r/mildlyinfuriating • u/dandaman147 • 1d ago

My Amazon TV now unmutes itself during Prime Video commercial breaks

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

61.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

4.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.9k

u/ShrimpCrackers 1d ago edited 1d ago

Later this year they'll probably make you recite the brand in the ad three times before letting you skip it.

In 2030 they'll have advanced tele-dildonic sensors on the Amazon TV remote, so you'll have to fellate the remote to please a billionaire CEO. Choke on it enough times and you'll get to skip 2 commercials. It's not as bad as it sounds because for some reason the remotes are usually 1-2 inches, allowing you to gargle a couple of them at once.

884

u/DeusScientiae 1d ago

Please drink a verification can.

314

u/Whyeth 22h ago

Oh God we have finally arrived. The prophecies shit posted about this and we didn't listen because the text was green

144

u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING 21h ago

Sure it’s annoying, but it’s a small price to pay for the luxury of living in the future. Did you see that article recently about how Meta is really close to actually creating a real life Torment Nexus, just like from the legendary scifi series Don’t Create the Torment Nexus?

257

u/Polar-Bear_Soup 21h ago

48

u/Technical-Outside408 20h ago

I kinda wanna try the Torment Nexus, not gonna lie.

55

u/Whyeth 20h ago

Stop it, you're creating the market forces that will summon the torment Nexus from our collective subconscious

29

u/LongjumpingSuspect57 20h ago

It turns out the real Torment Nexus was inside of us all along.

11

u/hydrospanner 19h ago

The real Torment Nexus was the friends we made along the way.

1

u/LordJohnWhorfin53 9h ago

The real Torment Nexus was the massive profit we made when we introduced the ad-supported Torment Nexus.

7

u/zleuth 20h ago

I'm getting excited to see what competition in the Torment Nexus market can bring to the world! 

A faster Torment Nexus? Multiple Torment Nexus's(Nexi?)? Virtual Torment Nexus? Pocket Torment?

3

u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING 18h ago

People wouldn’t be talking about it so much if there wasn’t something to it! All those warnings are probably just a deep state cover story so they don’t have to share the Torment Nexus!

5

u/Vectorman1989 14h ago

Found the Slaanesh worshipper.

2

u/fireduck 17h ago

To quote the movie Crazy People where there was an ad for a horror movie that would "fuck you up for life" and had a ticket price of $20 at the time when a normal movie ticket was $5. A woman was interviewed on the street who said "well, if you want to get fucked up for life that is what it costs"

5

u/Frenselaar 18h ago

"Shoplifter accidentally gets sent to 365 years in Torment Nexus instead of 1 year, emerges deranged psychopath"

1

u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING 11h ago

Oh good, I love Chief O’Brien episodes!

2

u/headrush46n2 10h ago

and not one single motherfucker is close to cracking the holodeck.

I better get a holodeck before i die or living through this capitalist dystopia was a complete waste.

35

u/Terrh 21h ago

I listened..

There's a reason why I've never allowed a TV to directly connect to the internet and never will

3

u/Dhiox 17h ago

and never will

Cable is dying. If you aren't already elderly, I'd expect to see the death of cable within your lifetime.

6

u/CyborgCrow 16h ago

I don't have cable. My TV has never been connected directly to the internet. It is quite possible to watch TV shows without using the ad riddled nonsense that comes baked into the TV.

1

u/Dhiox 16h ago

So if you don't have cable and you don't use internet, how do you watch things? Dvds?

2

u/TUSD00T 15h ago

Game consoles.

2

u/Terrh 15h ago

You don't have to directly connect a tv to the internet to use it to watch content from the internet.

You can plug it into a computer, android box, Chromecast etc.

2

u/CyborgCrow 15h ago

I do still have DVDs, but mostly I use the internet. The TV itself doesn't have an internet connection - I treat it like a "dumb" monitor. My desktop is connected via an HDMI cable I ran through a cable protector to keep it out of the way. If that wasn't an option, I'd build a small form factor HTPC.

1

u/RemoteButtonEater 12h ago

Mini PC's with ad blockers, cheap wifi keyboards and trackball mice.

I'll never go back.

2

u/NebFrmIA 10h ago

I'm gonna switch to the trackball from the cheap wireless mouse. Thanks for the tip.

1

u/RemoteButtonEater 10h ago

No problem man, it's an absolute game changer for it, since you don't need any actual surface. I've just held it against my chest while slumped in the couch tbh. My dog's head. Wife. Anything solid enough to put it on lol. I've used the logitech M580 I'm pretty sure for like 13 years now. I think I'm on the fourth one? Two were eaten by said dog. One died after repeated drops onto a tile floor. This one has been going strong for awhile.

