Representational image.

Certain things in today’s modern life are not only bizarre and hilariously unfunny but, quite frankly, annoying as well. Many are also one colossal gimmick designed to make fun of us. Now don’t get me wrong, we all use it, not because we want to but because, in today’s modern way of life, we can’t function normally without it or conduct business as usual. So, what am I talking about? Well, let me put it this way, and it is just my humble opinion that others may not share. In my view the settings function on our devices is a gimmick. No matter how many times you might set your phone not to receive certain notifications, that notification is going to come through your device whether you like it or not. This has been the continual and annoying case with Google which seems to think that I need to know my local weather and sends me notifications about it even though that function has been toggled off. One can also turn off certain actions within our devices but they seem to automatically turn themselves on again. Is this a virus? I don’t think so. Why would a virus’ only aim be to annoy you by updating apps you’ve disabled?

Blocking is also a gimmick or, at the very least, limited as to how far it can or will block something. I thought blocking was blocking but yesterday I got a scam job message on WhatsApp from an unknown number in Indonesia. A quick search revealed that it’s a scam being sent to many people in Dubai. I blocked the number immediately but did that work? No. About half an hour later, the same number messaged me with a follow-up! So much for blocking. Now how many times have you opted for not wanting to see certain posts on your social media? I have blocked countless ads and notifications about birthdays and anniversaries of people I barely know. If, like me, you’ve opted for ‘hid this’ or clicked on ‘not interested’ or ‘I don’t want to see this’, you might be annoyed that your feed is still filled with these annoying ads and notifications. These functions are obviously superficial and gimmicky because the disclaimer is that you’ve blocked or removed only that particular ad or post. If the same company produces another ad about exactly the same subject but changes the design slightly, that new ad is going to pop up in your feed again. The same goes for birthday and anniversary notifications

Now, if you’re a YouTube creator, like me, you’ll be convinced that hashtags that are meant to be used for your videos and your channel are a gimmick. This is pretty much what YouTube claims but at the same time, they’ve created search options that include hashtags, which doesn’t make sense. Now, some so-called experts will tell you that hashtags are no longer relevant whereas others recommended tags. So, as a YouTube creator, who are we supposed to believe? YouTube with its confused messaging or so-called YouTube experts who have opposing opinions but thousands of followers nonetheless?

This also seems to go for keywords. I will tell you something about these browser extensions that you, as a YouTube creator, might download to help with using the ‘right’ keywords in your next upload. The analyses performed by these extensions, by big companies I might add, are also a huge gimmick. In many of my recent videos, the overall score for keyword usage has been 50/50, yet the views on those videos are worse than the videos where I was lax about keywords or tags. What’s that about?

But having said all this, did you know that some things aren’t a gimmick? Accepting cookies is a big mistake but you have to. Accidentally allowing your browser to store passwords can be problematic for the future. And the funniest thing to have been developed is a bot trying to confirm, before you can continue using a site, if you’re a robot by asking you to click all the cars on a picture grid. I always find that funny and at the same time somewhat ironic.