@alice my brother's work Windows laptop doesn't have a VPN / browser extensions and it's basically unusable

Thankfully we (UK) are not about to force age verification on every VPN user.... /s 🤬

@miss_rodent they do among my circles, but then again I don't think my circles count as particularly "normal" to begin with.

And I like it that way.

@Aprazeth gosh he's hot...

@alice since my employer disabled things like ad-blockers, I would have to see all those ads. That is, if I wasn't the nerd I am. Since I am, I spend 5-10 minutes on each page disabling every single element and div that annoys me.

@alice By having not-quite-normal friends/relatives install uBO for them

@alice glowing orange circuit breaker vibes

ash in your hair because of What You Are Invoking so you pull up the hood on your plastic mac and go "Ah that's better, right let's get back to it" vibes

@alice Fair, I've kinda made a point to nudge everyone around me into using them for the last... decade or more... so, it's become normalized in my proximity too, though I'm not sure how common they are more broadly.

@alice In addition to the usual stuff on the desktop, I've been running Rethink DNS on my Android for a few years now. It's absolute stomach-churning to see how much tracking garbage is in every single app.

@alice

... Yeah, I mean I wouldn't snog him but I wouldn't mind being gently snuggled to sleep either

@schrotthaufen I use AdNauseam. Blocks the ads and silently clicks them so it costs them marketing budget. I gleefully waste hundreds of dollars of ad spend each day.

@alice@lgbtqia.space they complain that their laptop is slow and buy a new one, unfortunately

@alice I had a friend with one, yeah, those were fantastic.

RETVRN TO IR BLASTING PHOEN

@alice "I don't know how folk cope without these" I say as I wheel a portable air conditioner into the space in the corner of my living room that's always 20 degrees hotter than its surroundings and sounds like a heartbeat

@miss_rodent whenever I see someone's phone or computer without all the privacy stuff I have, it looks basically like an apocalyptic hellscape. I don't know how it's even usable without taking constant psychic damage.

@alice Hm, tiny, hair, creepy and doll?

@alice should I ask about the creep hair totem?

@kaya I'm dedicated to my jokes.

@DavidNielsen oh, please do!

@alice Yeah, I don't know how its usable either. If I did not know that adblockers and scriptblockers and such existed, I would likely just abandon the internet entirely.

@alice They just complain that their Internet is slow.