The best website to read my essays on is Substack, here.
I was reading “There's more film and television for you to watch than ever before — good luck finding it” on Salon and found it jarring to see the ad shown above for Starlink, one of Elon Musk’s companies. It popped up, literally popped up onto my laptop screen as it replaced another ad.
The ad was on the side so as you read down the article it remained there, but it also was between sections in the article.
I looked at several other articles but it seemed to be only on the one about streaming video.
Regardless of whether it was elsewhere in Salon I wondered who in their marketing department thought readers of this progressive anti-Trump and anti-Musk website would be in the market for Starlink, let alone click on it the ad to learn more about it.
They managed to sucker a click from me because I was curious about it and thought it might be a good topic for a Substack if I couldn’t think of anything else.
This is what the the first parts of the website look like. Here’s the first page I saw when I clicked. (You can enlarge the following images by clicking on them.)
Then scrolling down:
The Starlink device works because Musk, as of April 2025, had 7,135 Starlink satellites in orbit, with 7,105 of them operational. SpaceX plans to deploy a total of up to 42,000 satellites in the future. (Reference Wikipedia) For it to function you have to point the device at the sky.
“Streaming, video calls, online gaming, remote working and more are now possible in even the most remote locations thanks to the world’s most advanced internet system.”
Here are two more:
I won’t add more screen grabs since the photo of the cybertruck is a good one to end on. If someone thinks the cybertruck is the cat’s meow in aesthetic design maybe they will be the type of person who wants to buy Starlink. If you want to see the rest of the website you will have to give it a click here.
This is marketing aimed at a domestic American market for use while doing things like camping or traveling, not for Ukrainians using it to communicate vital military information.
I can speculate that Musk, assuming he is involved in this advertising initiative, figures it is worth it to see if there are enough MAGAs willing to spend a premium for the kind of internet connectivity it provides. I seriously doubt a non-MAGA would want to do anything to add to Musk’s wealth.
I don’t know whether or not anyone realized that putting an ad on Salon was akin to advertising salmonella in a supermarket commercial. It is quite possible that nobody considered who would see the ad and that an algorithm search for website articles about streaming video. The word streaming appears 23 times in this story, including in the subtitle.
With Starlink you can watch streaming video in the wilderness.
It makes for a better story if I assume that Musk himself approved the ad in Salon as a way of trolling us liberals. That would make sense if he’s into such marketing minutiae. If this is the case, he reeled me in.
Consider me trolled.
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