You want to watch the trailer for an upcoming movie on YouTube but you first have to sit through an ad.
Its pretty bad when you have to watch ads so you can watch the ad you wanted to see.
Who uses Adblock??? They’re a bullshit, sellout company.
You install Ublock Origin instead and add the annoyance and adblock-blocking lists…
There… Now you don’t need to watch ads to watch your ads. Your news and recipe sites no longer have an ad every other sentence. A couple pages still refuse to load because you have an ad blocker. You learn to live without them. Your Google searches have sponsored sites filtered out.
You tell your mother that you can’t read that article and it’s not being represented on any other news platform, and suggest it’s possibly not all that reputable. She tells you she got it from Facebook. You tell her to stop getting all her news from Facebook. You realize maybe social media is a symptom of a sick society too involved in each other’s daily doings. You delete your social media accounts and block the pages.
You decide you want to read that book from the Wikipedia page your friend recommended. You open up Libby to see if your local library has a copy of the book. They don’t, but they have digital copies of several other books by the same author. You make a note to check them out later, as they’re not about the topic you were looking for. You search Google for the book title followed by .epub download and find several sites that have the book your looking for. You put it on your tablet, then put on your shoes, and go out to the park to read your new book. While you’re walking, your coworker texts you to complain that your supervisor fired him for plagiarizing work off ChatGPT again. He doesn’t understand how they could tell.
You get to the park, sit, and enjoy your book for a while.
… I kinda want to sit outside and read now. How many hours left in the work day?
I have experienced every single one of those situations. Such a frustrating but accurate article.
Always cut out the intermediaries.
(I’m glad this story was published. We may roll our eyes, but it’s a contribution toward raising normie’s consciousness, which is welcome.)
Always cut out the intermediaries.
In this vein: when you can, PAY CASH. Normalizing credit and debit transactions also normalized bleeding money from businesses to VISA, Mastercard, and whatever monster you bank with. They all suck. :) Businesses pay more for credit transactions than debit transactions, so use debit if the business doesn’t take cash.
It feels like youtube especially is much worse. The app bit has happened to me before. No one updates the app/website and wrong info just gets piled on.
