Relatable SocietyTech

I'm Not Forgiving the Ad — I Just Can't Reach My Phone

Wet hands are not consent.

· 3 min · Togetter

What's going on

Someone posted an illustration of a person at the sink doing dishes — phone sitting on the counter just out of reach, hands too wet to touch it. The text on the image reads: "I'm not skipping this ad because I'm fine with it. I just can't reach my phone right now."

It landed immediately. Anyone who watches videos on their phone while doing chores knows this exact feeling: the involuntary, simmering tolerance of an ad you absolutely would have skipped, but physically cannot. It isn't approval. It's just helplessness — and the ads don't know the difference.

The replies rolled in with recognition, coping mechanisms, and a few acts of spite.

Comments

You feel me. (The image shows someone at the sink, hands wet, phone just out of reach. The caption reads: “I’m not forgiving this ad — I just can’t skip it because of how my hands are right now.”)
If it’s one of those “do you know the truth the mainstream media won’t tell you?” ads, I will rinse my hands off just to skip it.
This is me every day. I’d skip every single one if I could. Don’t get comfortable.
Same. When an ad pops up mid-workout, the rage actually makes me lift heavier.
I get this SO much 🙂‍↕️ I’d been watching for a while and then the exact moment my hands get wet doing dishes, an ad starts playing — what is that?? I get mad and wipe my finger on my shoulder to skip it.
Since advertiser payment can sometimes depend on whether the ad was watched to completion, I comfort myself by thinking: “I watched it all the way through, and you just wasted your money on me… heh heh.” It takes the edge off.
I can live with ads in general — free plan, fair enough. But when my hands are wet and I physically can’t tap the screen, and the video won’t resume unless I actively hit skip — that I genuinely cannot forgive.
And it’s always at exactly this moment that a 3-minute unskippable ad starts playing. Tragic.
And of course it’s always an absurdly long one.
Because I haven’t been skipping lately, the short ads suddenly upgraded to a 2-minute skippable one. It feels like the AI noticed my passive behavior and is exploiting it, and I hate that.
Some ads just won’t end unless you actively press skip. Can we please do something about that.
If the ad finishes and the video resumes on its own, fine. But ads that require you to manually hit skip before the video continues are absolute garbage.
There’s an ad I keep seeing that basically says: “Short on cash for your fandom spending? Just borrow from a consumer lender!” (high-interest short-term loan companies) Ethically, I feel like that’s a bit much.
This is exactly why I got YouTube Premium.
Happens way too often, but I’m firmly in the “skip it out of spite, no matter what” camp.
I will skip it even mid-dishes 🤣
Same 🤣 I also figure that skipping quickly might help train the algorithm toward better ad categories.
I try to hit skip with my elbow. Accidentally tap through to the ad’s landing page instead.

My take

I've started noticing that the moment a video begins loading, I'm already braced to hit skip. At some point I stopped watching and started preparing.

Comments loosely translated for tone.

Source https://togetter.com/li/2693480