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Why the Internet Isn’t Fun Anymore
(www.newyorker.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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Technology
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In the early 00s, here in my city, it was fun to go to a certain pedestrians-only avenue to drink with friends. Or a date. If you do it now - yes, post-COVID lockdowns! - you can't hold a conversation for five fucking minutes without someone interrupting you with advertisement. As a result, people use that avenue nowadays strictly to commute.
I've ditched TV when I was 14. (I don't regret it.) But plenty people told me that open TV, and then cabled TV, became unbearable due to the sheer amount of advertisement.
Unless I recognise the number, I'm not bothering to pick the phone up any more. I'm probably not the only one doing it.
Are you noticing the pattern? Perhaps the internet suffers a bit more with it because people are a bit freer to do what they want here, but the problem is not exclusive to the internet, it's everywhere advertisers appear. The world has become less fun due to advertisers ("how do people DARE to have fun and ignore our «marketing opportunities»?").
I spent 3 days in a hotel room this week, and while I did bring my Steam Deck and dock with me for entertainment, I got there to find that the TV had no HDMI ports. I was stuck with basic cable and the only saving grace being Showtime, which wasn't at extra cost and doesn't have ads.
But when both Showtime channels had stuff I was less than indifferent to watching, the advertisements on any of the other channels were horrible. The shows felt like they were 1:1 in terms of content to ads.
Don't get me started on the radio, either. I used to love listening to the radio, but now all they play is the same set of a couple dozen songs, with 5 minutes of ads that play every 3 or so songs. Also, no rock station in my area plays anything newer than ~15 years old, tops. They're all still playing the same music that I listened to on those stations when I was a teen, and I'm a little over 30.
I feel you on the radio aspect, I cycle through all my presets on my 25 minute commute because so many of them are just ads for 5 minutes. And for some reason my rural area has 4 classic rock stations but I can't find one that plays anything modern but pop and pop-country.