Welcome to the Golden Age of User Hostility

boem@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 307 points –
Welcome to the Golden Age of User Hostility
theatlantic.com
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Reminds me of those gas stations that play commercials at the pumps. More and more of them are disabling the mute buttons. I only stop at stations with the TV-free pumps now.

There are fuel pumps that show ads? Where do you live? That's crazy to me

American thing

Not in my town, but they're not hard to find literally anywhere in the US

I just want to emphasize how loud these can be for the unfamiliar as well. Like blaring into your ear while you pump. Also, some of the really loud ones are not synced pump to pump so you'll get this shouting weird echo while at the pump. I think Tesla probably gave the gas stations a grant to put these things in. It seriously has contributed toward my motivation to go go electric for next car.

I wouldn't have believed that if you hadn't expanded upon it a little. Right out of a dystopian movie

Someone think of those poor speakers out there in the cold and spray some expanding foam into the speaker grills.

I think it’s an US thing. Have yet to encounter something like that in Europe.

"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs."

– Banksy

I have yet to encounter one that lets me mute it…

Just spam all the buttons as fast as possible. I usually can seem to softlock the display but the transaction old school display still works properly.

hahahaha enshittification working against itself ! the future really is poorly performing code sitting on top of antisocial designs. What a timeline

It's not really poorly performing code if I just kinda sorta break it

They used to let you mute them. But everyone started doing it, so of course they disabled it. Sometimes you can get into the admin menu with the right combo of button presses. I don't recommend trying this, as most stations have multiple security cameras and your locale might have draconian laws about tampering.

wait, take a breath, do you think someone's going to get arrested for trying to turn off advertising?

I know America is ever-sliding into Dystopia but that just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

If you harm a poor person, you're generally OK. If you harm a wealthy person or corporation, you're fucked.

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One of these days I'm going to find out where they hide those speakers and when I do I'm bringing an icepick to the pump.

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