Crap may fall out of magazines all the time, and if pick up a magazine in the shops I can leave all the crap behind, but I'm a subscriber, and my magazine arrives in a nicely sealed bag - I don't have the luxury of leaving the crap behind.
This piece of crap was nicely wedged inside the middle of the magazine, so it wasn't even apparent until I got to the relevant page, and it came fluttering out. Hence, in many ways, it is like spam. It may be a fact of life, but (a) I don't have to like it, (b) as with spam filters I'm entitled to try to stop it reaching me, and (c) just as I take action against those accounts that send the spam to get them closed down, I'm entitled to complain about inappropriate adverts and take action to try to ensure it doesn't happen again.
As mrpoultice says, it's the bizarre criteria that the publishers have picked for the advertising - every other magazine on the shelves appears to pitch it right and get the targeting spot on, but not FT.
As for what I was doing reading the FT at work, I was on my lunch break! Surely no-one would begrudge me bringing a little ray of Fortean sunshine into a soulless corporation? It didn't embarrass me, I'm not a prude, but I did find it inappropriate, in much the same way (to harp back to my spam comments) that I find spam e-mails advertising shares, sex drugs etc inappropriate.
CodenameThrow makes an excellent point though - should we actually embrace the inserts if they lead to fewer ads in the mag? I would actually have to say yes, but only under certain conditions: if the number of ads DID decrease (doesn't appear to have done so in this issue), that the pages were freed up for fortean articles (again, no evidence it has), and finally that the adverts bear some relevance to the readership and the subject matter. We're not a magazine about sex and relationships - so there is no legitimate expectation that sex toys and drugs to help with sexual dysfunctions would be advertised.
I know in my mind the point I'm trying to make, but I arrived home tonight to find that my house has been flooded and I've had a big glass of wine to get over it, so I'm not at my most coherent!
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