I just canceled an office space my company rented because they put up a TV in the kitchen playing ads. They refused to relent and we are moving out now.
Bill Hicks (video):
By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. […]
There’s no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan’s little helpers, OK, kill yourself.
Seriously, you are the ruiner of all things good. […]
No this is not a joke. You’re “There’s going to be a joke coming.” There’s no fucking joke coming. You are Satan’s spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us, kill yourself. It’s the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself […]
I know all the marketing people are going, “He’s doing a joke” There’s no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend – I don’t care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. […]
I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too: “Oh, you know what Bill’s doing? He’s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market. He’s very smart.”
Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking, evil scumbags! […]
What is extra odd is when people don’t bother with even the small stuff. I have a friend that just accepts Youtube ads exists. He is aware of Ublock Origin, he knows how to install it. He has used Youtube with no ads before. Yet he complains about the ads he willingly accepts.
I don’t get it.
He’s well programmed.
That was an amazing movie. Rowdy Roddy piper wasn’t horrible, either. That was made in response to the Reagan era politics, which was the start of what continues to this day.
(For those scratching their heads right now, it’s They Live.)
Nobody has ever been able to explain it to me. It’s like their brain just shuts off when you ask
I’m so thankful my parents made us mute tv commercials as a kid.
Now I’ve gotta stare off into space at the gas pump cuz they started blaring obnoxiously bright video ads.
Turning off TVs with adds has been the only usage I’ve been getting out of my Flipper zero. Doesn’t work always, but I did have some success and I’ll always try whenever I have to spend time longer time anywhere.
Normally you can press one of the buttons to turn those off. The mute button is unlabeled, of course, but in my experience every one of these I’ve come across can be muted. Annoying as fuck in principle, no doubt.
Edit: you were talking about the display, not noise. Leaving this here anyway in case someone else didn’t know they can be muted
I’ve heard this rumor before but I’ve never found a mute button on a single pump. I’ve pressed them all.
At the one gas pump in my town that does it, it’s the second or third button on the right side of the screen.
And if they ever patch that, I’m filling the speaker holes with spray foam.JFC your guys gas pump ads have SOUND???
Here I am bitching about screen brightness. Pretty sure that would be illegal in Canada. At least I friggin hope it is.
It gets worse:
Luckily the company behind them went bankrupt, but it’s only a matter of time before someone else is more successful with the idea.
Fuuuuuuuuuuckthat. I bet the only reason they ‘went bankrupt’ was because big oil and auto was worried it might push people to buy electric.
You should spray foam anyway.
It can be hit or miss. I think the button sometimes gets worn out too.
Luckily that’s still uncommon here, so there’s only a couple gas stations that do it. I won’t give them a cent.
Well in all fairness, I complain about the ads I don’t even see.
I have older family members that have started muting TV ads, and occasionally ask for help when the ad blocker doesn’t work. They aren’t all that tech literate, but even they would probably wonder how anybody deals with the ad-full, unfiltered Net.
Have you tried punching him in the throat?
Poor pathetic dude.
The absolute worst is when people say “You can’t really blame them. That’s just how things are.”
Of course I can blame them! They did testing on focus groups to figure out just how intrusive they could be before an unacceptable percentage of people got mad. If they miscalculated and overreached and upset me, then my being upset is perfectly valid. Also true if they knew someone would be upset and considered it acceptable losses. This applies to all sorts of things and not just advertising.
The idea that if an action someone takes is rationally understandable then you aren’t allowed to be mad about it is so toxic and I hate it. I can understand why they do intrusive ads, they like money. But it affects me against my will and I hold them responsible, as I should.
Exactly!
I have the same relationship with ads as the OP, and even deeper hatred for fingerprinting to the point there is a lot of friction in my daily tech usage. Lot of stuff breaks, I have to fill captchas often, maintain self-hosted tech, get wrong time zone and language I don’t know on websites, etc. (On one hand it’s a boon, because it is keeping my pretty serious internet addiction in check and it has kept me away from most social networks and short form content).
They have just installed this annoying kind of LCD slideshow adds that are a long screen alongside underground line, and I’m actively trying to avoid and not look at it, same with any IRL ads. I really hope we’ll get some FOSS smartglases tech eventually, just so I can have an IRL adblock that replaces adds around you that I’ve seen a demo for.
But, I have seen (single instances) of adds over the year that I appreciated, because it’s more a clever art than an add. But 99% of adds isn’t that, and it’s just annoying intrusive attention grabbing slop designed to burn into your mind. Fuck that.
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.
- Banksy
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.
Subverting ads doesn’t even need to be high art. E.g.
Came here for this. It might be my favorite quote of all time.
And pasted here so you don’t have to click.
I opened youtube on a corporate PC the other day - viewing ads on the platform for the first time in I don’t even know how long, at least 8 years, probably a fair amount more - and was immediately repulsed. How do people live like this? I don’t understand it either.
Pihole, revanced, sponsor block, ublock, … Essential tools to access the Internet. My phones permanently connected to a self-hosted vpn that keeps it behind pihole wherever I am.
