I use ad blockers and open source privacy focused software whenever I can but occasionally I have to use computers that don’t belong to me or an older phone where my usual applications aren’t installed and seeing all the advertisements just feels dirty and dystopian.
I think the worst ads are the text to speech ones that say “Download this app today”. The unblinking energenic people saying you can make a living at home are probably a close second.
Same, it’s so weird seeing normal TV or using the internet without blockers. Feels like living in Idiocracy.
One of my most used sites has a banner that says “Sign up for a small fee to remove the ads.”
I was a confused for a second, because I had never seen one.
Tried the site with another browser with my default protection off and holy shit, so many ads. The webpage is mostly unusable because of the shear number.
I’m always disgusted with tv ads and it blows me away that people just let commercials scream at them all day to buy viagra, anal leakage meds, insurance etc. Why would you let that shit in your home? Ugh
Why would you let that shit in your home?
Because you didn’t buy the anal leakage meds.
That’s literally my parents “background noise” it’s a news argument or commercial 24/7 over there.
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Why would you let that shit in your home?
because I find it amusing and it doesn’t do anything actually harmful.
I just feel annoyed… I hate their fake humor, fake happiness, fake everything. And they are so dumb.
I only see ads when I use YouTube on my phone, but my god the “humor” is terrible. Especially those “aren’t we weird and kooky?” Liberty Mutual ads, not one of which is remotely funny.
They aren’t creating awareness of their brand, so much as they are making people associate their brand with being pissed off. Looking at you Liberty.
YES the dumb skits are fucking excruciating. and they air them over and over. and some people laugh!
What fake humor are you talking about? There was a snickers commercial last year that made me laugh. It wasn’t fake - it was hilarious. Had a pretty raunchy joke in it too.
I don’t often watch TV, but I get what you’re saying. Sometimes it’s fun to just watch through the ads and make fun of them with my gf until a movie comes on, it’s sort of a guilty pleasure
I hear you, it is an interesting cultural and quasi historic experience. It’s fun to go back and compare commercials over the decades.
One of my dad’s friends would mute the TV when commercials came on. We’d entertain ourselves by making up new narration and dialogue.
The viagra commercials were the best.
Yeah, that’s why I have a bunch of VHS recordings from the 90’s. They’re like little time capsules and the ad’s of the time are telling of the events at the time.
Haha, I understand both of the points made. I can’t get over the feeling I get from the obvious in your face push to tell you about a product. the obvious act of pushing a brand name and product to me is either annoying, depressing, or disgusting.
I would rather live happily with what I have. I am simply not the target audience. I can pick out that every ad and commercial I see is targeting the consumer and experts you to buy or think about it. I am neither right now, but that does not mean I am not going to get influenced to buy a product. Also, I want to prevent myself from being influenced by outside sources. I don’t know how to do it for everything, and advertising is an easy target to get rid of.
On the other hand, it is interesting and almost comical how some ads are made. Unfortunately, almost every commercial or advertisement made is short form content. There is almost no depth, and each video/ image/ text is made to be self-contained. I am someone who likes to have an overarching story tied with character development and meaningful changes from events. These commercials seem to be like family guy flashback/reference jokes or acting like a poorly done transition in between scenes that was introduced to force you to stop watching for 5 to 15 minutes with the added benefit of earning the Channel money.
Also, I want to prevent myself from being influenced by outside sources
I guess I am a special case in this way because I grew up in a religion that basically forced me to learn how to block out something so it doesn’t influence me one way or the other. I had go for 7 years blocking out religious garbage in my face so I am just use to looking at something, and not being influenced by it.
But most people don’t have that so no wonder its so invasive for them.
I also don’t get modern Family Guy hate but whatever. To each their own.
