The ad in the middle of this article about conspiracy theories

Here’s what’s behind that stupid ad

https://www.10news.com/news/fact-or-fiction/fact-or-fiction-online-ad-advises-people-to-wrap-doorknobs-in-foil-when-home-alone

It clearly implies there is some kind of safety benefit to it. But there is not.

Clicking on the ad leads to a lengthy slide show which eventually gets to the doorknob story.

All it says is aluminum foil can be used as an alternative to tape to cover doorknobs and hardware while painting.

It has nothing to do with safety and the inclusion of the phrase "when you're home alone" was only used as clickbait to make the ad seem more important.

Thanks for taking one for the team and checking that out. I sure wasn't gonna
- I Always click on those ads to waste their daily budget
The quality of the internet is so low these days
- "Articles" like this have been around for decades unfortunately
I've been using ad blockers for so long that I forgot about these ridiculous click bait ads.
- Click here to find out 10 more reasons to use ad blockers now!
Thank you for taking that bullet for us!
Of course, the "while painting" was implied. I'm so embarrassed I didn't clue in immediately.
❤
Big foils propaganda at work.
Thank you. I was pondering why put foil on door knobs.
- Obviously! To keep the knob's thoughts from being read.
I mean... if you are like, home alone status, in a whole ass house with a bunch of doors... maybe covering the knobs in foil would make it so some kind of intruder makes more noise when opening doors, as they either handle the foil opening the door, or when removing the foil?
????
It kind of makes some sense?
I was under the impression it was a safety thing. If you grab loose foil like that it will form to the hand crushing it to turn the knob and therefore you know the home has had "visitors" without you saying so.

I can remember around 1999-2000 if you clicked the wrong thing in IE you'd get 50 popup windows with ads for porn. At least that's behind us.

This still happens on dodgy football streaming sites.
- Use Ublock origin as it blocks the rapid redirects
- Find the ones that only give you 2-3 links to go through. They used to exist for the NHL atleast.
Then you also had the sites that would trap you there, every time you clicked the back button it would just reload the page.
- Every single Microsoft site still does this.
- I mean there are still websites that open themselves 10 times so you can't click back out of them. I am curious as to what their end game is. Do they imagine we go "well damn can't go back out of this page, might as well start living here now"
- <script> function openNewWindow() { window.open("https://this.site.com", "_blank"); newWindow.moveTo(0, 0); newWindow.resizeTo(screen.width, screen.height); } window.onbeforeunload = function() { openNewWindow(); }; </script>
At least that's behind us.
I sure am (‿!‿) ԅ(≖‿≖ԅ)

Sorry, I couldn't resist. And contrariwise to this pic I do agree with you, the web used to be better. Sure, ads were always a fucking annoyance, but they're reaching unbearable levels nowadays; a lot of people (like me) tend to not see it because of ad blockers, but once you turn them off? Eeeeew.

Well, you could land on a bad site full of nasty ads or wind up downloading software that offered you the finest of malware or viruses.
And you could just not go to them, or not download sus programs or warez.
Now the sites and apps hunt you down and shove it in your face. They follow you, rat on you, sell your info, and constantly try to sell You stuff every page you land on.
Yeah, Old Internet wasn’t great, but it wasn’t institutionalized malice like we have today.
Wild that the original of this image edit was “remember when /b/ was good” back in 2005
Whenever I turn off AdGuard on my phone to get something to work and then forget it's off I'm bombarded with ads everywhere and I'm like "oh, yeah, gotta turn that back on"
It's the nostalgia filter. By the 2030s, some would think the year 2020 is the closest thing to utopia humans actually experienced
There was, like, a golden age in the early 10's before popups and animations everywhere, and after popups and animations everywhere.
It's possible I'm just nostalgic. If it sucked some way I'm not remembering I'm very interested to hear about it.
No, I don't

So I think the idea of the tinfoil is that somebody grabbing the knob will make noise.

Therefore altering you.

You’d be better off with an alarm system and a deadbolt lock, though.

Alternatively the intruder will just be so confused they'll decide to break into another house instead of figuring out what the foil does
- Probably assume they ran out of socks.
That's what I figured - pretty much any alarm system would be better, but could technically help you in a pinch
I'll just stick with the old and reliable thank you

Remember when the web didn't suck?

No, I don't. Not since 2000, when I logged on from home for the first time. The majority of it has always sucked. Then the web can suddenly do new things... and finds new ways to suck.
It has, however, always had excellent little areas and corners.

Actually the ad matches the article. To me the ad is “fringe” and it has infested the “mainstream” (CNN).

Why are they quoting a wolf? They didn't talk the last time I checked.

Check again, it's getting crazy out there.
- oh shit

The only thing infecting me reading this is cringe.

I wanna know who did the financing for the ad. A tinfoil company? Big ~~Tough~~ Softy Iron? A Goog guy worn off yoga?

(I aim to not say the fifthglyph for all days to promote !avoid5@sh.itjust.works)

It's an ad in your post, fittingly (although yours isn't particularly ironic).
Do you know of oulipo.social? No fifth symbols found on all of that domain.
- thought it fit! >:)
  ooh, kinda wonky of los oulipos to call that thing just cuz of that only work which had this gimmick
  also i think that the original book allows using "the", in fact it also allows "me" and forms of "be". so los oulipos gonna
  <this is hard>
  , huh?
- (btw i wanted to somehow word in "at least once per day", but found using "per", "every", "for each" etc challenging to translate)

I'm so frustrated with the internet right now. My wife started making Castile soap and I'm trying to find out if its some fu-fu-berry-bullshit or like an actual decent soap. Google is feeding me momfluencers (which range from 'fine but there is no accountability' to blatant grifters) and sites that are simply trying to sell this stuff. I'm going to try again with kagi tonight, but it's still very frustrating that I never know what to trust anymore. The bullshit is coming faster than I'm able to handle it

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/castile-soap
That's a reputable org.
- You beautiful bastard, that's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.
  I'm bookmarking that page. Thank you!
A good way to make your own soap without artificial fragrances in them. My wife has skin sensitive to fragrances, and most commercial soaps have fragrance (even unscented Yeesh)

me: what a silly article who could ever fall for this

also me: buys lots of tinfoil just in case

this is supposed to be political, WHAT DO DOORKNOBS HAVE TO DO WITH POLITICS

Knobs are common in politics. I'm not sure about doors.
- It's all knobs and knockers

What? That is gold, not Mildly Infuriating at all.

The MSM tries to act like the voice of reason when they're the biggest purveyors of disinfo by a wide margin.

If you mean via ads like this, I would agree. They could do more to filter out the garbage.
But if you mean in their content, I'm not seeing that, beyond the usual (long history) leaning to one side or another.
But these are two very different things and shouldn't be equated.

CNN and other news organizations in a nutshell

In Canada, we have a state broadcaster, which is nice. The current election frontrunner, according to the polls, is a guy who's made it his entire life's quest to get rid of it. Sigh.
- I can't say I would want state run media but then again, I'm not Canadian

LifehackGuru

I just saw this but with a toilet paper roll under the toilet seat when alone.

"be reminded that you forgot to get tp when you really need it with this one weird trick!"

Use an adblocker in your browser and an ad-blocking DNS server like Mullvad DNS (it's super easy on Android, just search for Private DNS in the settings and set it to base.dns.mullvad.net), AdGuard DNS (same thing, super easy, just set it to dns.adguard-dns.com) or NextDNS on your phone (and ideally on all your other devices). There's also an app called AdAway, but it takes up the VPN slot so you can't use it together with a VPN.

I only had to play an hour of "Thief" to thank myself I don't have door knobs.