The advertising in the 80’s and 90’s often also served as a kind of catalogue because there was no other way to find things except word of mouth. That’s a solved problem with the modern internet, if you want to find a type of game, find a good community or similar to the magazines of before, follow a YouTuber or Twitter or whatever you like.

Yes, but not necessarily. I have ads turned on for The Register because they cater to a specific market segment, and also because I like to support the site.

The ads are pretty tightly focused on new technology companies, which I'm interested in. BizCoFoo with a new DB technology that turns stored procedures into pimento cheese sandwiches is not going to find a lot of traction on r/SQL except to generate a lot of noise from people who hate pimento cheese.

Ads aren't an "all this" or "all that" sort of thing. I'm not a fan of billboards, because I think they're ugly and hateful, but when I'm travelling in a place I'm not familiar with, it's handy to know that there's a BBQ joint in 17 miles, which may not be featured on Yelp or Foursquare or whatever.

Ads can be great if they directly inform you of something you want, need, or are interested in. The ad-tech companies, though, are terrible at doing this algorithmically; e.g., seeing ads for dishwashers everywhere right after you've bought a dishwasher. They're also terrible because the first instinct, when a Web site's ad revenue starts to falter, is to add even more ads from other networks to pump it back up.

One or two ads on a Web page is tolerable. Ads that show up every time you hit Page Down? Cancer.

Now you can find out what's available from the internet, on demand, when it suits you and not when it suits the advertisers.

There is so much choice now that you suffer from analysis paralysis unless you get recommendations on what to get, or know how to curate and ruthlessly filter down the firehose of choices down to a manageable trickle. Of course you don't need ads adding their 2¢ to that stream.

> is this a generational thing?

Maybe? I’m an old millennial and I never subscribed to magazines for ads. I found out about my interests in other ways, but I did have the Internet by the time I was maybe 12 (in 1996 I’d guess). The only magazines I got as a teenager was 2600 and adbusters.

> I don't like ads spying on me and I don't like intrusive ads but ad in general are not evil to me.

For me I find all advertising intrusive and manipulative. I’ve never owned a tv because I just can’t understand why anyone would want to watch ads like that. I don’t like thinking in moralistic dualisms like good and evil, but I will say I’d be all for a world where advertising doesn’t try to steal my attention and manipulate me.

To this point, that's actually what I use Instagram for now. I'm almost more interested in the ads on there than the content of the people I follow. I've found clothes brands that I'm interested in, new shoes that fit my vibe, and lots of concerts that I'm interested in. I think the biggest gain for a lot of them is brand awareness. I haven't actually bought much because I don't need new clothes at the moment, but come spring when I'm looking for a new outfit or two, I'm definitely coming back to a couple of those sites.