Incompatible with now
---------------------

I'm on holidays in my country of origin with family at the moment,
after a long absence. It's wonderful. That said, a few nights ago
though we all settled in to watch a popular game of local $sport on
TV, and although I'm glad I was there, I found myself feeling
completely alienated by almost everything I saw.

Although I have a TV in my country of residence, I only use it for
streaming and playing games - there's no over-the-air TV, and we
prefer to read news online.  This has been our situation for at least
a decade.  Thus, being subjected to the fire hose of prime-time mental
malware (sorry, "advertising") was a genuine shock.

I found it crazy-hard to look away from most of the ads.  (Guess my
mental defenses are out of practice.) Moreover, almost every single
one of them was trying to sell me something that I have a strong moral
objection to. For example:

- Internet from the dominant (privatised) telecomunications company,
touting its amazing filtering technology which would supposedly
protect me from unwanted calls and malicious websites.  Internal
thoughts: keep your fucking paws off my packets.

- A new local movie/show streaming service telling me to sign up to so
that I can watch $popular_show. In my country of residence,
$popular_show is right there on netflix.  But of course here the
rights have been bought by this other random service.  God I hate all
of this crap.

- A long diatribe spoken by an Indigenous person selling the idea that
$sport is actually an integral part of their culture and that
(although this wasn't explicitly stated, it was implied) by watching
and getting involved with this particular game we were engaging
respectfully with the Indigenous community.  I found this particularly
appalling, as this match is a huge commercial enterprise conducted (as
many spectator sports are) primarily to rake in advertising money.
While of course many Indigenous people love $sport, having a huge
corporation attempt to exploit this involvement of hugely marginalised
group for their own gain was sickening.

- A multinational restaurant chain selling a new menu item named after
a popular Twittergram "influencer". ???  Okay, maybe I don't have a
"moral" problem with that, but hell.

- ... and so on.

At this point I'm starting to feel like my mindset is fundamentally
incompatible with the prevailing thought patterns in my country of
origin.  I don't usually consider myself an overly cynical person, but
I honestly don't know anybody else in meatspace who shares my
repulsion to these and other apparently normal aspects of modern life.

Is anybody else out there in a similar siutation?

Maybe I'm just old.
.