Less of a family guy hate and more of a comparison. Family guy is OK and not the greatest thing to watch continuously. Which is why I dislike commercials more because they are always happening. I can tune into family guy when I desire, but advertising is never a choice given to me. Why can’t I just choose the adverts instead of all the personal data collection so they try to guess my desires(literally call it personalized targeted ads, like some kind of weapon name). Just like parasites, I hate invasiveness. I want to be clean and will seek refuge or remove it from my life.
advertising is never a choice given to me
Interesting. To me its a choice. I choose to skip ads or watch them.
How about choosing the ad you want to watch? instead, you have “random personalized from harvested data” ad feed to you at intervals that are becoming ever imposing in the normal content you wish to enjoy. The only option is to skip, watch, or turn off the device/service. There isn’t an option to choose your ads. Like a social media feed where anyone who pays can enter your feed, and you just have to skip them or look at them. It is not good enough and purposely limits your control. Plus, blocking ads should be considered a form of skipping ads indefinitely. Also, they don’t even allow skipping ads in some situations and force you to watch them. F that noise. Some will even go out of their way to force you to watch ads or mask links with tracking.
Even then, ads are terribly made content wise because of the forced randomness of placement and viewership. Moments where youtubers do sponsor driven ad breaks are a decent change, but that relies on the youtuber matching up the content with the sponsor, and the sponsor allows creative freedom. Even then, I desire to have content I search for. Instead of serving me random content in between everything as a general strange form of psychological torture.
Most ads I see are for products I don’t ever want to buy. It is just noise and an eyesore.
You are wrong. There is no choice given.
No, I’ve seen services where they let you choose what ad to watch before the program.
Also I only see ad’s on YouTube TV which was my choice to purchase. So I went into that purchase knowing that I would be getting ad’s. It was my choice entirely.
Yeah I agree.
It’s made me very intolerant of ads. It’s kind of surprising how much effort I will invest to avoid ads, and avoid supporting people who make a living from advertising revenue.
people who make a living from advertising revenue
That’s a lot of people, lad…
…just imagine if they were all doing something productive instead.
Props to @DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de for helping to discourage their parasitic behavior and ushering them toward career paths that might actually utilize their potential in a positive way!
It IS perverse. You’re having your eyes groped by strangers, all trying to get you to do what you have no desire to do. You just want to get what you came for and leave, but no, everywhere you look something is trying to block your path and distract you from your goal. And it’s not even honest: you already know that none of these extraneous, unwanted come-ons you’re seeing is anything close to true. In some cases, it’s a full-on mental assault.
It’s vile. I used to leave some on, but now there’s not even such a thing as “acceptable ads” anymore just because of the sheer numbers involved. So now I don’t just block: I go full extermination mode. I’m usually on desktop so if it’s a one time thing, like a single ad on YouTube that managed to sneak by all of my walls and filters and I can’t just pass it by because it’s stuck in my field of vision, I’ll actually do an “inspect element” and delete it on the spot. But otherwise, if I can’t block 100% or very close to it, I find a different site or source, or shut down altogether.
I genuinely don’t think our minds were made for this level of constant information onslaught and never-ending manipulation campaigns, and I don’t think it’s healthy or life-affirming to subject oneself to it without limit. So I don’t. People get angry about it, but hey, more for them to enjoy if that’s how they wanna roll.
I had a 16+ year old Reddit account, but was shocked when the whole 3rd party app situation was going down to learn that patently Reddit had ads. Between pihole and browser ad blockers even when I used the web version I never saw them. Don’t think I was missing anything.
It IS perverse. You’re having your eyes groped by strangers, all trying to get you to do what you have no desire to do. You just want to get what you came for and leave, but no, everywhere you look something is trying to block your path and distract you from your goal. And it’s not even honest: you already know that none of these extraneous, unwanted come-ons you’re seeing is anything close to true. In some cases, it’s a full-on mental assault.
You paint an image in my head of a guy stopping you on the street to sell you a knock off Rolex.
And to ensure I don’t accidently use their site again, I grab it’s most background element and block it, hence effectively blocking the site as a whole.
