Ask Lemmy

I solved this problem by having not watched cable television in like ten years.

Visit a house where they have the tv on all the time. Commercials and everything. It's harsh.

I jolly roger everything. No commercials.

I found a cool way of ad-blocking back when I watched TV. Probably does not work anymore, and relies on Teletext page 888 (closed captions, the number varies by country) not being updated during ads.

1. Mute
2. Switch to another channel and back to clear Teletext cache
3. Turn on fullscreen Teletext, any page (I like the 89x test patterns)
4. Type "888" as the page you want to go to
5. The TV will now wait for 888 to be broadcast, which only happens after ads and trailers
6. The program is now running with captions. Disable Teletext and unmute if you want sound instead.

What are ads?

I haven't had an ad in my house or on my devices in like 15years. I block all ads.

When I go elsewhere or out and see an ad I literally get confused for a second before I remember people still let them play.

Don't suffer through ads friend.

Why you askin Lemmy what normal people do?!

I stopped watching TV some 15 years ago or smth.

I have not put myself in a position to be forced to watch ads in a very long time. Even when I had normal TV service I was recording shows to a computer that would identify the commercials to automatically skip them when I watched a show. But I guess I'm not anywhere near normal in that regard.

Lol, the fuck is an ad???

I either pay for no ads, or sail the high seas

Fucks ads

Ads?

One of the best things I did was raise my kids ad-free for the first 5 or 6 years of their lives. The first time they saw ads, they were baffled about what they were, then they were baffled why people would put up with them.

I take ads as a personal attack on my psyche. I turn my toothpaste around so I'm not looking at the logo. I pirate any shows I want to watch, and I use uBlock Origin in my browser.

Ads? Hmm. No, now that you mention it. I must be doing it wrong, because I never see ads.

🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

Ads aren't a thing in my life. On the off day I have to visit someone who lives with ads and suffer through one or two I tough it out, or look at my phone, or do something different.

I don't watch live TV. I dont pay for any subscription services except phone service and internet data. I watch YouTube content that has the ads stripped out. I download youtube videos that get often rewatched to hard drive. For movies I buy DVD that can have the drm stripped out.

I play good video games preferably drm free (steam is the one service I can't really give up easy, but it has offline mode and the deck so praise gaben!). I read e-books that are drm free. I have a mp3 player downloaded with all my music drm free.

The better question is, why are you willing to live with ads at all? Assuming you are in control of your living situation and have the power change whats shown on tv or played through speakers.

Why would you tolerate being constantly bombarded with manipulative messaging by companies, political canpaigns, and all the other powerful groups who want to affect he masses for their benefit?

Why is it so hard just say no? To give up the forms of toxic entertainment delivery? Why can't you sacrifice ease and convinence and familiarity to regain some control overhow your attention is spent during free time?

If you like something, buy it and really take the steps to own it physically.

That's one of the reasons I cut the cord.

And unsubscribed from Netflix/Prime when they started asking for more money for ads.

And freak out whenever the weird hacky fix from the depths of Lemmy that kills youtube ads stops working for a day.

Ads are the goddamn worse, Carpenter had them dead to rights in They Live.

I don't watch shit with adds lol. I just recently learned that in the US Netflix, Amazon Prime and the such offer paid subscriptions that still show adds. Like what the actual fuck? Just pirate at that point, the bad sites have an equal share of adds and the good ones have none, it's a much better experience.

No TV, no ads. Simple.

My spouse and I have not been forced to watch a TV-ad since the late 90S. Since the day we got rid of our TV once and for all, when we realized the were expecting us to pay good money to buy a TV set and then still have to watch their ads, and more and more of them? Not the best deal. So thx, but no. 25 years later, we still have to regret it once ;)

I stream everything and pay for ad free services. I hate ads.

Ain't no ads on Jellyfin.

My TV lets me pause live TV, so I pause, leave the room for a bit, come back and fast forward through the ads.

I can't stand ads. It's even worse on TV when they yell them at you. So I actually stopped watching TV in 2009 because I couldn't stop the ads, and I was tired to have the TV trying to convince me to buy a car every 15 minutes.

If I want to watch something that was on TV, I download it from... * the internet *.

My parents still watch TV and just let the ads blast in the background, and we need to yell over them to talk. I hate it. Then they're like "oh it's just like in the ad". I don't know how they can tolerate this. I did when I was younger but when I realized that the TV was trying to sell me twice a car in 15 minutes, or about 8 times an hour, I couldn't help but notice and it's just really annoying.

Has anyone watched an NHL game lately. They got annoying moving ads on the boards. Hard to concentrate on the puck with whirling ads in the background. Someone needs to use AI to counter thier AI. It's enough for me to stop watching. And I mute ads of course.

I have no idea what normal people do, but I avoid ads at all costs. Sometimes I pay premium, sometimes I just don't watch.

i have not owned a television since I was a child and came to develop my quirky ad-reviling character trait

I don't watch TV.

I stopped watching 'tv' because of ads. No way will I pay for ads or be subjected to them as best I can.

My wife normally mutes them, but I generally don't care enough to pick up the remote and push the mute button. I just tune them out and use it as a chance to grab a snack or go to the bathroom, or just check stuff on my phone.

Mute ads in live sports. Absolutely.

Avoid ads in all other formats.

When i run into ads on Twitch (rare) i mute the stream and leave the tab.
I usually only make it through a couple runs of ads before bailing on the stream.

record everything. skip the commercials.

the need for having them in an ad supported environment is understood. but it's long since gotten out of hand as to how many there are. 8-10 minutes per hour when i was a kid to 20-22+ per hour now.

I use a TV and pi connected to my server thus no ads but what gets me is radio ads in cars such as a taxi or in the barbershop, I hate them, they're obnoxious.

If its a State Farm ad, its definitely getting muted.

I don't watch television in a way that exposes me to commercials. Same with YouTube and Spotify.

I fast forward through ads during podcasts assuming my hands are free enough to do so, but will listen through them if I'm driving. I don't absorb much from them, I'd be hard pressed to recall any I heard even within the last hour. I think I've been hearing one on repeat lately about subscribing to a service to tell you what services you're subscribed to; couldn't tell you the name of the company though.

No, I never muted them. How else are you supposed to know when the series continues?

I always mute and go off to do something else (meaning, I'm not watching, either). One of my worst hells was when I had to take care of my MIL for 2 months last year and while she watches YouTube non-stop, she does it with all the ads. I hadn't realized how bad the ads there actually are these days. I almost didn't make it.

I mute them habitually and very regularly wish muting was kept as a metric so "they" could know just how much I truly loathe them.

You're in good company here.

I expect most people who decide to watch cable or a comparable streaming service would watch ads with the volume on. A lot of people grew up with cable and constant ads and don't see a problem with it.

I don't watch cable TV. I get free Disney plus which includes ads. For these I do in fact mute them. I find ads annoying.