I definitely consume too much dystopian content to be a fair dystopian barometer, but the sheer amount of ads being pushed my way is starting to make me feel legitimately anxious. It feels like a techno-dystopia where all of the neat and artistic elements have been extracted and then ground into dust for our corporate overlords. Even the ‘regular’ people are just trying to sell themselves. The streamers, the funny videos, the pet videos, the porn, the reposts of all of those, so much of it is just monetizing my attention.
Do ads even influence people that much? Does anyone even eat Church’s Chicken?! Do people consider switching their car insurance? I though the postmoderns were jumping the gun a little with the pictures they painted of a future with corporate logos and other advertisements spread across every visible surface, but now I have to see 5 ads and a cookie consent pop up to look up a quick definition. Watching a friend’s youtube video? 30 seconds of rapidfire ads from 15 brands. It’s starting to feel absurd. Are we going to be okay?
You’d probably want to look into blocking traffic on your network using pihole or if its possible to reconfigure your xbox network settings and point it at adblocking DNS servers such as AdGuard:
https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html
Xbox Press the Xbox button on your controller to open the guide. Select Profile & system → Settings → General → Network Settings. From the Network screen options, go to Advanced Settings → DNS Settings. Select Manual. Change DNS addresses to the addresses of one of the servers below. Default servers AdGuard DNS will block ads and trackers. 94.140.14.14 94.140.15.15 Non-filtering servers AdGuard DNS will not block ads, trackers, or any other DNS requests. 94.140.14.140 94.140.14.141 Family protection servers AdGuard DNS will block ads, trackers, adult content, and enable Safe Search and Safe Mode, where possible. 94.140.14.15 94.140.15.16 If your game console supports IPv6 addresses, add them as well. Default servers AdGuard DNS will block ads and trackers. 2a10:50c0::ad1:ff 2a10:50c0::ad2:ff Non-filtering servers AdGuard DNS will not block ads, trackers, or any other DNS requests. 2a10:50c0::1:ff 2a10:50c0::2:ff Family protection servers AdGuard DNS will block ads, trackers, adult content, and enable Safe Search and Safe Mode, where possible. 2a10:50c0::bad1:ff 2a10:50c0::bad2:ff Press B to confirm changes and exit the menu.