For something I’m paying for, I want no ads, recommended or otherwise.

For something I get for free, if it’s easily skippable/ignorable, I don’t really care, I’ll skip it or mute the tab or whatever. If I can’t, I’d rather have a like sniper level targeted ad (use all the data!), really try to show me something I’ll care about (there was some like 10 minutes ad about the science behing glass by one of the guys from MythBusters, I watched the whole ad, it was great). The demographic level targeted ads are my 2nd least favorite, mostly because it feels like I usually need to suffer through what is a targeted ad but if they bothered to exclude some of the audience based on some data points (looking at you luxury car ads, it’s just never going to happen), they’d know I’m a bad target, I’d rather some generic add over those. My least favorite ad though, when I get an ad in a language I don’t even understand, like at least match my primary language, wasting everyone’s time…

If only employers cared. It has been nice, now my employer is rolling out a arbitrary but mandatory 4 days return to office policy. In like 8 years of employment I never needed to be there that much. Whatever, 100% remote job market looks decent for me, hopefully find a better place soon.

That’s kind of the sad truth of it though, once it is a useful and safe enough thing, you either pay for it or get left behind, it’s dystopian as fuck, but it will significantly increase the utility of those who can get it.

Grocery stores are actually a bit more sinister than that, they reorganize things periodically so people have to spend more time walking around the store and can impulse buy more. They are getting wiser though, they tend to do it more sectionally rather than the whole store so people don’t get as fed up.