Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen, we've officially made it. By 2026, spending an evening online without swearing is harder than getting a zero-percent mortgage.
Providers are hiking connection prices so cheerfully, you'd think fiber optics were being hand-pulled into our apartments by Elon Musk and Pavel Durov personally, as part of some high-stakes bet. You pay for a "gigabit unlimited" plan, open up a show in the evening, and your router starts wheezing and spitting out speeds reminiscent of punch-card modems. Where did all the megabits go? That's right, they were spent maintaining thirty-three layers of firewalls, filters, and "smart" boxes that work day and night to ensure you, God forbid, don't look at anything seditious 🕵️♂️📦
But the funniest part is our good old people.
Every second person now fancies themselves a digital ninja:
- Downloaded an app from the marketplace with a shield icon and a hamster face (free, of course, because we aren't suckers who pay!).
- Hit the "Connect to Netherlands" button.
- And proudly went to log into sketchy websites using their primary phone number, casually granting the app access to their contacts, geolocation, and grandma's china set camera.
Brilliant. Just a standing ovation 👏
Do you genuinely think the folks running free servers are doing it out of pure love for your pretty eyes? I hate to break it to you: if you aren't paying for the product, then you are the product—along with your browsing history and chat logs, which will be dumped on a hacker forum tomorrow for pocket change.
Bottom line: The state is trying to funnel all traffic through one rusted pipe and wondering why it keeps bursting. Providers shrug and pass the receipts on to our wallets. And users turn on "protection" that sells them out faster than they can finish their tea.
Digital hygiene isn't about some magical green button. It's about knowing where your wires lead and to whom you just voluntarily handed the keys to your digital apartment. Think with your head, not your clicks.