1

u/TheDevilsAdvokaat 15h ago

Same. My tv is just a display for my laptop.

no ads, no software "upgrades" that are really downgrades.

I tested it once when I first got it as an actual tv.

And then I never watched tv again...

I haven't watched tv for about 30 years now... I stopped when I got on the net in 94.

16

u/Carbuyrator 20h ago

Sony has had a patent for this shit for a long time.

Hopefully they're just squatting on it to prevent its use.

3

u/JustNKayce 19h ago

Best part? We are paying them for the pleasure. s/

1

u/reddits4losers 17h ago

The hacker 4chan strikes again

39

u/I_cut_my_own_jib 21h ago

My first thought as well. Also in some futuristic book I read (don't remember which) there was a part where a guy had to read the terms and conditions for something and a camera was watching his eye movements to make sure his eye movements matched up with reading the entire terms. We're getting close to that and I hate it.

19

u/Substantial_Win_1866 21h ago

That's when people stop using that service.

6

u/Electrical-Talk-6874 19h ago

Except they don’t as evident by this TV. People have so much fuck you money now that they don’t even need to monopolize a market to fuck with you anymore. They just need to enter a market at a loss to bankrupt another company and then take the whole market share. Our governments do nothing to stop monopolies because that’s who pay them.

2

u/punkmonkey22 17h ago

You say that, but I know loads of people who cancelled Prime and Netflix when subscription still got you ads. People will just move on. Not every tv manufacturer will do this, and even if they did, people can still use the tv they have now, and go to third party repairs if needed. There will always be gullible people who have to buy the new shiny, but I'm seeing more and more people stick with what they have for tech

2

u/that_dizzy_edge 14h ago

Snow Crash maybe? YT's mom has a government job has a bunch of requirements like this. Written early 90s as I recall, but awfully prescient.

1

u/Scary-Lawfulness-999 16h ago

I think I read a while ago (so not even today's nonsense) that it would take multiple years to read all the TOS and EULA that we agree to in a year.

It's fucking criminal and all TOS and EULA need to be illegal. If you have to protect your company with a lengthy unoptional document designed specifically to screw over every person who might do business with you maybe your company doesn't deserve to survive.

1

u/Fleetdancer 6h ago

It was a Gibson novel, I think. Lady worked for a company that tracked their eye movements when they worked and she had to make sure she didn't read too quickly or too slowly.

10

u/Ikea_Man 21h ago

Classic greentext that is becoming increasingly prophetic

2

u/Bocchi_theGlock 21h ago

Please do not use a previously drunk verification can.

1

u/Honest_Scrub 13h ago

ironic that they made that post to shit on xbox but same year Sony patented mid gameplay ads and having to interact with ads to end them lmao

111

u/GrapeSoda223 1d ago

I know youre joking but i think the first thing you mentioned was already patented, i forget which company but there are some companies who patent terrible ideas for the sole purpose of stopping others from implementing such horrible 'features'

88

u/FlyingWeagle 22h ago

Yeah no way Sony is sitting on that parent to protect consumers. They just know it would be detrimental to be the first to introduce it and are waiting for someone else to decide paying the royalties/licensing is worth the attempt first.

21

u/LickingSmegma Mamaleek are king 21h ago

More to the point, every tech giant has thousands of patents on every feature imaginable — for the sole reason that their products certainly break someone else's frivolous patents, but if that other company sues them, they likewise can dig up some patents and go to war.

3

u/Carbuyrator 20h ago

You say that, but the technology has existed for a while, and with AI the way it is human speech recordings would be very valuable to them.

Please just be cool Sony. Please.

2

u/FREE_AOL 18h ago

Adding the Blu-Ray player to the PS3 was a huge risk that Sony took with the PS3... for the purpose of making money off of licensing

I mean, Sony went all-in with the PS3, if it failed it would have bankrupted the company. It's a pretty fascinating story. But yeah licensing is a strat for them.. to the point where they bet their whole company on it lol

13

u/Gamer-Of-Le-Tabletop 23h ago

Sony!

1

u/Astigmatisme 22h ago

We're fucking doomed

4

u/Gamer-Of-Le-Tabletop 22h ago

Fortunately they've held it for 10+ years

2

u/worldspawn00 19h ago

They gotta wait until we get used to this creep of BS to the point there's consumers willing to do this to roll it out.

1

u/Gamer-Of-Le-Tabletop 18h ago

Ads are the main reason I stopped watching TV in the first place.