This is the thing that got me.
I never used to mind ads that much, yea they were there but the sites had to earn money somehow and advertising was a fair way for them to do it. I’m not going to pay a subscription for every site that I want to visit.
Then one time I was looking at jeans on GAP and was bombarded for the next 3 weeks with ads for them on basically every damn site I visited.
I don’t hate ads that don’t track me about and are obnoxious in their presence, but that just doesn’t exist anymore.
“Jarring” would have also been acceptable.
Most people are so desensitized to ads that they barely register. So the advertisers ramp up the attention-grabbing. Repeat. So when I actually see an advertisement it nearly knocks me out of my chair because I’m not desensitized anymore.
My sister shared me an Instagram reel for a [brand] bag review and asked me to buy it for her (there’s no [brand store] in her city).
It was such an obvious advertising campaign by the brand, when I walked into the store the same reel she shared me was playing in the store screens
I’m 90% sure I understood what you are saying, but I wouldn’t be angry if you ninja edited your comment to fix some of the typos. Here’s a cute turtle to indicate I’m not trying to be a dick, just gently nudge you cause I want to understand. 🐢
no worries mate, idk why my comment was missing some words, spaces and letters
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Ads nowadays are little more than psychological assault and it can’t be healthy to be exposed to it regularly. My Home Ec teacher back in the day had a whole unit about the different manipulations present in advertisements and it was really enlightening and upsetting. Modern advertising should be banned or severely regulated.
I support significant regulation, but it won’t happen. But having a course like the one you took as well as media-literacy should be required middle-school education with a more sophisticated follow-up in high school. That also won’t happen because then you don’t get the people who vote for GOP pieces of shit. It’s in their interest to have citizens who are easily manipulated.
My father said babies were being aborted basically when ready for birth. I said there’s no way that was happening, said send me a link. One glance at the page and I didn’t need to read the article because of the gimmicks all over plus obviously bogus ads. He had a doctorate of mech engineering, but he couldn’t handle life on the internet. Typing this, I’m horrified to realize that I’m glad he passed when he did and didn’t end up with ever-increasingly wacko beliefs that could have harmed our relationship.
Whenever I see someone’s computer who doesn’t use adblocker it blows my mind. I can’t imagine going back to that shit.
I just install uBO without saying anything ;)
Chaotic Good
Used to do this, however nowadays I worry it will fuck up their YouTube and they won’t be able to fix it themselves lol
It’s a fun game of too many ads leading to adblockers, which leads to those not using adblockers to get twice as many ads, more people use adblockers, etc. Until the only way for a company to make money on a website is either to sell your data, or charge for the service.
Yay.
I’d happily pay for a service if I could have a guarantee, with legal teeth (like a service level agreement with truly massive penalties for breach), that the service won’t ever do any of the following:
- Put an ad in front of my face.
- Sell my personal information.
I used to pay for some services to get the “ad-free” version, but almost invariably this chain got subsequently followed: ad-free → opt-in “curated” ads → opt-out “curated” ads → “curated” ads → dropping all pretense of there being any advantage to paying as the site becomes ad-o-rama.
So I won’t pay for sites. I just block their ads.
The pattern is always the same. No ads - ads - no ads if you pay - no ads if you pay but we sell your data - personalised ads because you pay, and we sell your data.
I put
dns.adguard.comon their browsers and phones.
Every once in a while I find myself looking at the Internet without ad blockers. Like, newly-installing a browser on a newly-installed OS, or trialing a new browser on my phone or whatnot. And when it happens it’s a massive shock to me just how unusable the modern Internet is without an ad blocker.
If I were forced somehow to not use an ad blocker, I would probably stop using the WWW portion of the Internet and likely grossly cut down on other facets of the Internet.
but occasionally I have to use computers that don’t belong to me
Do them a favor and install an adblocker.
