This might be "frog in the pot" territory, but the internet is surely heading in the wrong direction these days, innit?


Can't say when I really noticed, but it has certainly become obvious over the last two months or so. Parts of the intertubes are virtually unusable these days.

Let's see about checking the weather. They've gutted NOAA. So I suppose I'll take a look over at Accu-Weather. Except - every page now loads a popup ad first. Want to pick a city? Ad. Looking for the hourly forecast? Ad. Want to see the local radar? Ad.

You know I'm an aviation geek. This one is on my phone. Flightradar 24 is a terrific app, when it is working. But it is totally random. Sometimes I can open it up and get aircraft information instantly. Other times, it plays a long-form video that there is no way to skip. By the time it's over, the plane I was looking for is long-gone. Oh, well.

I really don't suppose I need to whine about the handful of games that I play on my phone? King Robert makes an appearance in every single one of them. Sometimes after each and every round of whatever I'm trying to play.

YouTube, of course, is virtually unwatchable these days. I really noticed it earlier in the year when I was going through a Haydn symphony cycle. I finally found a channel that at least had the good graces to play their block of ads at the end of every movement, but there are plenty of videos out there were multiple ads will pop up mid-note, mid-sentence, or who knows where else. Of course, you can't skip those, either.

The thing that gets me now though, is that most of those ads are absolute snake-oil sailesmen. The one with a lady dressed up in a doctor costume, telling me about how a glass of warm water and citrus juice "changed her life". Another one with a muscular dude denouncing chicken and rice as he physically mashes up an avocado in his hand. Or the one that is atrocious - an Asian lady that is whining about how she needs to poop but it "feels stuck".

Lady, poop doesn't get "stuck". If you don't go, you've got a bowel blockage or worse, and no fake ad on the internet is going to save you.

It's getting pretty wild. Like everything else, I'd presume it will get worse before it gets better - one wonders how much money all this clickbait is funneling into GOP coffers. Probably a bunch of regulations or restrictions have been removed and nobody noticed.

I have.