The social-media Web as we knew it, a place where we consumed the posts of our fellow-humans and posted in return, appears to be over.
Elise
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131Y

Wait. So, like a person interrupts you? Can you explain this like I don’t understand it?

Lvxferre
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1Y

Wait. So, like a person interrupts you?

The thing in my city? It’s like this, but each 5~10 minutes. Each time it’s a different person advertising something else. It’s frequent enough that you can’t hold a decent conversation, even if your only “mistake” was to sit on a bench in a public space. If you ignore the advertiser, they’ll insist and use a slightly louder tone, as if you were assumed to be deaf; and if you ask them to leave you alone [even politely] they’ll babble about “trying to help you so you don’t miss this amazing opportunity”.

Just to give you an idea: once, my then girlfriend and me decided to count it. We sit on a bench, drinking some booze, and we got twelve advertisers bugging us in a hour and half. Including: eyeglasses stores, phone providers advertising “number portability”, local popular restaurants, handcrafted accessories sellers, gold buyers, so goes on.

It’s basically an offline example of the same thing that happens on the internet. Everybody and their dog wants your attention, and they’ll make sure to be heard against your will. The text doesn’t directly acknowledge that, but note how everything there ties it to advertisers, from “S.E.O. hackers have ruined the trick of adding “Reddit” to searches to find human-generated answers” (why? For ad views!) to Tiktok “pushes us to scroll through another dozen videos of cooking demonstrations or funny animals” (why? Ad views.)

whoareu
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21Y

I guess I am lucky since that doesn’t happen where I live.

Elise
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71Y

Wtf that’s nuts and sounds like it breaks several laws, like harassment and disturbing the peace or sum. I’d definitely have a stern word with them.

Lvxferre
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21Y

I never looked for potential laws against that, because… well, Latin America. But I think that it would be hard to classify it as either - it’s multiple independent and uncoordinated agents, and the disturbance/harassment is not due to one of them interacting with you, but all of them.

I think that the city needs to pass some law specifically against selling and advertising stuff on public places.

Elise
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21Y

This is gonna sound silly but I have that with joggers. Like I just want to relax in the park and there’s all these joggers stressing me out with their self improvement vibes. So I end up having to go outside the city to find some peace in nature.

To be fair I do it myself too.

Anyway that sounds really annoying for you.

One time my roommate let a solicitor in during Corona. My god I gave him such a stern word I wouldn’t be surprised if he quit because of it. I was so angry because I hadn’t seen my friends in ages and then this fucker can just come visit? There’s no way that was legal in Germany.

Not comment OP, but I assume its similar to mine. People will approach you to give you flyers of their buisness, free samples, or otherwise smooth talk you to enter their shop/stand.

The Doctor
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51Y

When you’re sitting in a restaurant or bar chilling with friends. It is a thing that happens.

PonyOfWar
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11Y

deleted by creator

Lvxferre
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It’s “a thing that happens” when it’s sporadic. But when it becomes frequent, annoying or obtrusive enough, it becomes a reason to avoid the space, it makes the space less fun. Same deal with the internet.

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