A little. On the internet, the ads actively jump in front of our faces while we're trying to read something. Imagine driving under such conditions.

Be more like this virtual barrier in Sydney:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325904/Water-stop-...

Given that ads are a major vector of malware, it's more like raw dogging a prostitute.

What makes Breezewood unique is that you are forced off of a freeway to drive through that strip. Otherwise it looks like many other American roads.

I think the internet without Adblock is more like these heinous digital video billboards in Los Angeles that appear above the road, directly in the line of vision of drivers. Why these are legal is incomprehensible to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7ZeROERRrg

Why advertisements are legal at all is incomprehensible.

That's actually a pretty famous photo. You can right-click and see a much larger one. Must get that full-sized advertising goodness.

https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/postwar...

Famous and deceptive. It is a narrow angle shot, taken straight down the axis of very specific strip. Take an off axis, wide angle shot, and billboards disappear. I don't remember the details but photographic tricks like that played a large role in a trial opposing advertisers to people who considered billboard an eyesore. The former used wide angle shots while the latter used telephoto.

We saw a lot of tricks like that related to covid and social distancing. Heavily zoomed pictures of "crowded" beaches, streets, etc... where in reality, it is far less dense than the photo makes it look like.

that picture only captures, like 5-10% of what you see as you pass through there.

I think it's always ridiculously represented as "hurr this is what America is!"

It has every chain business there because it's the intersection of major highways where there's no other meaningfully-sized rest stops around for hours.

Indeed, people outside the US (especially Europeans) don't really grasp the scale of the US interstate highway system. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, "The United States is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

It's so big, that if you're driving long distances over the middle of the country you have to make sure you stop for fuel and food and a biology break whenever you get the chance, because there's no guarantee you're going to be able to find a place in flyover country.

Hilariously that won't even load for me on firefox w/ublock origin.