[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation

I forget that YouTube has ads. And then I go to watch on a platform that doesn’t have blocking and it freaks me out.

yeah, i've been trying out different browsers and it's so so bad. like, they're pure garbage

don draper era ads actually had fucking thought in there. people made art and worked on the typesetting. now it's pure AI vomit garbage that means nothing to nobody, nobody along the entire chain of making this gave a single fuck about it, no one that's ever seen the image has had a genuine feeling come from it other than disgust and doom.

sat down to watch TV with the parents for the first time in a loooong time and when ads came on I was astounded how many there were and how long they were... insufferable TV ads >_>

"When I'm watchin' my TV
And a man comes on and tells me
How white my shirts can be
But, he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me"
The Rolling Stones

Whenever I use a browser without adblock, it takes me back to the early 2000s, and not in a good way.

I gave up trying to get my wife to use anything that blocks ads, and she won't switch away chrome. When she bakes, she leaves her tablet or phone open, with multiple video ads destroying her battery. Seeing this thing just turns my brain to mush as I don't see any ads. I don't know how she puts up with having ten video ads on one page.

I have not seen advertisements in a long time accounting to a few years. I have abandoned all the proprietary data harvesting platforms and rarely surf web for no reason. Using libre software, platforms and only referring to specific reliable scientific sources helps a lot in reducing the wastage of time. It also helps in planning things better and I have seen that I am generally able to complete my self assigned projects faster. It also leaves me with more time to spend in leisure. Of course it also combats addiction to mostly useless Social Media. Being away from all the toxicity on the internet also keeps me happier. It's quite disgusting how tech corporates exploit millions of users' data for Capital generation.

My colleague uses chrome like Google intended and every time she shares her screen I question her sanity. Terminal instead of iTerm, ok. Not using oh my zsh, well, if you insist. But that? You can barely identify the information you're looking for between all that screaming nonsense.

When I'm not using computers behind my three layers of filters I have here at home.. I feel very sad for the internet.

so of course I have ublock origin on my computer, AdAway on my phone and pihole on my network, but the school computers actually prevent you from installing any adblocking extensions

anyway at school I see a lot of "download Wave Browser/OneLaunch/PC app store/other random crapware" ads and videos in the corner and I can barely read anything on the site

I will go to many lengths to avoid ads. I never use the YT app for example unless I’m on my desktop which has multiple ad blocking extensions and containers. Been using Yattee for iOS that plays nice with nvidious or piped

Get fucked advertisers

I got onto the YouTube vanced train back in 2018 and every now and then I hop on desktop YouTube and it's soo jaring.

I’ve been doing it for so many years across all devices and platforms that I actually get…confused for a second when one slips through. It is normally YouTube that slips through (they seem to be trying new things almost daily to get around any possible ad blocks), but sometimes it is from a major news web site or something. I actually have to look around for a second and then realize what has just happened.

I set up a pihole and installed revanced on my mom's phone. She was surprised when I mentioned that YouTube has ads once haha.

I signed up to Vessel [1] when they were giving out the 1 year free trial, and it was only 9 months or so in that I realised that it had ads. It was kinda jarring, especially for a paid (not that I did) service.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vessel_(website)