imagine Mr. Rogers stopping his show every 5 mins to sell you athletic greens and test boosters.

Or imagine the Flintstones advertising cigarettes to kids in the middle of the show.

Or comedy shows named after the sponsoring toothpaste company with sponsor breaks throughout.

Sure it’s gotten really bad lately, but mass media has always been rife with obnoxious advertising, both in-your-face and subliminal. The early days of Netflix streaming were really the anomaly as far as access to non-pirated ad-free media. The broadcast TV generation had their coping mechanisms with the mute button and eventually DVRs, but “media without ads” has basically never been a thing.

And I double my piracy. Checkmate, corporations.

Right? I can't believe people actually pay for these services. Oh well, I guess someone has to. ‍️

Dwayne Johnson playing the same character in all his movies. Acting range = 0.

What. Cable has only been available in cities and you could get the OTA Chanel's.

Amazon funded Trump's inauguration, they've doubled their advertisements, they mistreat their warehouse workers, for people who don't use Amazon often you're paying more money than you'd spend on just paying for shipping on the occasion you need fast shipping or if you don't need fast shipping you can still get free shipping if your order is more than the threshold which I think depends on your account might be $25 or $35.

Given all these things I really hope no one is subscribing to Amazon prime. I'd highly recommend anyone who uses Amazon prime to cancel it. Being shown advertisements on something you're paying for is insane. This should be the final straw for any Amazon Prime customer.

His movies make money.

It's like they want me to sail the high seas

What? Not everyone lives in or near a metro area. Some people live in valleys or mountains where an OTA signal doesn’t reach. I should know that is where I grew up.

Plus if you read up on the history of cable TV you will find that it was invented for just those reasons.

“At the outset, cable systems only served smaller communities without television stations of their own, and which could not easily receive signals from stations in cities because of distance or hilly terrain”

It isn’t that hard to read up on it and understand the history. Instead I guess just downvote because you don’t like the answer.

I mean yes they deserve to get paid. Do you do stuff for free? I mean it's funny how people complain about ads but nobody is willing to pay for anything.

"I can't see ads!"

I worry the average person has no idea how to torrent.

+100% ads --> -100% amazon purchases

Hoist the main sales, me maties!

Mine ended on the 5th, i didn't renew it. It's the first time since i got it that I didn't but everything's chinese rebranded shit there now and the shows are better if i torrent them.

Glad I cancelled Prime some time ago. Haven't missed it and I usually get free shipping anyway by buying elsewhere. I'll even pay more to avoid Amazon.

The average person doesn't even have a proper computer anymore. I guess you're can still torrent on your phone but I've not tried it.

Yeah, people create stuff online without getting paid all the time. We literally built the Internet that way. Go back to the early days forums, blogs, dumb memes, personal websites, fan videos none of that was about money. People made stuff just to share it, to be part of something, or just because they wanted to.

It’s only after financial incentives got introduced ads, sponsorships, “influencer” money that everything started getting worse. Suddenly it’s all algorithm-chasing. Everyone’s copying each other, following trends, tweaking thumbnails, timing posts. The content got way more polished, surebut also way more boring. It's all the same stuff over and over.

So yeah, people deserve to get paid if that’s what they want. But pretending like people only create if they’re paid is just wrong. Humans naturally create. Always have. We write songs, we draw, we tell jokes. Money didn’t start that, it ruined it. It made it a job. It made it about likes and reach and SEO. It turned the internet into a shopping mall.

Now everything online feels fake. Safe. Recycled. All because the moment you attach money to something, people start optimizing for profit instead of originality. That’s the trade-off.

Why not? Because I don’t care about ads in a service that’s just thrown in as a bonus to a service I already pay for and would still pay for even if they got rid of it?

What’s that got to do with freedom?