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Zeusthecat

I Had A Random Thought...

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Mobile is hyper restricted with the free service. You aren't allowed to listen to albums straight through, they must be shuffled, at least in the US.

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It is literally one of the most annoying things on this dull earth to email someone with explicit times that you cannot meet with them and then to have them email you back with a suggested meeting at one of the times you gave. Right now, I'm combating it with passive aggression ("Wednesday afternoon? Great! If you can settle on an exact time, I'll see if my boss will let me take off from work to come over there and meet with you.").

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It is literally one of the most annoying things on this dull earth to email someone with explicit times that you cannot meet with them and then to have them email you back with a suggested meeting at one of the times you gave. Right now, I'm combating it with passive aggression ("Wednesday afternoon? Great! If you can settle on an exact time, I'll see if my boss will let me take off from work to come over there and meet with you.").

 

"Hey, I'm trying to schedule a meeting with these 4 ED doctors and everyone's schedule is pretty jam packed. Here are three times -- can you let me know what your calendar looks like for each of those?" "This time you didn't suggest works best for me." "Can you please let me know about the times I suggested? Do any of them work for you?" "This other time you also didn't suggest works great for me too, thanks for doing this!!!"

 

this is how you get uninvited to meetings

 

people are terrible at scheduling and i don't understand how

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I tried Spotify for the first time today and I'm not sure I understand the point. I wanted to listen to Run The Jewels 2, so I searched for that. It gave me a playlist that had some of the songs from that album, and some other RTJ songs, and some adverts, and then after a while it wouldn't let me listen to any more. Are you just supposed to hope it gives you what you actually want to listen to?

 

The spotify mobile app free version is essentially useless. You get free access to the entire library on desktop, and you have to pay the subscription for the same on mobile. I've stupidly fell into their dumb trap where I tried out a free trial of the mobile app and now I pay for it because i can't live without it :((( 

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"Hey, I'm trying to schedule a meeting with these 4 ED doctors and everyone's schedule is pretty jam packed. Here are three times -- can you let me know what your calendar looks like for each of those?" "This time you didn't suggest works best for me." "Can you please let me know about the times I suggested? Do any of them work for you?" "This other time you also didn't suggest works great for me too, thanks for doing this!!!"

 

this is how you get uninvited to meetings

 

people are terrible at scheduling and i don't understand how

 

Doctors are (or become) terrible at basic organisation and communication.

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Some chap in London is domain squatting blacktwitter.com. Unbelievable! Put it to good use, man!

 

..maybe blocking anyone else from actually doing something with it is good use.

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A cybersquatter is a step up from some racist asshat having it...so it could be worse. 

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A report came across my desk today from a field tech.  He was calibrating a transmitter and described it as being "squirrely".  I'm trying to come up with a technical term for that for my own report.

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'Intermittent' is the appropriate term for 'stupid fucking thing won't even have the decency to fail consistently'

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I learned today that I am supposed to feel guilty for using an ad blocker on my browser. Screw that. Until websites stop plastering invasive, auto play ads all over the goddamn place, I will always run adblock, just like I would turn the tv to another channel when a commercial comes on.

 

I've seen the arguments against my stance and I'm just not convinced. First, even if I am not using ad block, I ignore every ad I see. So it's not like that advertising is reaching me and getting me to go buy some product. But because the system is set up so that every ad view generates some tiny amount of revenue for the content creator (because these ad companies rely on a handful of whales (not unlike how a lot of free to play games work (which people are much less likely to defend)) to go buy their shit and justify the money they are paying out to content creators for each of these views), the sheer fact that I am not subjecting myself to the ads means that that is one less revenue unit that the content creator sees. But who is really being unfair here? I feel like it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that content creators that rely on that kind of revenue and make their livings off the back of a scammy advertising system are kind of at the mercy of the people that decide to view their content and people that decide to circumvent that system are well within their moral rights to do so (especially considering how invasive ads are now and the risk of malware and other adverse effects from crazy ads autoplaying and jumping all over the screen). The only reason they make a living doing this is because ad companies are willing to give them money for each person that views one of their ads on that page or video. And the only reason ad companies are willing to give them money is because they know they can manipulate a certain percentage of people to buy their shit through clever advertising and psychological tricks. It's kind of gross and it's a business model I'm so sick of. 

 

I realize my opinion won't resonate very well with a lot of people and that options for monetizing internet entertainment are limited. But putting an entertaining thing on the internet for anyone to see should not automatically entitle you to some amount of money for each and every person that views that content, just like people that only rely on donations and don't use ads are not automatically entitled to a donation from each and every person that watches their content.

