Crimes Against the Quality of Life

Is this the most annoying commercial ever ! - Imgflip

Supposedly the most obnoxious commercial out there, just now. I’m so glad I wouldn’t know.

Suddenly YouTube is lousy with commercials. Like freakish monsters climbing out of an untended culture vat, they’re all over the place–even plugged into the middle of videos, like old-time TV commercials. By Jove, if they ever did that to movies that people were paying $20 a pop to see–! But who says that can’t happen?

Our town has taken away the free ten minutes they used to give you on the parking meter. Now the minimum charge is a dollar. You’re in the store for five minutes to buy a cup of coffee or a yo-yo, and they want a dollar.

Suddenly we’ve got all these goniffs with their hands in our pockets, fishing for our wallets. And this is not to feed the hungry or clothe the naked. It’s to make rich corporations and swollen local governments richer. At our expense.

I got used to YouTube having no commercials–except for some that were read by the host of the video, having to pretend he was an enthusiastic patron of Acme Nose Hair Remover or what have you. I am embarrassed for them.

So what’s the next irritation going to be? What’s the next sharp pebble they stick into our shoe?

I’m sure we’ll find out soon.

The Curse of Commercials

Facing The Hound | The Hounds of Baskerville | Sherlock - YouTube

Lately on YouTube I’ve been running into commercials (the horror! the horror!) when I try to watch a video. Certain hosts whose channels we watch now do commercials. To me it seems to demean them.

Patty and I have been away from network TV long enough to have grown unaccustomed to commercials. We don’t watch movies that are “free with ads.” We’d rather pay a rental than have to tolerate commercials.

For several years YouTube and other sites were commercial-free. (Way back when, wasn’t cable TV pitched to us as commercial-free?) I begin to see commercials, collectively, as a kind of devil-dog, a Hound of the Baskervilles, that stalks us till it finds us. Then it hits us with the ads.

Are we going to wind up with commercials on every YouTube video? The last time I went to a movie theater, they showed 15 minutes’ worth of commercials before the Coming Attractions came on. Effectively, I was paying to see freakin’ commercials! [Run screaming to the sidewalk.]

This is cultural decay. This is “Everything’s for sale.”

I hope folks appreciate that there are no commercials here.