Morning all, a couple more thoughts from the weekend about my current state of affairs with technology.
I mean it, good morning!
Early morning video meetings have revealed to me a universal truth - there are two types of people in the world, those who hate their alarm clocks and those who have inexplicably denied themselves the pleasure of coffee.
Is Youtube an essential business?
Longtime readers will know that I listen to most of my music on Youtube. The only tricky issue is ads. By the way, this reminds me, I know why they are called 'ads', it's because it adds needlessly to what you are watching!
Anyway, sometimes these adds force me to take the controls and hit the 'skip ad' button to get the music started (in these moments, the button should say 'subtract'). In rare cases, an ad will start mid-song, because we all know that when the jester is on a sideline in a cast I secretly want to buy online shampoo, and I sometimes wonder in these moments if sticking my head in the oven will hurt. (In case you are wondering, the button for a mid-song 'skip ad' should read 'FU(tube)'.)
There are profanity-free options, however, for going ad-free. One option is Youtube Red, which for $9.99 per month allows subscribers to bypass all ads while on the site. It sounds good enough to me, but I have to question the point. Isn't the type of person who would pay money to skip ads the same type of person who might buy something based on an ad? In a sense, paying to skip ads is an ad-based purchase, which is the point of the ad in the first place. It seems like a bug, not a feature.
I suppose in an odd way I'm the fundamental paradox about this scheme. My actions may determine the future of this simulation. On one side of the equation is my perfect track record of not buying anything from an advertisement; on the other is this Geico ad about car insurance. I don't have a car, but I'm still driving myself crazy! The problem, as some have so eloquently decided, is choice - choosing to buy means choosing to not buy.
