I am not suggesting anyone do this. Just because a person has a nasty idea doesn’t mean he endorses it.

However, if I were a different kind of person — one prone to acts of self-gratifying revenge — I might be tempted to launch a specific guerilla counter-attack in response to the latest Courant.com pop-up video advertisement.

Pop-up video ads are always annoying, and Courant.com’s latest — a woman in a bathrobe pitching a lighting store — is no exception. I understand that the Courant and its bankrupt parent Tribune Co. need revenue. But is a policy of ticking off its readers really in the best service of that mission? The ad below is adequate motivation to switch my home page to something — anything — less annoying. How many page views would it cost the site if half its readers did that? Or how long would this ad last if readers vowed never to shop at Connecticut Lighting Centers?

But that’s not my idea.

My idea is way more personal. So personal I would never do it unless I was really, really, irritated and looking for payback.

In my haste to shut down this awful pop-up for the fifth time, I noticed something. (My habit is to choose  a story on the home page, click to it, then, 6 seconds later, when I’ve read the entire item,  return to the home page to look for another. For at least the first few times I do that, the pop-up starts over.)  There is a little control that enables a person to share the pop-up. See it there? It’s the little “at” symbol. When you click that, a little email window opens. (I’ve shown it below.)

 By “share” the pop-up I mean  torture someone with it. 

And who better than, say, the publisher of the paper,  or the head of advertising,or the owner of the lighting center? (I would be willing to bet that there are no journalists in the building who approve of this kind of  Hack Off The Reader advertising. )

Did you notice that The Courant email addresses all follow a formula? It’s firstname.lastname@courant.com; or first initial last name @ courant.com.

So maybe it would be satisfying to share this damn pop-up with a long list of folks who might not have seen enough of it. To share it many, many, many times.

I am not suggesting you do that. 

But I’m wishing you would.