I swear god; If I ever look up at the night sky and see a billboard shining down at me from space, I’m bombing my nearest Google office.
I used to just
yt-dlpany YT video links people share, but that doesn’t work anymore and no ETA on a fix.My new favorite thing is my PeerTube instance.
yt-dlpis basically broken for almost all YT videos now since it doesn’t yet support SABR, and most videos are forcing that now.Someone shares a YT link? Copy, paste into Peertube, wait like 30 seconds for the transcode, and watch. No BS. And if I want to watch it later? Well, there it already is.
Edit: It appears the wonderful people maintaining
yt-dlphave fixed that since I last tried back in December.Yt-dlp still works just fine; I used mine lastnight.
Remember to run ‘yt-dlp -U’ to update it.
I watch something like 20 YouTube videos a day from many different subscriptions. I don’t really want to straight download them all.
I’m using https://freetubeapp.io/ and so far it mostly works. You have to stay on top of updates, and age-restricted videos can be a problem, but the feature I love most is that it can subscribe to creators without an account, and it just shows you time-sorted feed. It also has native sponsorblock baked in, and has support for downloading videos, or using an invidious as a proxy.
You can turn off autoplay, comments, recommended videos and other engagement-maxing bullshit, so it’s just a video player without distractions that I can use to follow stuff I’m directly interested in, that doesn’t force content on me.
Huh. I’m on the latest release and every video I download fails with the SABR notice and link to the issue for it. Maybe it’s regional?
YouTube a while back enforced some Captcha thing that broke yt-dlp without some other dependency. I’m on mobile right now and don’t have the info on hand, but long story short I had the same issue and fixed it by downloading with dependencies.
Post a link that isn’t working for you? Maybe I just haven’t found a broken one…
What version of yt-dlp are you running?
Oh, you’re right. It does work after updating. I was on 2025.12.08 which was the latest the last time I messed with it around that same time and saw that the SABR bug had been open since March of 2025. Still open so that was what I had been watching.
The 2026.02.04 build worked fine.
Still gonna keep my PT instance lol.
I had to update mine and add some extra arguments:
yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser firefox --extractor-args "youtube:player-client=default,-web_safari" -t mp4 "<URL / ID>"Update yt-dlp it literally works. ETA is 0
Sometimes I go visit an elderly aunt, who watches a lot of TV. One time I was there and watched a bit of TV with her and my cousin. I had the remote, and started manually muting every time that ads came on.
They thought I was crazy. Why would I want to mute ads? They just didn’t understand why I would do that. Anyway, I haven’t watched TV with them since then.
Also, paying for a with-ads subscription like Hulu-with-ads. I honestly don’t get it.
Idk maybe you should and always mute it, maybe after awhile of you doing it it’ll be harder when you’re not there doing it to keep the status quo and they can join us on the fuck ads team lmao
Ads are attention rape change my mind
I see it as an attempt at manipulation and I do as much as possible to get as much of it out of my life as I can. If a gas station plays ads while I fuel at the pump I will look away. If it plays sound this station is dead to me and go to another one.
The worst is that it is a blatant tax on everyone. Not just for being annoying eyesores, but in the value of the products we buy. When a company spends millions of dollars in advertising to make their $400 product look like it should be worth $800, it is the consumer who foots the bill and then some.
This is why I don’t trust “privacy” [company] if they do any sort of ads. Especiall-
THIS COMMENT BROUGHT TO YOU BY NORDVPN, WHERE WE USE OUR MONEY TO ENHANCE YOUR PRIVACY AND DEFINITELY NOT OUR BALLOONING MARKETING BUDGET
Do you have a VPN you like? I’ve never seen a NordVPN advert, and have used their service for years. Then again I have an actively hostile attitude towards advertising; that is why I’m on FEDI.
Not the person you’re replying to, but Nord sponsors a lot of “entertainment” youtubers. If you watch those kinds of videos you’re inundated with their ads.
Mullvad is a solid choice.
Ironically for this context, I’ve seen billboards and even a bus decked out in Mullvad ads here! (Los Angeles) But I agree that they seem solid.
Subjecting me to an annoying advertisement is a sure fire way to make me never buy your product willingly and I will shit talk your company at any opportunity I get.
An other thing to do … If you can not skip them and dont want to get up to do something
If i saw to much off one add ( every tvshow every 20 min…) i do not buy them.
If an ad is bad ( ex bad child who eats nutella cause dad loves him) i will not buy it. It made me know the cheap boni version is also doable. Been buying that one ever since.
And the strictest uBlock Origin’s policy possible. Don’t forget the strictest uBlock Origin’s policy. And Cookie AutoDelete too.
How do folks manage their actively hostile relationship with advertising?
I use VPN, and NoScript.
Adbkocking dns, VPN, Privacy Badger, ublock
Refuse to buy their product if their ad is obnoxious.
Advertising isn’t exactly hipnosis to get you to buy the product. It’s a strategy to get you familiar with the brand/product, so that, if you have to choose between products later, you’ll favor the brand you already know (a common bias we all have). This will happen without you necessarily noticing it, because we’re all blasted with numerous ads and there’s no way to keep track of them all.
And now you know why trump.