If i had a dollar for everytime I’ve done this and been asked why I “downloaded a virus” because Google Chrome has a little red icon in the corner and now things don’t “feel right”, I’d have like 7 bucks
I mean, don’t do it against their will. At least put some effort into selling the idea of an internet without ads to them first. Then explain that Google and other companies are going to try to manipulate them into thinking that not viewing ads is a bad thing with false warnings and scare tactics like those. That it’s fine, and if they read carefully the warning it doesn’t say anything bad is actually happening.
I had a family member visiting that left early because their “games didn’t work right”
(Network blocking)
Sounds like you blocked a different kind of annoyance.
If they left for that reason, they weren’t visiting you, they were visiting your internet connection. :-(
Most people don’t appreciate it when you install software on their personal devices without their permission.
Boy would this be the quickest way to make sure I never allow you to touch my electronics again.
without their permission.
Nobody said that.
Fine. I don’t appreciate it when assholes inflict ads on me, so we’d be even!
I will occasionally suggest it if I am doing any kind of tech support but I don’t push it. Occasionally it can cause issues with webpages and if they aren’t savvy enough to have an ad blocker already I don’t know if they would have the knowledge of when to toggle it on and off.
I’m used to seeing brief YouTube ads when I cast from my phone, but I was in a hotel recently where the only option was live TV (we were in the back of the hotel and the Chromecast didn’t have a good enough antenna to pick up the router), so it was the first time in years I saw full-on commercials. If the movie hadn’t been so good- After the Thin Man- I wouldn’t have put up with it.
Look into the gl.inet travel routers. I’ve got one of the smaller ones and it has helped me on a few trips. It can run as a hotel wifi extender. An AP for your devices while it logs into the hotel wifi or ethernet on their behalf, etc. Can even channel all your data over a VPN over the hotel connection which is useful if you’re overseas and want to use your services back home but need to un-geoblock yourself.
Worth a look for under $100.
I agree, and those routers can be extremely cheap. I recommend people plug them directly into ethernet whenever possible otherwise speeds basically get cut in half when operating as extenders (just like at home, excepting backhaul).
And in hotels without an obvious ethernet port: check behind the TV. There is usually a less metered port on the wall back there for use by the TV. Sometimes it is restricted, but I’ve been pleased to find that enough hotels don’t have the foresight to do more than simply obscure things a bit.
How do they handle the web portal login requirement that hotels typically have?
Thanks.
Tangentially related, I recently replaced my Chromecast with a “Chromecast with Google TV”. It’s an Android TV box which you can install SmartTube on and cast YouTube with no ads. Yes, I am aware of the irony of paying Google for new hardware instead of paying them for their ad-free service, but the new device cost less than 2 months of YouTube Premium and I like tinkering.
Oh nice! I’ll have to look into that! Thanks! It’s not glacially slow, is it? That’s one of the reasons I never use the apps of my so-called smart TV.
My smarttube is glacially slow, but it’s the TV hardware that can’t keep pace, I assure you.
I’ve also noticed when the stream is cut by YT, smarttube will almost always manage to get it back, very rarely do I have to actively pick up the remote to fix it.
When my TV plays nice, it’s a perfect YT replacement, and I highly recommend it.
Thanks, I’ll definitely look into it.
I wish you a pleasant, ad/sponsor-free viewing experience sir.
As the other commenter said it’s about the hardware really. I tested it out on a really old device first to make sure it actually worked - it did but at a glacially slow pace. The new box is pretty snappy though!
The Thin Man series is worth commercials for.
Totally. I was loving it and watched the rest when I got back home.
I’ve actually come to appreciate commercials after cutting Netflix. It’s a set time for me to take a little break, and it’s out of my hands. (I mute it too, of course.) Otherwise I could just keep watching on and on without a break, and that’s not really very good for you.
I have no will power.
To each their own, I guess. They know you’re putting it on mute, by the way. That’s why they try to make it as eye-catching as possible.
Appreciating commercials because you have no willpower sounds… fraught, at best.
