My retired parents live with me. I went ahead and put a PiHole on our home wifi. A day later my mother was literally complaining that she couldn’t click on ads on facebook. I told her those are ads and they track her and she says “well everyone likes to use the internet how they like to use it.. can you put it back the old way? I want to look at these shoes”. Can’t fucking win.
As I recall, back in the late 90s there was a story in the Wall Street Journal about a man who loved receiving email spam. After a long day's work he would go home and relax by looking through his email spam and order things.
I once had a user whose PC would freeze every time they tried to see their desktop. Like, you minimise something full screen and the PC would freeze for a few minutes and crawl while the desktop was in view.
Turns out they had more than 4,000 items on their desktop.
That day I learned where Windows puts icons that don't fit on the desktop (it stacks them all on the first icon's place, lol). And this wasn't even the problem they called about! They were just grumpily blaming Microsoft and working around it for years.
I guess my point is computer illiterate/belligerent people will find a way around the problems they cause and just blame something/someone else.
I used this scene in a cybersecurity training session. I knew it got the point across, when our resident ad-clicker asked me for advice to avoid that situation.
E: she asked for advice for her home computer, as she didn't understand that "at home and at work" meant "at home and at work with any device, not just work's"
I have a friend who has their entire center 5th of their laptops screen just dead. they move windows around it to deal with it. I look at the way they're using their computer and like I can barely reach it at their window size but it's better than paying the $500 MacBook repair to them
My former co-worker was daily driving his browser without any extensions and didn't see anything wrong with it. I was watching him work one day and he was literally fighting a battle against the unholy pop-ups just tryna download some free fonts. What could've been done in 2 clicks took him minutes to do trying to close all the ads and tabs kept opening, videos kept playing. It was painful just to watch.
I remember some video. It was a joke about IT remoting in to fix a computer. The icons on the desktop were shaped like a dick. Then it guy took a screenshot and was like I'm definitely sending this to HR as he sorted them alphabetically. Then the other dude was like "no put it back, infant find anything!" And the line that sticks with me, the IT guy says "there's no sort by dick".
I don't have adblock on my work computer. I don't want it interfering with webdev and I've found it to do so in the past. But it's interesting, the dichotomy between sites I use as development resources vs the rest of the web. My phone and home computer are unbearable without adblock, but on my work computer, the ads are hardly noticeable really.
In Firefox, on Linux, behind a VPN and firewall with ad blocker, I run 5 different privacy/ad blocking extensions. I keep hearing about adds, but not seeing them.
Supposedly Youtube now is getting more agressive on this? I wouldn't know. Haven't seen a Youtube notice about it yet.
But really, I dream of the day youtube is replaced by something else. Fracture Youtube into 1,000 pieces and scatter it into the wind.
Bonzy Buddy... Anyone? I found it so often at customer computers. When they saw me trying to uninstall it, they got quite angry, because they REALLY LIKED that funny monkey.
my partner's mouse's scroll wheel has been broken for years. every time i've tried to get them a new mouse they stop using it after about 2 days and go back to the busted one. why? "idk it was too heavy/didn't fit their small hands/plastic felt weird" etc. deadass i've gone through about 6 or 7. idk what the point of this rambling post is other than people are adaptable to shitty conditions and most straight up don't care that their hardware/software is shitty.
Simultaneously the worst and funniest thing I've ever seen - got together with my now ex and she opens up her laptop to show me her bank statement. I look over and I see IN REAL TIME all of the English text convert into wingdings.
"No don't change it, its really funny; I like it!!!" I bet, super funny - but it's your friggin' bank account! Who knows what else it's doing besides being a bit silly?
Honestly, just don't go to that part of the Internet unless you absolutely have to. YouTube is a great resource for information, but it sucks as entertainment.