Ads are annoying, but we got used to it? (traded blog post)

24 Jul 2025

I traded blog posts with Dabi and the title I received is: Ads are annoying, but we got used to it?

—

Where to begin. Have I gotten used to ads?

I studied ads often in school. We pulled up ad campaigns from the biggest brands and critically discussed them — the narratives, the diversity (or lack thereof), the discrimination, the gender codes, the hypersexualization, the fantasy. We explored their creativity & technique. We examined why they were effective & how these stories and images might impact how we perceive ourselves and our world.

It was all very academic and, at the time, ads felt more distant. My primary exposure to ads then was non-digital: walking by mall displays, driving past billboards, flipping through magazines, visiting NYC and finding myself surrounded by screens. I noticed visual ads often,¹ the way a designer notices kerning. They were in my space, but it didn't feel like too much — after all, it was what I knew, my normal. I regarded them as creative art & appreciated the more clever campaigns.

Online ads then were annoying (I remember the pop ups & animated banner ads), but I quickly learned to ignore and block them. They felt less insidious. They looked like ads, ridiculous and blinky — banished to the edges of web pages and obviously not something I'd click.

Between then and now, ads feel so much more invasive — blending in with real articles and stories, quantity over quality, more manipulation than message. I was used to the ads I grew up with,² but I am not used to the ad-driven dystopia I've watched emerge in the last decade.

I despise and aggressively block digital ads (including promoted & suggested content) in every way I can: DNS content blockers within Mullvad VPN, filter lists & custom filters with uBlock Origin in Firefox, paying for the service if there's a no ads option. I've used NoScript (block everything!) in the past as well, but did not stay with it. (It introduced more friction than I wanted.)

I avoid using websites, apps, and services that display ads I cannot block.

I suppose in this way, I have gotten used to ads: I expect to have to block them.

I wonder if the feeling is different for someone who grew up with this as their normal — or if there's a line our current adscape has crossed, one that feels intolerably annoying even to those who've never known an alternative.

Incomplete thoughts: loud little gas station screens that talk at me, ads in public transport & airports, the world of Blade Runner 2049, attention theft, paid for a thing but there’s still ads, the only ads I'd maybe be okay with seeing are discounts for things I already want (but I have beef with the whole discounts thing too), spam everywhere (email, text, snail mail), ads masquerading as real content, questioning all content, stealth marketing, The Joneses, free internet was a good idea but didn't consider who would pay for it

—

The title I gave to Dabi is: If my life were a movie, this would be its soundtrack. Dabi writes often on her love for music, so I was curious what her personal soundtrack would be. I'm not certain what mine would sound like — how do I capture the the angst of my teens, the turbulence & letting go of my 20s, and the calm of my 30s in one cohesive track list? I just can't imagine songs from Cursive's The Ugly Organ and Max Richter's Sleep sitting in the same list (though I suppose they do have the cello in common). Feist's "Inside and Out" has to fit in there somewhere too.