First: "Who blogs on Blogspot?" I know that Blogspot is dead. I can't stand Medium's vibe and somebody told me that SubStack was evil. Blogspot is where I first found James Iry and Steve Yegge. It loads slowly, but it doesn't badger you to sign in, as far as I remember [glares at Medium]. So now I'm promoting ad blockers from the servers of the company that owns YouTube.
We have been told repeatedly that the battlefield is in the mind, that we in the Bride of Christ must keep our minds pure. So media discrimination becomes vital. Everything affects worldview; worldview affects everything. A novel or movie may teach lies. We must be on guard.
The inherent purpose of the modern advertisement is to subvert that. Ads may have once worked by finding people who had a need, then suggesting a way to fill that need. Now, they create a need to fill. They're blatantly manipulative. 'Tis better to be damned than mentioned not at all, for the poor sap who hated the ad jingle stuck in his head is still thinking about your product regardless of whether he so wishes.
In purity in media consumption, I may have problems with promiscuity, but at least I won't whore out my mind for a measly $15 per month. (But apparently I'm too cheap for that, either, so I'm watching Doctor Who on archive.org and just kind of not listening to music.)
"But advertisements don't work on me!" How do you know they don't? They work on the subconscious, not the conscious. These people pay a lot of money to discover what works. Then they pay a lot more money to discover what you, specifically, can be duped into watching. I should know; I unwisely spent hours yesterday on Facebook, and the ads were approximately as interesting as the posts from pages I follow. I hate Facebook because I love Facebook. I wasted so much time. The doomscroll-inducers do their job well.
But let's assume that you are correct--that advertisements do not affect you. So then why watch them? If it doesn't influence you, it's useless to you. The company sponsoring the advertisement makes no money. It's like consenting to a police search: If you know they won't find anything, then you're just wasting their time. The only party helped is whatever bastion of brain rot is serving the ads. You are spending your brain time to move money from some company that makes fake video games to the company that sells them the means of convincing people to download the fake games. You could do this much more effectively by not doing that, waiting for the fake game company to die and Google to find some advertising model that helps you instead of exploiting you.
Anyway, here's my point: If you get a mobile game and enjoy it enough to keep playing it, spend the $2 to get the ad-free version. If you prefer a music subscription service over buying another (rippable) CD every month for the same cost, then do that instead of listening to ads. If the service you are paying for gives you ads anyway, change services. And anywhere that won't let you escape ads by paying, use an ad blocker.
These companies want to stress you out so that you'll buy their products. Don't give in. Live in peace.
