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.

You want to order from a local restaurant,

Don’t. Either order from a big chain or don’t order at all.

you need to download a third-party delivery app

Choose a different restaurant?

even though you plan to pick it up yourself.

Just walk to the store and order in-store?

You want to watch the trailer for an upcoming movie

Why? Why would anyone do that?

but you first have to sit through an ad.

Use uBlock. Sponsorblock. DeArrow. Privacy Badger. Peertube. Yt2009. Ytdl. Vanced. Newpipe.

The first page of Google results are links to pages that have scraped other pages for information from other pages that have been scraped for information.

Append site:reddit.com to the end of each search. Use udm14. Try ddg or searx or any one of the many search engine alternatives.

All the sources seem to link back to one another.

Sir this is the internet. It’s always been this way.

The photos on the page look weird. The hands are disfigured. There is no image credit.

Image credit and culture of copyright and corporate capitalist scum are to blame for most shitty things on the internet, defending this shit makes you deserve the misery you helped create.

Your coworker sends you a PowerPoint pack

2002 called.

It makes even less sense.

Not your problem.

You tell them you’ll just rewrite it yourself.

Cuckold.

your favourite social media

Ewww. Imagine corporate social media unironically.

the app you use for networking

Networking as in, computer networking? Depending on the exact application there may be tons of FOSS alternatives.

If not, then stop being a corpo bootlicker and don’t “”“network”“”. Problem solved.

You want to watch a TV show from your youth so you check a streaming service,

Uhmmm, why would you do that? Rarbg exists for a reason. 1337x. Rutracker. VLC. Wanna go fancy? NAS or a simple old dell optiplex or a laptop. Debian. Qbittorrent-nox. Docker. Jellyfin. JBOD of old scavenged HDDs.

You can’t read the recipe on your phone because it prioritises the ads

Firefox & uBlock Origin fixes this issue on Android.

and the page no longer loads

Find a different recipe. This shit was always mostly ctrl+c/ctrl+v spam. Use a waybackmachine.

Your phone schedules an update.

Turn automatic updates off. Never a problem on android (Pixel, not reskins).

Alternatively: Don’t use a phone.

Your Gmail

Don’t use Gmail.

Your smart TV

Don’t use TVs.

I thought GenZ/Millennials were past owning TVs?

The Airbnb

Don’t use it.

Your Uber driver

Don’t use it.

You still give him five stars.

Don’t.

You buy

No.

Your mother

So fat,

they put her

behind a paywall,

Use 12ft.io. archive.is etc etc.

receive ads

Turn off notifications for shopping apps. Block all ads.

Strangers on social media assume you are American and get mad when you correct them.

Most of the internet is American, most websites are American, most people speaking English are American. Us stinky euros will always be secondary characters. It’s Pax Americana age baby, I’m sorry you were born in the shit (I’m UK atm so def true for me).

you need to pay for a subscription to the site in order to read it.

Why not just have them send it to you as text files? Screenshots? Why are they hosting it on a paid third party website if they want it to be accessible? Why not self-host?

You go to your local library’s website and although they don’t have the exact book, they do have others by the same author. You place a hold on two of them, then go get your shoes on.

Or just download it?

All problems are user’s own. Yes enshittification sucks. You’re free to disconnect as much as you can.