Yeah, I held out for years, in part because I didn't want a different than "usual" experience. I figured I would deal with obnoxiously ad-infested websites by s

Yeah, I held out for years, in part because I didn't want a different than "usual" experience. I figured I would deal with obnoxiously ad-infested websites by simply not visiting them. Whereas I was afraid that if I used an ad-blocker, nigh-unusable websites would actually look usable to me, and then I'd make the mistake of sharing links to them with others, not realizing how bad they were. Then I'd promote the propagation of such sites, not to mention annoy friends/family when I send them links to sites with all sorts of obnoxiousness I never saw myself. So I wanted the unvarnished "default" sites, the better to flee as quickly as possible. But I finally gave in and installed a basic ad-blocker (though not with a default blocklist), because it's become futile to try to use the web without one. Unless I restrict myself to a tiny number of whitelisted sites (here, Wikipedia, some .edu sites, arxiv.org, etc.), the web has just become unusable without filtering. At least some very basic filtering like blocking autoplaying flash ads and blocking popups is needed to regain minimal functionality.