Ditto!

If you use Chrome as your browser, you can block pup-ups and some ads.

Frank Sinatra (You remember him) with nothing but an orchestra behind him and wearing simple, well-tailored tuxedo, came on stage and just sang. And killed every time.
Today's performers need dozens of back-up singers, a troop of dancers in abbreviated costumes, fog machines, explosives, pillars of fire, and a laser show just to get you into the door.
The internet is much like this with a lot of glitz and very little substance all designed to get you to click on their site so that they can add to the number of hits which determines their advertising rates.
However, if you know how to surf (as I am sure many of us long-time internet users do) you can cut thorough the crap and still find some real substance out there.

Valuable observations and comments, it always helps to know others are troubled by this ever growing consumerism that drives all of this. Agree on survey observations as well. Felt good to read I am not alone by a long shot.

i turn off the sound...that helps a lot.

I too wish the slide shows would go away. Not ready to give the internet up. My laptop/phone is my instant library, dictionary, research tool. Still I remember when I first hitched a modem up in the late 80's it seemed like so much fun. It doesn't feel like that anymore. I often keep my sound turned off, I just can't find where the noise is coming from. And I, I admit, I shop there more than anywhere else. I do live in a farming town in the far corner of my state so I can connect with things I might be get elsewhere when I lived in Bigcity. Though sometimes I think maybe I should turn it off and join our library board and another book club, and just forget about it.

I've been thinking the same thing. I wonder if we could get enough open source people to create a non-commercial internet, where everything is free and open, and no goddamn ads.

Maybe there should be a Top Level Domain set aside for this. It's too bad .org isn't non-commercial. At one-time people proposed putting all porn on .xxx - maybe we need a .free for people who want peace and quiet. We'd also need a browser and search engine that could filter by Top Level Domains.

Ronni, I love it when your inner Crabby Old Lady pops up into your website..shes a breath of fresh air.
And, like everyone else..yes yes and yes..
I've just about given up on most of Facebook because of the huge number of 'pass this along if you hate bullies, or love god or jesus or support veterans or like cats' As if we don't pass these annoyances along we don't support veterans or like cats..gurrrrr..I really think if my friends have nothing to say that day, they should just shut up and not subject everyone to this kind of negative reinforcement. I hate that people are bullies sometimes, but passing that canned opinion along to everyone isn't going to change a thing.
Don't these friends have anything original to say?
Then Facebook bugs me about having 290 messages waiting. And I can't seem to find an option to select the people I actually want to hear from..Facebook selects who they want me to hear from. Zuckenberg needs a reboot himself-back to the old Facebook where we got to decide who we want on our feed!
Phew..I needed that!

Last week a miserable excuse for a virus attached itself to my computer..called Advance Mac Cleaner..I couldn't just move this VERY LOUD advertisement to the trash, nor could I find it in apps or in my library..it was well hidden and totally obnoxious. It started up every time I opened my laptop.

I finally had to call the company and listen to 15 minutes of poor phone tree options to get the secret password to uninstall it, meanwhile listening to "ARE you SURE you want to uninstall AMC?? "
Well, yes, thats why I'm hanging in here dumb computer.
I had to go to another URL to download the uninstall, which itself was also full of the ARE YOU SURE announcements.

What a way to start the morning!
Thanks for giving me a place to vent, Crabby!
Be well Crabby and take care of yourself...we all love you!

Neighbor Elle

Elle, thanks for supplying the name of the advertisement that haunted your computer; thus giving us all a valuable warning {I'm referring to Advance Mac Cleaner.} If any of the commenters who wrote about their experiences with awful ads, sites, etc. can give the names of these offenders, it would be a big help. But it's asking a lot and I totally understand if it doesn't happen.
Especial thanks to Ronnie for the wonderfully funny post today from Crabby.
I love Crabby's moods. And Crabby is such a cool name!

posted by Page

AMEN!
Crabby old man agrees with it all.
Also Never ever ever click on anything "amazing" ,"jaw dropping", or "you will be amazed".
MAJOR waste of time and a good place to get that crappy "helpful" software accidentially installed.

