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Lighting yourself on fire and running through the streets will get you noticed, but it may not be the wisest move to make.  Still, Ask.com seems determined to repeatedly torch itself, as, depending on one’s point of view, its billboard advertising campaign moves from bad to worse.

"Ask.com Billboard Brings Up Unabomber"

The last phrase to turn heads was “The Algorithm Constantly Finds Jesus.”  As our Jason Lee Miller noted (twice), religious matters can be a bit of a hotspot, and Ask has now moved on.  To terrorism.

“The Unabomber Hates The Algorithm,” proclaims the latest billboard.  (Valleywag has a pic if you feel the need to see it.)  And, well, it seems that the public hates the campaign.

“Is Ask.com drunk, do they misunderstand a good portion of their audience, or are they just that desperate for attention?” asks Jeff Jockisch (AKA “Jozian”) on the Cre8asite Forums.  Others have been more critical, and some have been less so, but it definitely seems as if Ask is losing fans.

To be fair, some vocal few have spoken up in the search engine’s defense.  “Shorebreak,” a longtime users at Threadwatch.org, writes, “Give in to the borg if you [sic] cojones fail you, but **give the folks at Ask some freakin’ respect for an ad campaign that everyone’s talking about!**”

Well, yes, everyone’s talking about it.  Back at the Cre8asite Forums, Barry Schwartz (“rustybrick”) notes, “It has been a while since I seen so much discussion in this forum.”  Yet everyone would talk about our theoretical burning man, as well, and I’d guess that things wouldn’t turn out too well for him.