God, how do normal people even browse the internet anymore?

@alice since my employer disabled things like ad-blockers, I would have to see all those ads. That is, if I wasn't the nerd I am. Since I am, I spend 5-10 minutes on each page disabling every single element and div that annoys me.

@alice By having not-quite-normal friends/relatives install uBO for them

@alice glowing orange circuit breaker vibes

ash in your hair because of What You Are Invoking so you pull up the hood on your plastic mac and go "Ah that's better, right let's get back to it" vibes

@alice Fair, I've kinda made a point to nudge everyone around me into using them for the last... decade or more... so, it's become normalized in my proximity too, though I'm not sure how common they are more broadly.

@alice In addition to the usual stuff on the desktop, I've been running Rethink DNS on my Android for a few years now. It's absolute stomach-churning to see how much tracking garbage is in every single app.

@alice It's insane. All the protections on my network are now filtering out around 47% of the traffic.

@alice

... Yeah, I mean I wouldn't snog him but I wouldn't mind being gently snuggled to sleep either

@schrotthaufen I use AdNauseam. Blocks the ads and silently clicks them so it costs them marketing budget. I gleefully waste hundreds of dollars of ad spend each day.

@alice@lgbtqia.space they complain that their laptop is slow and buy a new one, unfortunately

@alice I had a friend with one, yeah, those were fantastic.

RETVRN TO IR BLASTING PHOEN

@alice "I don't know how folk cope without these" I say as I wheel a portable air conditioner into the space in the corner of my living room that's always 20 degrees hotter than its surroundings and sounds like a heartbeat

@alice Hm, tiny, hair, creepy and doll?

@alice should I ask about the creep hair totem?

@alice so about this creepy human hair totem, I am assuming Victorians are involved.

@alice I've been pushing for ad blocking at work. None of our browsers have any ad blocking or ad prevention measures implemented or permitted.

The amount this is adding to our mobile data bill must be huge, not to mention the constant interruptions and shit thrown at people when they are working and looking for stuff.

That's one of the advantages of WFH - my Kinkpad is built for speed and shit blocking, which means I can find things out far quicker than on my work issued device.

@DavidNielsen someone asked "how do you even keep track of all your followers?" and I said I make tiny hair dolls for each one, so I can tell whenever one is out of place.

Then I spent over an hour searching for the perfect photo of a small, real human (or cat) hair effigy.

I was disappointed that I couldn't find just the right image, so I started searching for felting instructions so I could make my own.

Like a perfectly normal person.

I'm now the proud owner of this.

Like a perfectly normal person.

@alice Yup, I've been clearing and cleaning up computers infected via adware and malware delivered by ads for more than two decades. Ad blocker is the first thing that gets added any computer I work on.

@alice Browse the web? I haven't done that in forever. I doomscroll, and I might click a link someone shared here. There's a few RSS feeds I follow. And a couple of pages I bookmarked to go to directly.

There is no browsing.

@alice I'm a teacher, I use adblockers, automatic cookie decliners and similar addons. Sometimes I assign my students online grammar exercises. When I see the same website I always get a shock and try to gently suggest that maybe they should look into getting an adblocker. Similarly, my heart drops everytime they just click "accept all" to get the cookie banner to disappear as quickly as possible.

@alice very... very carefully