I agree, some things really bug me. But I wouldn't give up on the Internet. I have my browser set with high security, I have an ad blocker that seems to be adequate, (enough so that I have to disable it on certain good sites), I set my facebook setting so that videos don't play unless I click on them, I use 3 email addresses (one just for political) and I set them to sort my emails as they come in so those I care about are the ones I look at first. I must admit that my son and my son-in-law each have worked on my computer and tablet to keep me "safe" but anything I haven't appreciated I have had no problem undoing. I know there are certain sites, such as the ones that require clicking constantly on a new page to read the story, so I just don't go there unless I am bored. I have Chrome on my tablet, Firefox on my computer, and there is a big difference in what ads I get and how some sites load. Whatever I can control, I do.

Same as with my phone. I'd love to be able to get rid of all the robocalls, I'd love for the no-call list to really work, I'd love not to answer unknown numbers but I can't because I missed a couple of important calls that way, so I just hang up (unless it's a real caller, who then gets an earful).

But I'm not going to give up what I truly enjoy about being in touch.

I still work using the internet for research. Your observations are spot on. The things that annoy you, annoy EVERYONE. Personally, I would never buy or even look at any product using those marketing tactics. That following you around with obscure items you may have looked at in the past is just creepy.

I send a huge thank you for this article this morning. It is a breath of fresh air in a long stuffy week! I love your humor.

Jayne

Bingo Crabby, Grumpy here hears ya!

My - thoughts - EXACTLY!!

Grrrr. I agree. And now my phone (so called smart phone) is doing it too!

In addition to all the annoyances mentioned above--ALL of them! There's the consequence of praising someone or some service. They come right back asking you for a review. This is not just a company. Sometimes it's writer friends whose work I admire. Part of this is that writers, unless they are the 1% famous, are required to toot their own horns in any way possible--but I have stopped complimenting people altogether, unless I feel like writing a review. A shame, since I've always thought deserved praise ought to be given voice.

In addition, I particularly dislike being asked to comment on whatever service I have ordered. I am reminded of being in a fancy restaurant once--a free dinner--wherein we were interrupted regularly by our waiter bringing the chef to our table for us to praise. Funny in retrospect. Not at the time!

OMG, yes. I have the exact same feeling. My latest example: I went to the car dealer to get air put in my tires. It took all of five minutes out of my day. I didn't even count the number of request I had to evaluate the service. "That was the best air ever. It literally breathed new life into my vehicle!"

I'm getting better at knowing which sites to avoid but I still get caught sometimes. Like others have said, I surf with the sound turned off because it's so jarring. I far prefer reading to having someone read material to me. I also agree about the pervasive slide shows, as if we lack the attention span of a gnat and are unable to concentrate long enough to read a list. Lowest common denominator indeed.

Baking has always been a hobby, but it has become more of an avocation since I retired. Some cooking sites have begun dumping in random and very loud videos as if we all require lessons in how to peel garlic to improve the quality of our lives.

I'm not generally Crabby but circumstances sometimes push me in that direction. I don't ask for much, mostly to be left alone and treated the way I treat others. Seems like it might be too much to ask.

I agree, I agree, I agree. They give you more stuff than you can handle. Yesterday trying to get tickets to a book event, ended up phoning in despair. The phonee sounded surprised, but let me give her a card and saved me two ticckets.

You nailed it. All this stuff is making the internet much less satisfying for me. I do turn off the volume but the pop-ups are driving me nuts. Mary

Thank you thank you thank you!

Oh I am with you on all these points. They are so frustrating and for me, slow my browser down so much sometimes, I just turn it off. I get very annoyed when they ask you to subscribe when you already are. Surely as you say, they already know.

