#at least these kinds of stories aren't as ubiquitous as the 'female AI/robot grows obsessed with a man/child' stories

[ooc-miqojak]

I've seen tons of similar stories - like Fahrenheit 451 - and Black Mirror even had one a lot like this! A very, very common trope/fear we humans have of the technological future is how invasive and consuming it will be... because it already is. This is the natural trajectory for capitalism - especially as we put AI into all kinds of shit that doesn't need it.

I've even had gaming youtubers break down the psychological manipulation that things like video games use to dig into the same part of the brain that gambling taps into... capitalism is literally altering our brains to better predate on us.

That said, I'm built different - I'd just get a raspberry pi and build it to block ads... like we've done once already in my home. (And then I'd probably be in capitalist prison too, but oh well. I've ripped the AI and external searches out of my Win11 bc it was predatory and annoying, so I will continue to alter the products I pay for and own!)

About ten, fifteen years ago I wrote a story about a guy living in a Capitalist dystopia. His walls, furniture, and tableware are all covered in smart displays. Basically animated wallpaper. It's sold as being able to turn your room or objects into anything - A nice forest view, outer space, a fantasy realm... but the companies that run this stuff keep sneaking ads in.

It gets so bad he's always being woken up by adverts that offer insomnia cures and better bedding that play when he tries to sleep.

So he buys the ad-free tier, and it's great... for a few months. And then he starts getting adverts from 'premium partners'. So he goes up a level... and the same thing happens.

So he jailbreaks his wallpaper and sends all the ad servers to 0.0.0.0 and voila... he can sleep.

Until this SWAT team blows his door off and drag him off to jail. The Ad companies are suing him for loss of revenue for the products he' notionally have bought if he'd watched their adverts, based on some weird 'The average consumer buys X products with an average value of Y' calculation.

The judge is like 'well I dun wanna annoy the sponsors' so he RICO's this guy's house and possessions and sends him to jail.

... which is a nice relaxed non-volent offender jail for the corporately disenfranchised. But because these people have no money... there's no ads and now he's happy because the only place he's free... is in prison.

Which at the time was a bit much and now it's like: Called it.

Elon's suing companies for not advertising because he's losing revenue. He's also cranking the price of Ad Free Twitter. Disney and Amazon play adverts on their paid service when services used to be free because of the adverts... and now you have to pay to watch the adverts or go up a couple of tiers.

And google's going around freaking out about ad-blockers.