In this tale about the internet, I have taken the liberty to punch a new bunch of marketers in their snouts. See if you agree with me in this very short narrative.
[image: creative commons]
Five Steps to Keeping Our Sanity
The internet has become so smothered with ads, ads, and more ads—along with a demand that you and I (the viewers) must delete our ad blockers in order to merely see what is behind them. That is a big hassle, but one that leaves the “non-creative” person at their mercy. They have even doubled down with their crassiness. They want us to subscribe to their service in order to see beyond the ad blockers. Too many of them also charge us (typically $19.99 per month) for a subscription to whatever it is that they are selling. What’s more, without ad blockers, I could not delete old e-messages from my computer. The flying ads were so thick they prevented me from doing so.
What a lot of crap!!
Here is a potential way to stop this onslaught by the boys and girls whose task it is to empty your bank account and mine, and put us deep into debt (your time and expense could vary): $19.99 per month per website, at 10 websites per day, times 30 days, comes to $5,997 dollars per month to see about 0.01 percent as much as we could see just 1 or 2 years ago—not to mention that we are certain to become bankrupt in about 2 weeks and face a lifetime of servitude just to be able to survive. (Annually we might lock commitments to the tune of $71,964 ($5,997 per month X 12 months = $71,964).
Now, I don’t know how anyone else has responded to this colossal attempt at wholesale rape (also known as a huge bucket of BS). Here is my solution:
First, I re-activated my ad-blockers to preserve my sanity. That allowed me to also delete my old e-messages. Now I ship all those websites with annoying ads to my Spam pool, never to be retrieved again. Then I decided that I was still spending too much of my depleting time allotment on this game of “me v. them.” So I cut down on my use of my computer to the bare essentials.
Now I:
1) keep my ad-blockers On;
2) read and send e-mails;
3) write, post, and read compositions for AD;
4) listen to free music on Spotify;
5) watch and listen to YouTube videos from scholars, musicians, and scientists.
That’s it. I’m still a little wacko, but I’ve slowed the drain on my bank account. That should give me enough time to deal with the Grim Reaper.
Good advice. I killed my Twitter X account. That saved me hundreds of hours. I block junk emails all the time. I also sorted through the emails from news media to keep the best that give real news and information. As a writer who is trying to sell books, I'm reluctant to push a newsletter and become one of the maniacs that I struggle to delete every day. Life is full of contradictions.
Like Odin, I found my first Mac at work in 1987 when all you had to buy was the software on a floppy disk and I was in business. The Internet back then was scholarly, difficult to navigate, and free. Unfortunately, every time software was updated, you had to buy a new version and that was costly. Subscriptions followed. But for Mac, expensive to buy from Apple at first, updates are free and keeps most of the crap at bay. Even offers free, but inferior software against giants like Microsoft offers.
Unlike all those who wanted a cheap IBM computer and bought Bill Gates's Inferior Windows 95, they got cheap hardware and software that allowed the villains to come in, in droves.
I don't use ad blockers, but I conveniently ignore ads. After one month, all of the accumulated emails that I get and immediately trash, are deleted. But I keep junk around because it automatically attracts more of the like to the junk file that I can also trash easily.
Finding free stuff with real information and entertainment is getting harder, but YouTube and scrolling down beyond the subscribed Google first listers, one can still find legitimate free stuff.
To cheer you up, I was on Microsoft Team yesterday for a great meeting. This morning I got an annoying message that I could either cancel or trash Microsoft Team. Nothing worked and the dam message wouldn't go away blocking my other windows. So I went to my applications folder where Microsoft Team had been installed yesterday, and dragged it to the trash. Problem solved!
But why is it when I donate twenty dollars a month to PBS, supposedly a government service to the people, so many of their shows now require me to pay to see their episodes, streaming?
But like you I'm frugal, and don't subscribe to anything but what I have to like Microsoft 365… Because I damn have to if I'm going to write.
I gazed long and hard at that list. Sanity indeed. I couldn't help but harken back to the time I bought my first computer...IBM PC in 1982. Wow. Thought I had the world by the tail. But, like all good things of nature, rot is inevitable...even in the innocent word processor. I do have to admit, though, having owned Macs since 2004, the amount of techno mulch is next to zero. And of course, staying away from social media has added years to my life span.
Your list of 5 will probably be a list of 10 in this exponential growth of tech.
