Rick's b.log - entry 2026/02/09

Advertising

Those days are dead.

Now, every online experience begins the same way: with a cookie popup so bloated and hostile it feels like the opening move in a psychological thriller. "We care about your privacy", it blatantly lies, moments before demanding consent to track you across the known universe, three alternate timelines, and possibly your next reincarnation. "Accept all" is enormous, brightly coloured, and throbbing with menace. "Reject all" is entirely missing, replaced instead by something like "Manage settings", which opens a scrollable novel detailing exactly how many thousands of "trusted partners" would think they have Legitimate Interest to sniff your digital undies.
By the time you're done, the tea has gone cold and your will to live has followed suit.

But websites are merely the appetiser. Mobile apps are where advertising goes fully feral.

You open an app to do a small, harmless thing. Set a timer, check the weather, hack Russian satellites...mundane little tasks, nothing out of the ordinary, we've all done it, right? Immediately you are ambushed by the same cookie popup that, you know, if they gave the slightest inkling of a crap about their desire to "care about your privacy" then they might remember how you responded the last time, or the time before that, or...

But no, this isn't all. The cookie blather is merely the prewash cycle. Get into the app and begin to do anything - and I mean anything - and you'll be assaulted by a full-screen advert with the subtlety of a brick through a window.

Temu.
Save the king (don't, please don't, let the idiot drown).
Temu again.
That polar bear game where the bears look traumatised and the puzzles are clearly lying.
Temu.
Some AI app whose entire pitch is "we generate chicks with comically large boobs, because we ran out of ideas in 2014 and all the developers have only ever met two dimensional women (mostly animated)".
And, just to make sure you haven't forgotten, bloody Temu.

This is not advertising diversity, this is ecological collapse. Somewhere, lurking deep in the algorithmic undergrowth, only a few adverts have survived, and they now endlessly clone themselves like cursed digital fungus. There is a coin toss chance that any advert you see will be (surprise!) Temu with some shouty-screamy idiot telling you that you can get this tat right here FREE if you tap on the advert, download the app, sell your firstborn to Chairman Mao's ghost, and understand that their definition of FREE does not actually mean free like you think it means.
The remaining fifty percent is divided among the other adverts, who take turns reminding you that yes, this is still happening, and no, you may not leave.

And they are long. Obscenely long. Thirty seconds becomes sixty becomes ninety. Fake "Skip" buttons appear and vanish like mirages. The close icon is microscopic, moves just as you tap it, and has a fifty-fifty chance of dumping you in the app store instead. You are invited to "play" the advert, which is borderline exciting until you realise every possible interaction is incorrect and will, eventually, land you in the app store over and over again. Congratulations, you have failed the reflex test and are now being punished. Doubly so because the app store will record this in your history as "a thing you looked at" (no, really, stop reading this and go check your app store history), despite the fact that you wouldn't touch that app with the broken end of a rotting bargepole if you actually had a choice.

This is not a business model; this is hostage-taking.

What truly kicks salt into wounded eyes, to mix metaphors, is the knowing that this is all for practically nothing. This Smörgåsbord of Irritation, this relentless sensory assault, it is not generating yacht money. It's not even generating reliable second-hand car money. It's mere pennies per thousand views. Fractions of a penny per insult. A drizzle of revenue so thin it could be measured with a pipette. We're all forced to endure this cacophony of nonsense so someone can earn enough to maybe, possibly, if they're lucky, go buy a Tesco meal deal at the end of the month.

So why? Why are we all being screamed at by Temu like this?

Because somewhere, someone decided that maximising theoretical revenue was worth actively hating your users. Because an entire industry has optimised for "number go up yay" while completely abandoning concepts like dignity, restraint, and not making people want to yeet their phones through the nearest window, preferably closed for catharsis value. It is because every developer is told "ads or nothing" (don't let it be missed on you that the company that makes the most popular mobile platform is also the world's biggest advert pusher), and the adverts available are the same shrieking dumpster fire on repeat on repeat on repeat and Temu. Did you forget Temu? You're not allowed to ever forget the emporium of cheap junk (that you have to order from China because none of it qualifies as suitably safe to be sold in countries that have, you know, consumer protection laws, health and safety, that sort of thing).

And so we arrive at the modern internet, perhaps in a modern app. It is a place that feels less like a library or a café and more like being trapped inside a badly managed market stall, where a dozen failed door-to-door salesmen jacked up on espresso follow you around shouting the same sentence over and over while blocking the exits. All you wanted was five quiet minutes and a cup of tea. Instead you're stuck watching a badly animated king drown for the fifteenth time today.

For the sake of anything - dear God, sanity, or the sacred quiet in which tea ought to be drunk - this utter omnishambles cannot be the end state.
Fewer adverts. Shorter adverts. Adverts that stay in their bloody lane. At this point I would welcome the return of static banner ads for mortgages I would never qualify for, just so long as they don't shout, wiggle, or hijack my screen like a possessed biscuit tin jumping around the kitchen counter.

Anyway, rant concluded. My tea is about the right temperature so if you'll excuse me, I'm going to stare off into middle distance and mentally mute the word "Temu" for a long long while. No, I did not consent to this state of affairs, but it is what it is and it is bloody annoying. Unfortunately, "Reject all" was never an option. Now let me sip in peace, thank you.

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jgh, 11th February 2026, 00:13

Not that I'm a sports person, but I've picked up that ITV are now doing the American thing of having an L-shaped section of the transmission constantly showing adverts all the way through the match you're attempting to watch in a picture-in-picture thingy.

David Pilling, 12th February 2026, 23:24

New word to me 'yeet', (to throw, actually there's a lot more meaning).

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