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Yeah, I'm Gen X and have been trying to resist ads ever since I can remember.
Had two other roommates, and we'd be surfing the 53 channels or whatever on cable. Two of us had very similar watching patterns that we seemed to arrive at independently - we had a "primary" show and maybe a secondary one. When the primary went to ads, we'd either 1) slap that mute button ASAP and maybe chat a bit or 2) surf to the secondary show and watch a bit, use the last channel feature to snap back every little while to see if primary was back from ads or 3) go to the guide feature that scrolled current content.
Other roommate finally asked us one time why we do that. We said to avoid the ads because they are annoying AF.
He said: "why?"
When we paused and thought about how to answer this, he followed up with: "I love a lot of the ads, they can be really funny." [1]
Year later, when Tivo came along, it was like it was something designed for the other roommate and I's watching patterns and made it even better.
Anyway, these days I make copious use of streaming platforms and Plex and things like Invidious to avoid ads like the plague. I agree with you 100% - when I see someone employing all the tools to the best of their ability to not only restrict viruses and malware, but also putting up mental firewalls to the propaganda - I can usually assume that person is firing on all cylinders and we can probably talk as equals.
[1] To this day, I still just don't understand this type of person. The people that don't like football, but will watch the Superbowl "for the ads". All I ever think of when I see ads is the stuff my hippie boomer parents taught me and that it's probably all lies. Or that Chomsky said that programming execs consider the ads the content. Or, most effectively, the scene in The Trip where the protagonist played by Peter Fonda is thinking about what he does for a living - advertising - and at one point a woman says "lies" in part of his trip. I wish I could find a cut of that scene on YT...
Heh, yeah, they always find a way. I think it was the book "The Conquest of Cool" that covers the concern that ad agencies had about the boomers and how they were too resistant to messaging.
I found it rather interesting as a read, since there seemed to be a bit of an echo for Gen X - the advertising execs seemed to be quite perplexed about trying to reach Gen X and sell them useless shit, too.
Well, spoiler alert - they figured out a way to reach both, at least in the aggregate, LOL.
In the mid 00s, I was reading that the new rage was trying to use "peer-to-peer marketing" and trying to find ways to exploit blogs, and possibly podcasts, if I recall correctly. These days I'm quite sure they've done a lot to try to refine things on many platforms so that someone's guard tends to be down.
I do homelab stuff - I keep meaning to set up Pinchflat so I can further curate Youtube for the house...using SponsorBlock, it apparently can expunge even some of the creator-inserted endorsements. :)
thats a strange addiction for the roomate, probably gets some kind of "high" of watching it or its a comfort thing.
I lost contact with him, but I later pictured him using things like Tivo/DVRs and NOT skipping over ads, LOL.
I've since been in the room with people using DVRs where they either jumped back to watch an ad or someone else asked the person fast-forwarding to go back. It's not like that roommate was the only one.
Passively watching (linear) television was mostly the norm back then. I would know lots of people of all kinds of ages that would turn their TV on and mostly leave it on all day. Doing what I think of as more mindful/active watching required a fair bit of work and attention. Especially for college kids getting baked, LOL.
These days with all the options to chop things up with computers, do the homelab thing and rip/download and curate your own content with Jellyfish, Plex and Kodi, not to mention all the streaming services and platforms like YT, TikTok, etc.,...it's definitely more the norm to take an active role in what you are watching and how you watch it. It's definitely a lot easier. Although maybe today's users that just endlessly scroll through things with very short formats served up by the algorithm are today's version of those people that'd turn their TV on and leave it on all day, I don't know.