Buy Me

_{Photo by Wojtek Witkowski on Unsplash}

I don't know about you, but I could never get into the whole Spotify thing. While it does have some neat features, I couldn't get myself to actually pay the monthly subscription and the constant ads just got to me, so I deleted it for good. Why pay when I could listen to the same things for free on YouTube?

And I still can, for now. In case it passed you by, YouTube recently put out a subscription based service called YouTube Premium, which, as you can imagine, gets you better access to shit on YouTube, no more ads and other stuff like that. I understand they also have some TV shows, I don't really know...

Obviously, many people who've always known YouTube as a free service would be inclined to keep it that way. Why should I suddenly pay the five dollars or however much it costs, when I could get the same service for free? Except I can't. Because they need to push their new service and show you why you should pay that extra five bucks or whatever, so of course, YouTube is now riddled with ads. And it's much, much worse than it used to be, you know?

Used to be you'd occasionally get an ad (often skip-able) before the video began. It was annoying, though not that bad. But now, I've even seen two ads, back-to-back before the video, not to mention that almost each video now also has an ad at the end of it. So, if you listen to a playlist, as many do, you're basically listening to "ad song ad ad song ad ad song ad". For three songs, you've got up to six ads and even thought most are still skip-able, it gets tedious pressing the button 50 times within one hour.

And the worst part is, they're damn stupid ads too. For example, I keep getting ads for OB tampons. And I get it, I'm a woman, but I do have other things on my mind, you know, YouTube.... And they're awful - there's one where a girl's worried her boyfriend, who's giving her a piggyback ride, will notice she's on her period and I don't know, burn her at the stake or something. Seriously, if your boyfriend doesn't know you get periods from time to time, who exactly is this ad addressed to? Twelve-year-olds? And how many times is a boyfriend supposed to give you a piggy-back ride?

Then, there's the tampon ad that starts with this girl asking "Is it true tampons are dangerous for your health? Of course not!"

Well, duh, you're a tampon ad, what the hell are you supposed to say? That they give you fucking cancer? I mean, the women who are gullible enough to imagine a tampon ad is going to tell you tampons are bad for you probably deserve whatever disease they're risking...

And then, of course, there's the political ads, which make the tampon ads suddenly more pleasant. Because of the EU elections this weekend, I've seen dozens of ads for various local political parties - lying and stupid and just trying to squeeze one more vote out of ya. Really, all the parties whose ads have even brushed my YouTube are out by default. Have I seen your face when I actually wanted to see Corey Taylor's? Then you're out.

Oh, and who the fuck is Shawn Mendes? Or Mendez, fuck knows...he seems to be some singer kid or something....and he's apparently trying to get you to switch over to Youtube Music, whatever that is. My question is, if they wanted to sell me music, why not get an actual musician to try and market it? Someone like Elton John or Andrea Bocelli....This Shawn guy looks like that awkward teen neighbor who's suddenly trying to grow a beard and seem grown up....Jesus, have some respect. I wonder, is that what the kids are listening to these days?

I get that the ads are necessary (for you), but can't you at least try to make decent ads? It's not that hard to write a plausible 45 second script. Or believable dialogue. Or content that isn't generally insulting to your audience's intelligence.

Fuck ads.