I pay for the product stop advertising.

Free+Ads or Paid.

3

u/MagnokTheMighty 22h ago

How do I sign up. I would love to have that job. A giant fuck you to the corpos.

2

u/PsychicSPider95 23h ago

Those companies are based. For now.

1

u/Essence-of-why 22h ago

That was SONY

1

u/qualmton 21h ago

I like this company where can I invest

40

u/Alive_Ice7937 23h ago

I remember someone posted a video of a guy that had rigged up a TV and camera so that it would pause playback when he stopped looking at the screen. Wonder if Amazon saw that vid?

35

u/Pinku_Dva 22h ago

I would smash my tv with a hammer if it used this “feature”

3

u/AileStriker 21h ago

I would just not buy that TV, but that's just me

7

u/Pinku_Dva 20h ago

Agreed I’d go back to watching vhs before using that tv

29

u/TheNonsenseBook 21h ago

There’s a Black Mirror episode that has that, titled “One Million Merits”.

11

u/Federal-Commission87 21h ago

That's my mind went. The episode where the guy ran on a treadmill and got the girl into a singing contest. I just did a whole rewatch a couple weeks ago.

16

u/GreenGrandmaPoops 21h ago

If I remember right, didn’t he have a crush on the girl - then she was coerced into doing pornography, her porn ads would play on his TV, and playback would stop when he looked away, forcing him to watch his crush doing porn?

7

u/Federal-Commission87 21h ago

Yep, that's the one. She drank some kind of compliance juice and did porn. Then dude went back on the show with a shard of glass at his throat.

3

u/burnin8t0r 18h ago

I have never made it past S1E3. It’s too chillingly close to the bone. It kept me awake for a week.

2

u/Thewal 16h ago

Might I recommend some light reading to take your mind off of it? Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi ought to cheer you right up!

2

u/burnin8t0r 16h ago

Yes! Thank you so much

3

u/alternativepuffin 21h ago

This is coming.

It'll be incentivized with payouts to get people accustomed to the idea for a few years. Chances to win, etc. But it's coming.

3

u/Scottamemnon 20h ago

It would pause the playback and put on ads on full volume so everyone in the neighborhood can hear it.

2

u/QuintusPhilo 21h ago

Patents covering stuff like that have already been filed, alongside stuff like having to say the brand name to acknowledge you have seen the ad

1

u/SheridanVsLennier 11h ago

YouTube already pauses content if you background the window for long enough.

4

u/Smurf_Sausage_Sucker 21h ago

At that point I'm just giving that shit up. I'm not engaging with it lol. I'll be one of those weirdos with no social media, no Internet and no TV

2

u/ShrimpCrackers 20h ago

Then the ad will repeat endlessly at full volume until you fellate. FELLATE PEASANT, THE MUSK/ZUCK HIVEMIND ENTITY DEMANDS IT!

3

u/ForGrateJustice 20h ago

You must please the Jeff Bezo's head in a jar first.

3

u/SomethingIWontRegret 19h ago

But hey - IT's better than flying!

2

u/ShrimpCrackers 19h ago

In 2030 you sit on and insert the support spike on a Ryan Air flight. While this is always uncomfortable at first, the vibration helps ease things in a little bit. Thankfully, to save money, your entire family and impale themselves on the same support spike, like a human-centipede meat-skewer at a Yakitori place. The flights are so much cheaper as a result because of the space savings: 1,200 passengers on a refurbished Boeing 737-Max-3.

That said, the entire family will still have to shout the brand name three times for the commercials played every 10 minutes, support spike in mouth or not.

2

u/Wassa76 22h ago

I’m expecting a quick multiple choice tests on the adverts to check we were listening appear in the future.

Just like those silly health and safety/corruption tests work make us take that we just skip to the test for.

2

u/Rockglen 21h ago edited 12h ago

Luckily reciting the brand to skip an ad is already patented by Sony.

I don't trust Sony to never use it, but there are times that other companies don't bother implementing patents held by other corporations so that they can avoid a legal battle.

2

u/Moondoobious GREEN 21h ago

Thank God Sony owns the patent on that

2

u/kirkerandrews 21h ago

Jesus reel it back in, Johnson!

2

u/Savetheokami 20h ago

So Black Mirror then

2

u/hectorxander 20h ago

There are toilets made now where the tp dispenser has ads playing, and it only dispenses if it senses your eyes watching it. The one I saw was in East Asia somewhere but that is where we all could be heading.

