Haven’t watched commercial TV for going on 15–16 years. Ads appearing in streaming services are jarring enough and feel insulting, but forget that to some people it’s normal and so actually works.

Go ad-free for a few years and you’ll understand. Kind of like being reborn into Idiocracy quality. “What the fuck did I just watch? Who the fuck is that shit even aimed at? Someone got paid for that???”

Go and watch the movie “Network.”

It went from cutting edge satire to quaint docudrama in real time.

Commercial TV shows, that enshittification predates its own name. The [lack of] quality is fine-tuned, so your typical Joe is barely willing to watch it - otherwise, the commercial TV competes with more profitable subscription services of the same corpo.

It feels kind of weird, even. I’ve been avoiding TV since I was fourteen; now I’m almost forty, I’m seeing more and more people doing the same. Even my old mum. (Setting up a LAN so I can download her favourites and she can watch them from the TV was great.)

They want a good show to attract as many viewers as possible. To then watch the commercials.

If the service is free then you are the product.

Same with youtube and all ad based social media / entertainment.

In 2004, a french TV executive famously publicly said he was in the business of selling “available brain time” to advertisers.

I had this thought about 30 years ago. It is a required moment for truly self aware people (if you happen to watch cable tv like I did as a kid).