Ditto to everything! And I especially second your pet peeve: "Hullo, don't you know I got here from your e-mailed newsletter already??!!

My second biggest new peeve: My e-mail provider, to which I've paid an annual fee for no advertising for at least 10 years, informed me at least a year ago that if I wanted to remain ad-free I'd have to pay twice as much for their new "premium" service. No thank you! Now they've added a new ad, in addition to the banner bar on the right side of the screen, a fake e-mail at the top of my e-mail list (looks like an e-mail but it takes you to an ad if you click on it). At least I can say this ol' dog can still lean a few new tricks -- I'm pretty much able to ignore the banner bar and don't click on the "fist" e-mail anymore!

Yes, it's enough to make anyone crabby! As others have mentioned, I use adblocker, popup blocker, maximum privacy settings wherever I find them, and I'm working through options to prevent video autoplay. (Google 'how to stop autoplay' - lifehacker shows what to do in various browsers. But things do keep changing, so no guarantees.) I'm pretty impervious to such advertising and 'you might also like' as gets through, so I'll just have to tolerate the rest of it for now.
But Ronni's site is a welcome relief.

I keep the sound off. I never, ever do surveys or reviews. I'm not on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter or similar social media sites. And I have three email addresses: one for friends and family; one for "official" or business purposes (e.g., co-op board, accountant, doctors etc); and one for merchants or anything else that I think might generate a lot of unsolicited follow-up. That last one gets a lot of spam (I periodically check it only to delete most of the emails unopened), but the other two are pretty much spam free.

Ditto to everything! And Crabiness is a noble virtue, conferred only on those who have acquired wisdom.

Is there anyone who, after reading two paragraphs of an article, then being interrupted by a pop-up ad, thinks, "Oh, that looks interesting, I'll click on that"?

I have developed the habit of muttering "Kill" whenever I dismiss those ads, and get some small satisfaction from it. Should I be worried?

If I start reading an article and have to scroll back to the part I was reading more than twice (due to ads and other crap being loaded), I give up and go on about my business.

You have to remember that the Internet is barely 20 years old. Someday we will look back at all this crap and laugh. For now I give no one my actual email address if I don't know them -- otherwise they get an old yahoo mail address.
I started on the net back when it was called the ARPANET, so when it became universally known as the
Internet, I was inured to the whiz bang novelty of it and pared down my use of it to something manageable and kissed off the rest.
Today I accept mail only from my friends and Amazon, netflix, and occasional sites I follow until they misuse my address.

There IS life without the Net, and this too shall pass. But I shivver at dealing with the artificial intelligence that will surely follow, and Facebook be damned.
My 2 cent's worth.... ;-)

+++1 to the post, and comments.

I have been crabby since birth, and had hoped that as I became elderly, I would get stupid and fuzzy enough so that things wouldn't bother me as much. Then technology blossomed. I am now an official mental case of agitation.

As one of the first technical writers in the late '70s, I knew from the beginning that it would come to this, in terms of institutionalized commercialism. Because I was forced to become a techie in order to make a living, I still have just enough outdated knowledge to work around some of the ad intrusions, slideshow hangups, invisible X's, and so forth, but I am fast becoming a dinosaur in that area.

I can't really give up the internet, because I use the library app to find books and put them on hold at my branch, then track them as they move through the 250 holds already scheduled, until it's my turn. Also, without Facebook, I would be lonely, as many of my friends are, if not dead, far-flung. I have become dependent on the internet and social media, to a degree.

Without you, Crabby, I would still be experimenting with positive thinking (lies you tell yourself until you believe them) which never solved anything. Now I can say without shame: I AM CRABBY AND WITH GOOD REASON. In fact, I feel much more comfortable just accepting it and letting the chips fall where they may.

I'm a bit late to this topic. If you surf with Chrome Browser it's useful to install "Ghostery" and "UBlock Origin".
Unfortunately I found no way to avoid those painfully loud videos on Newspapers sites, except to stop them as fast as possible.