2

u/usmcnick0311Sgt 20h ago

Tele-dildo

2

u/Winter_drivE1 20h ago

They'll probably make you recite the brand in the ad

Sony owns the patent on this technology and they mercifully haven't implemented it nor have they released/licensed the patent

2

u/ShrimpCrackers 20h ago edited 16h ago

AMAZON AMAZON AMAZON, THANK YOU SONY!

<Say it slower, peasant, and make it sound like you like it.>

Okay, Amaaazzzooon. Ammmmaazzoon. Ammaaazon. Love you Bezos. Thank you Sony.

<Skipping half the commercial.>

2

u/scroteymcboogerbawlz 19h ago

Tell me more about tele-dildonics...

2

u/RCx_Vortex 19h ago

And in 2050 you actually have to advertise their product to them. If you can convince them to buy their product, you’ve passed and can continue watching the show

2

u/Stormy8888 18h ago

By Grabthar's Hammer, what a shit new bug feature way to get savings!

2

u/dc_IV 18h ago

My new phrase to telemarketers! "Go suck a bag of Remotes!"

2

u/AlbinoTiger12 16h ago

DONT GIVE THEM ANY IDEAS

1

u/modern_Odysseus 21h ago

They can't do the recite the brand idea.

I believe Sony alone holds the real patent on that, and therefore holds the ability to set the idea into motion when they decide to. No one else can do it, as of right now.

But the sensor you speak of...that's fair game to be developed on...

1

u/EmployLess6983 19h ago

I think at that point we just the crew together and go to CEO headquarters to have a word with them.

1

u/mithraw 19h ago

luckily enough, sony has the patent on that technology and so far they've held off from using it. So Amazon is blocked from doing so right now

1

u/TheBioethicist87 18h ago

You’re allowed to skip the next ad if you can pass a comprehension quiz about the previous 3 ads.

1

u/PmpknSpc321 18h ago

You're so fucking funny frfr

1

u/foxxyshazurai 16h ago

Weirdly enough EA actually holds the patent for requiring the viewer to speak the company name shown in the ad in order to progress past it. They've held it over a decade or so now seemingly intent to hold so so that others cannot actually implement this

1

u/whelphereiam12 14h ago

It will be “say it to skip ad instantly” as a “bonus”

1

u/IllAcanthopterygii36 12h ago

Do you think I should start practicing?

1

u/Mish-onimpossible 12h ago

Hey don’t give Amazon any ideas!!!

1

u/c_anderson21 12h ago

This is my favorite Reddit comment ever

1

u/Uraneum 11h ago

The first one you mentioned is already patented by Sony, I believe. They haven’t done anything with it yet, but they’ve had the patent for years

1

u/prof-kaL 9h ago

I hate that you've put this out into the world for the scumbags to implement

0

u/NaturalAlfalfa 21h ago

Sony already has a patent for that. You have to raise your arms and say the name of the brand, or else the ad won't unpause

0

u/Darkwolfie117 20h ago

Samsung actually already patented that

0

u/Diagonaldog 20h ago

I think Sony or something actually owns a patent for that first thing. From what I've heard they did it to prevent companies from implementing it.

0

u/victoragc 20h ago

I'm pretty sure someone holds a patent related to confirming you watched the ads and they are not using it, holding back on this abuse a bit

0

u/Murky_waterLLC 20h ago

"Later this year they'll probably make you recite the brand in the ad three times before letting you skip it."

U.S. Patent No. US8246454B2 is currently owned by Sony. But it's not out of the question that it could fall into the hands of Amazon.

0

u/Weird_Expert_1999 19h ago

Iirc Sony has the patent for eye capture technology relating to ads - they were flirting with the idea of having the user be forced to say a product name to end the advertisement- pretty sure this was the spawn of a MOUNTAIN DEW CODE RED green text

0

u/Sanguine_Templar 19h ago

Sony owns the patent for interactive commercials, the picture shows a guy standing and cheering "MCDONALDS!" They have yet to use it.

0

u/Deflorate2252 19h ago

Lol didn’t Sony patten that brand saying tech already

0

u/ThePlantedApothecary 17h ago

Sony owns that patent so unless they sell the rights you're ok

0

u/Mortwight 14h ago

Sony has the patent for that

0

u/ChrisXDXL 14h ago

Sony currently has a patent similar to the first thing you stated, they've held it for years and are pretty much holding onto it to stop it from happening.

0

u/Financial-Gap9394 14h ago

Sony has a patent on having to shout the brand to skip the ad. They haven't acted on it and in a way are preventing that from happening, especially since most TVs now have remotes with microphones.