I hate ads

and the skip button doesn't work

I hate ads.

I hate them. Like the wolf that stalks the rabbit, they chase me down. I have to dig into my burrow and protect it with adblocks, VPN’s and everyone’s fourth favourite browser, Firefox.

I won’t get into the pervasive nature of ads. How it seeps into our society, how we can’t distinguish it anymore from “content” or entertainment. Better writers have written and will continue to expound on advertising in the digital age.

What I hate is the condescension. The infantilization. I thought of myself as Alex from A Clockwork Orange when watching ads, but lately I feel like a dumb troll given a bib and some diapers by my overlords. Constant garbage being thrown at my face. So fast I’ve forgotten what I was watching in the first place.

When I was 5, I used to imagine the ideal ad consumer. Yes, ads have taken up real estate in my brain for two decades now. I imagined a family of four (as mine was, then) that had to strategically coordinate the shows they were watching with the ad breaks. Son and Daughter would be at home watching the ads. They would then relay the product and its price to Mother and Father who were out in a mall shopping for the product advertised. All this had to be done with speed because they had to complete the purchases in time for the next show to begin and a new set of ad spots to consume.

By the time I was 6, foolish thoughts like this were replaced by other foolish thoughts. How many of us can remember our first thoughts? What’s the first thing you see if you to try to excavate your earliest memory from the recesses of your brain. I think this ad-consuming family is in that top ten list for me.

As I said, I’ve taken measures to reduce the number of ads I see. My browser diminishes pop ups and sketchy websites to basically zero. I haven’t watched a YouTube ad in years. I don’t even browse information on my phone anymore. I whip out my laptop every time I know I’m going to visit multiple websites because I haven’t figured out how to get around Apple’s system to install my own ad blockers.

I feel like a wizard in DnD enclosing himself in a protective bubble. That bubble pops when I’m in the cinema.

The theatre is the one place I am still exposed to ads in the traditional sense. Sure, I’m exposed in other ways as well. Mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, the occasional jumpscare when I use YouTube on the TV. But I’m not interested in the digital space. I’m talking about good old fashioned let’s go out and do a thing that humans do and oh what’s this, someone’s trying to sell me something.

I go to the cinema almost every week so by now I have learned that movies don’t start on the time mentioned online and that if you arrive “on time”, you are going to be subjected to a couple dozen ads by the time the movie starts. Does this encourage me to arrive later? Nope.

My anxiety would never allow me to arrive late. Anywhere. Be it a pizza party, board game night, or a movie. I have to be on time. Which means I HAVE to watch those ads.

If you’ve had the pleasure of watching a movie with me at Cineplex, you have witnessed me crawling inside my skin the moment the “Pre-show Feature” text shows up on screen. The seat isn’t large enough to sink inside and no matter what I do, the bright colours and cheer of actors force me to look at them. I have tried to dim the noise by enabling dark mode on my Kindle to read something, but that barely works.

Sweet Summer child, there is no escape. I have given up over the years with fighting against the seemingly endless barrage of advertisements. Now I watch them with a mind numb from exposure and pray for the sweet release of that first production title card.

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What infuriates me the most is the quality of ads. The lack of effort, the condescension. I remember watching an ad for a loyalty program (of which I am a proud member). The ad was based around a game show and the host had the audacity to call it “the only game show about Canada’s favourite loyalty program.”

The questions were sales pitches and bullet points you would find in an email hidden in your Promotions tab. The one you clean out every month without a second glance. It was grating. My head was pounding with the bad dialogue.

But what really forced me to write this was the SkipTheDishes ad with Jon Hamm. In the ad, Jon Hamm walks in on people going about their day, reservations for a restaurant, buying groceries, having a barbecue party. And then he says “You could’ve skipped it.”

The reason why this annoyed me so much was because the ad just showed people doing normal human things. But SkipTheDishes wants us to replace all of that with sitting on our couch and having things delivered to our door. What is the point of a barbecue party if you’re going to order the food from a ghost kitchen?

Perhaps I shouldn’t let these things get to me. But the world is no longer salesman banging on your door demanding to be let in. The world is now Landlord Dracula with a spare key amidst a garlic shortage in your country.