Advertising saturation at tube stations: literally making me consider making eye contact with another passenger, instead of looking at ads.

Desperate times.

As a temporary intermediate measure I tend to stare at the arse of the person ahead of me on the escalator, instead of looking at the ads. (Whereas the first bit was mainly for comedy effect, this one is literally true).

Those parts of the network where they have the same ad EVERYWHERE are nightmarish. And I don't just mean “repetitive”.

In case you haven't seen them (if you're not a regular visitor to a major city), imagine a long escalator, with a roof. i.e. you're in a tube. Along the walls of the tube on both sides are TV screens every, I don't know, five feet or so. It's quite a long escalator so maybe there'll be (guessing) 25 screens per side. Two sides. 50 TV screens. That's all there is to look at, everything else is grey and featureless, whereas the TVs are animated and bright and colourful and attention-grabbing. They DEMAND your attention. You unwillingly give it, for a few seconds. You look away. Except YOU CAN'T, because as soon as you look away, you're just looking at another, identical TV showing THE SAME AD. All those TVs in sync showing the same ad. It's horrible. It feels too much akin to being strapped into a chair, head pinned in position, TV dead ahead. So all there is to see, for the duration of this escalator ride (which you can't speed up or slow down or cancel) is THE AD.

At least for now the screens are still silent. I give it another three years.