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Websites get money for the ad simply loading, even if you don't click it, so saying you ignore every ad you see doesn't matter to the people who need that money.

 

I use AdBlock, FWIW, but I turn it off for smaller websites that I know won't have intrusive ads. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing situation.

 

Also often people need that ad revenue not for personal income, but just so they have some money to actually host their website. Usually the ad revenue isn't even enough to pay for all of it, but it helps, so of course they're going to use it.

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But that whole system only exists because it succeeds in manipulating enough people for it to be viable. I get that some people rely on that model to pay for hosting fees or whatever but it isn't exactly a noble business model and I don't think people have a moral obligation to participate in it.

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I hope you make an effort to donate to Patreons and buy people's digital goods to support better models of funding than advertising.

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I don't know why I responded!

 

I don't know why I'm responding either Twig! Me and my stupid opinions.

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Haha I just am not passionate about it so it's weird for me to defend it. I fuckin' hate ads more than anyone I know.

 

But I prefer the things I enjoy to exist more than I hate ads.

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I think it's fucking weird we don't pay $1 per podcast from people. It strikes me as odd to get free content if it's not aired on NPR or something. And even then you'll be charged on something like This American Life if you want the mp3. Long ago when the Ricky Gervais podcast was the number 1 podcast download, they charged $1 per podcast or something like that and it wasn't something that annoyed people until later free podcasts became the norm.

 

I don't watch enough Youtube to pay for this but if everyone subscribed for $10 a month doesn't that mean that the revenue is not really going to the individual channels and will mean less money for the video makers?

 

Also I don't really use an ad blocker. I use noscript but it has "allow all scripts" from places like Youtube because it's easier for me to do that than to one by one allow some kind of script to run per page.

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I'm not sure that's right. I listened to that show and they talked about people complaining when they started charging for their previously free podcast.

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I got AdBlock to use on one site only - AVClub - because of those awful "stories from around the web" adverts (done by Taboola or something mostly). They consistently used disgusting imagery, like a photoshopped picture of Cameron Diaz with swollen, pus-oozing spots all over her face.

 

Now those adverts are everywhere and even on sites like RPS where they apparently screen all their ads. Even though the pictures aren't as repulsive, it's still all stuff like "Use this Life Insurance trick or your family will be starving and penniless when you die very very soon" or "these photo fails are so hilarious (btw they all involve high school cheerleaders accidentally flashing their vaginas)" or "actors you didn't know were gay" or "20 actors who used to be attractive and are now HIDEOUS". AdBlock recently got bought and introduced a system where it defaults to only letting unoffensive ads through (though you can turn these off too) and also seems to have a system where you can tell it to block certain types of ads. So I might see if I can put it on for all sites but only block those shitty Taboola ads...

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I dislike ads. I skip them all. I don't begrudge anyone using ads, but I don't want to listen to them, especially as even if I liked the idea of a service, I wouldn't be able to use them anyway since I live in europe and mainly listen to US casts.

 

You know what I hate more than ads in podcasts? When the first 5-10 minutes are spent talking about where you can find the people from the podcast on social media, where you can support them and  how you can contact them.

That shit is the worst. I understand why they do it, but it doesn't need to take so long. Just put it in the podcast description and say look there. Put it on the website and say that one address. The two podcasts I listen to that are the most egregious when it comes to that are Bonfireside Chat and Mark Bell's Powercast.

 

I wouldn't pay $1 for a podcast. Mostly out of the perceived lack of convenience, but also because they vary so wildly in quality between each cast.

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Ads don't really bother me.  I've learned to ignore them to the point that they're just background stuff to me.  For the most part I don't even recognize they're there, although on occasion this has also caused me to ignore links to legitimate stories because the form resembles an ad.  Ads in things like YouTube or Twitch don't bother me either because I'm willing to be minorly inconvenienced to support a content creator I like.  This was actually the thing that got me to stop using ad blockers altogether.  I turned it off while watching a Games Done Quick marathon cause I wanted to support them and realized that I felt that way about pretty much everything I see.

 

The one exception to ads not bothering me is when the ad physically changes the page.  Like if I'm reading an article and suddenly a tab slides in from the left and pushes everything out of it's way to be in my face, then I'm annoyed.

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Yeah I don't often find ads very obtrusive. I do think the industry was gross, but even if I could pay everyone for the free stuff I consume, I know not enough people would to make it viable (at least not in the current systems). I agree as well though about buying individual podcasts feeling off. A subscription model seems more suitable to me. Radiotopia has one right now that I'll probably kick some money into once I look up how it works.

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