I use a VPN which has an excellent ad & bs blocker. But occasionally some sites need me to turn it off to pay for things or whatever and I forget to turn it back on and end up browsing the internet in its normal state.
And wow… welcome to commerce central. It’s not that all the ads are obnoxious though some are, but the quantity of them is out of control on some websites.
To be fair, I’ve found it’s a good rule of thumb that the quality of a website is usually proportionate to the less amount of ads they have.
I also reviewed mobile games for a while and had to play without a VPN to get the same experience most players would get - game ads are the worst. Unrepresentative of the games they’re trying to sell, but also often sexist (veering towards misogynistic), obnoxious and with false endings.
Which VPN?
I use Surfshark but I expect most of the quality ones offer something similar. Nord and Express often get mentioned as the best VPNs but Surfshark as the best cheap VPN - I’m impressed with it, would recommend. You can even use Chrome on Android and most sites seem like normal, though I’ve switched to Firefox anyway
(If you are thinking of using a VPN just don’t use a free one because they’re probably dodgy)
Level 99 mafia boss checking in 😎
proportionate to the less amount
“inversely proportionate”
The person who was instrumental in the development of modern advertising was also involved in the notorious little Albert experiment. That really says a lot about how unethical modern advertising is on a psychological level. As a psych major myself I am constantly disgusted by how manipulative and toxic advertising is. It actually troubles me how we’ve essentially just accepted this as part of our society now.
“The aim of Watson and Rayner was to condition a phobia in an emotionally stable child.”
There’s a documentary called “Manufacturing Consent” that is an interesting look at the PR and advertising industry that goes into the psychology of it.
Though some of them have no subtlety. Even as a teenager, I remember noticing the insidiousness of minivan adverts. They weren’t selling vehicles, they were selling the idea that a new vehicle will make your kids want to spend time with the family again. It was probably because I was a teenager at the time that I noticed it because I thought minivans were lame and knew I’d resent having to go for family rides just because we got a new vehicle that I thought was dumb anyways.
But these advertisements wanted to convince families to spend money they may or may not have been able to afford for an emotional result that was at best going to be short term even if your kids had undergone enough brain trauma to get excited by minivans. Eventually the novelty would wear off and they’d want to go back to eating paint chips or doing whatever kids who think minivans are cool like to do. And then the lonely parents are stuck with a vehicle that reminds them of the thing that made them sad and have a new incentive to get a new vehicle to help them forget about it.
I never got that from minivan commercials. They mostly focused on storage capacity without needing to get a full size van, not really family. Family was more incidental because someone without a bunch of kids didn’t need the space.
Yeah, to be fair that might have been one specific commercial or a trend that has since passed. It’s been a while since I was a teenager.
My husband refuses to use ad blockers for some unknown reason (I installed them on his computer, he won’t fucking use them/turns them off) and also is the person who gets the cookie settings menu and clicks “accepts all” every time. I get so stressed trying to use his computer but also like dude! Have you any idea just what you are allowing them to access??? Granted, I’m somewhat ignorant when it comes to how to be completely safe and private on the internet, but I try, and to see someone just blatantly not care makes me lose my cool a little.
My condolences on the divorce
yes, I despise ads. It’s gotten to the point where if I’m forced to endure an ad before a youtube video, I’ll mute it and avert my eyes. It feels like a psychological assault out of nowhere. it’s worse at gas station pumps, where I can’t always mute it
Oh right? I never watch or listen to them. Given no other option I’ll even cover my ears and hum. Ads breAk the soul, and I literally feel healthier not being subjected to them.
Wait your gas station pumps have ads!? Where do you live?
United States. there are Ads everywhere. for the wildest shit, too. Ads for medications and prescription drugs are the worst of them, shouldn’t even be allowed… but, ya know… lobbyist money (A.K.A. bribes)
its really jarring, and to see people just accept it, kinda hurts my soul.
