make your website user-friendly. Another thing to add into this list of annoyances are things such as text that moves when highlighted, strange cursor additions, and little graphics that move around, following your mouse. Such things are just simple annoyances when viewing a website. I can understand that you think they look neat or interesting, but your reader may not think so. I hope that this has changed your opinion on such irritating things as background music. If you've got background music on your little piece of the internet, or if you're planning on it—I urge you to think twice about it.