Ever try to read an article on Time's website? Not recommended. And not because of the schmaltzy tone. Take that Jonathan Franzen profile I just linked to a couple words ago. You're reading it, you're reading it, you're thinking, "Why is this article about sea otters? I thought I clicked on a piece about Franzen," you get to the third paragraph, Franzen finally comes into the picture ("Franzen is a member of another perennially threatened species, the American literary novelist"), there's a brief physical description of him, and then—HEY LOOK OVER HERE LET'S TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE RIGHT NOW!

See that there? That red thing? All of a sudden Time magazine would like you to stop reading the article you are only three paragraphs into and instead go read a totally unrelated list of things. (Actually, a list of lists of things.) The Franzen profile spans five webpages, and every few paragraphs there's one of these janky, semi-random, insane-making red links trying to drive me away from what I'm reading. At the bottom of the first page of five, Franzen is talking about how difficult it was to write Freedom, why it took him nine years, and then Time interrupts the article again with:

What??? That doesn't even make sense. Also, I'm in the middle of something.

And the one-page printer friendly version of articles? ALSO STREWN WITH MEANINGLESS HYPERLINKS!

After reading the Franzen piece, I was trying to read "Ambition: Why Some People Are Most Likely to Succeed," because it was at the top of the Most Popular list off to the right, and not very far into it a psychologist at the University of California was explaining something when Time interrupted with:

Come on, you guys. Stop it. I'm trying to read here.