Gee Whiskers AT/PLawrence, since you asked, now I feel obligated to rant even more on the Social Media phenomena.

Specifically Youtube. Which I feel can now be characterized as an internet social stream collection of the worst link bait cesspool imaginable. There must be an internet master class dedicated to creating the most effective link bait on the net anywhere. (maybe it's on the dark web? :-)) Sure YouTubers have their formula dogma for successful eyeball acquisition, and we are the victims of those practices.

But confessions, Yes, I spend way too much time on that Social Network, but that’s not all, besides every other poster on the net including Medium writers, Substackers, and other so-called newsy outlets (today there seems no news posting like news of yesteryear, it’s now all BREAKING NEWS!) Even as one-offs try to eke out a stipend on sites like Substack, so too are behemoths like Google/YouTube hell-bent on monetizing their social networks. And, my args here is the arsenal of software tools and tricks I’ve had to employ trying to avoid what will probably be the inevitable YouTube subscription without Ads which is no guarantee at all, (think of Amazon’s magical $3.00 tack-on fee for Prime members, which says, “MORE” is not enough!) By the way, A YouTube subscription was always way out of financial reach sanity IMO, so yeah, I’ll never sign up say I, I still have loads of books available to read. Signing onto that cash-social-mobile would probably eliminate most of my other consumer investments online, including Ko-Fi, Substacks, online donation accounts, you name it, they would have to go, so no!

I think it was Cory Doctorow who may have coined the story that Ad Blockers was the largest public protest in history. No matter how anyone feels regarding this Ad blitz war ongoing, it’s some kind of ubiquity war for the minds and pocketbooks of everyone, especially in the US, IMO.

I guess I’m implying this subject of social media cannot be separated from the Advertising world surrounding us all, again IMO.