[wldlyinaccurate]

I only have some second-hand, anecdotal explanations. In my freelancing days (several years ago), I had clients who insisted that their websites work flawlessly without JavaScript -- some would even insist that there was no JavaScript at all. When I asked these clients why they wanted this, the answer would always be because they have disabled JavaScript in their browser, so why would they want any JavaScript on their website?

When I asked why they disabled JavaScript, it was rare to get any sort of coherent answer. Usually they would just mumble about viruses, or occasionally about privacy, but every single one of them cited "a friend" as the original source of whatever reason they had.

So my theory is that most people disable JavaScript "just because". Reminds me a bit of the five monkeys and a ladder experiment.

[josho]

For those, like me, unfamiliar with the monkey/ladder reference, it's an interesting fable. Read more here http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-exp...