I have very few ads in my life, because I hate them with a passion. As an autistic person, ads don’t even work on me to the same extent, and I hate having to sit through them.

I have opted into a government program, that means I don’t recieve ads or “free newspapers” in my letterbox. I use special webapps with integrated adblock and curator extensions on my browsers, and even custom scripts using scriptmonkey to get it away. On my TV I run SmartTube, which not only removes ads, but also automatically skips sponsor and other filler from videos, as well as removes clickbait titles where possible using DeArrow.

I run Linux, I have set up all my devices to use adblocking DNS, and I have run a PiHole for years. The only thing in my home that shows ads at this point, is my google TV that will suggest a show on viaplay or prime or whatever, and it is the only thing I cannot get rid of.

The reason I dislike ads, is that these corporations are fucking scum. They collude to ruin people’s self-esteem, and to overflood the market with needless materialist bullshit that we don’t need, by exploiting our deepest insecurities. As AI becomes more normalized, it will get even more insidious. People talk to their chatbots like they are their friends, and soon those chatbots will subtly manipulate them into buying hair products that don’t work, because they see a picture in your photos gallery of you slightly balding, and see you talked to it about feeling insecure about your appearence lately.

Ending my rant with a quote by banksy:

“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”