how about some cloudflare mf!
> open an interesting article
half the page is greyed out, pay up mf!!
> try to change a password
password not secure enough mf!!
> try to watch youtube
you must disable adblock mf!!
> search for a video on youtube
no, you will watch what we tell you mf!!
> search for something on google
here is some blogspam written by chatGPT with 20 chapters mf!!!
> try to update twitter account
here are 10 arkose captcha puzzles to solve consecutively, each requiring abstract thinking and 20/20 eagle vision mf!!
> try to login to work email
enter the 2fa okta pass mf!!
> open an app on my phone
you have been signed out because of suspicious activity. give us your phone number to verify mf!!
> open slack
we just rejigged the UI, now a bunch of useless crap pops up and stays up every time you mouseover something mf!!!
> try to edit some code
your node is outdated, neeed to update mf!!
bash isn't supported anymore got to use zsh now mf!!
got to sign in to git first mf!!
got to pull the latest branch mf!!
got to merge all the changes first mf!!
got to login to corporate vpn before u can push mf!!
> turn on game console to relax
need to install this mandatory 50gb update first mf!!!
things that used to be 1 step. now are 2, 3, 4+ steps.
everything requires more effort for same results. everything is more and more annoying.
Skip youtube, rip dvds. Skip Twitter, talk to actual friends. Give up the phone that you never actually owned to begin with.
Or something even newer is the emphasis on "recommendations" being included in your searches (youtube, quora, etc).
Remember when we won the war on pop-ups? I do. Seems like web developers can’t add enough of them now. Open a webpage and wait five seconds for the inevitable cookie banner and email newsletter pop-up. It’s very annoying. Super-fast internet plan, running wires through my house, expensive network hardware, all wasted because I still have to wait when I open a web page.
We’re squandering amazing resources by building software this way.
It is frustrating to see how the world increasingly becomes worse in parallel to technology's increasing advances not fulfilling its promise. Simply because the majority of human beings taking advantage of it have their mind still firmly and exclusively rooted within their primitive reptilian brain areas.
I am sorry for the younger generation who didn't grown up in a time before computers and the (now broken) internet, and who won't even be able to understand what old folks like me are referring to, simply because they lack the lived exposure of former times and realities. All those youngsters are inheriting a world increasingly worsening at a scale not possible before.
Death will be an escape and a relieve from this slow descent into the abyss of the current real time dystopia.
Unless of course all your documents are completely in order and you agree to update them everywhere you go with a detailed record of all your travels, as verified by real-time electronic surveillance.
Don't even think about "No Man's Land".
"And then there's the negative side . . ."
I blame lawyers, criminals, and dumb people.
Bourbon or weed might help, at least makes it seem funnier.
If you do the audio captcha, you usually nail it the first time and it lets you in right away.
Check archive.ph for the articles.
On Brave, you can add dns block lists. One of the lists available through the GUI is for blocking scripts in news sites.
Instead of google, sometimes I use Yandex since it has more raw shitty results. Which, ironically, can be more useful than the AI-written textual diarrhoea on ever SEO-addicted site.
I use Brave + Ghostery + Privacy Badger and don't get that popup for YouTube.
That said, I miss the internet of the early 2000s.