Colm O'Regan: Modern life has a habit of forcing you to shout the oddest of sentences

Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Picture Denis Minihane.

“I ALREADY TOLD YOU MY COOKIE PREFERENCES AN HOUR AGO – WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME TO MANAGE THEM AGAIN?”

Modern life has a habit of forcing you to shout the oddest of sentences. This is me barking at a screen because the website wants me to do something about cookies.

My main preference is to never be asked about my cookie-preferences again but no.

Cookies. For. Feck Sake. 

You may also know them as “Something To Do With GDPR”.

Brought in with good intentions by the EU to stop companies from sneakily harvesting all your data but now it means that each visit to a website is preceded by this mad bureaucracy of scrolling down to your feet to say yes or no to cookies.

I know that this is important and I should reject things I don’t understand on the internet just in case I come home one day and an AI me is living in my house and the locks have changed. 

But trying to tell the difference between, Performance Cookies, Targeting Cookies, Analytical Cookies, Cookies for Making You Think About Your Life Choices Cookies — all listed with little sliders that you have to switch off manually, like you’re about to start a 747, seems designed to make me give up.

There must be a better way than endlessly switching off all the “Legitimate Interest” cookies.

No, not these kinds of cookie preferences.

If ever there was an innocuous phrase that sounded sinister it’s the cookies that say “it’s grand we have a Legitimate Interest, don’t worry”. 

I worry because I don’t recognise any of these vendors that have a “legitimate interest” in collecting our data. They look like their a front for something.

But by the time it gets to the 46th button to switch off, if I was agreeing to let them harvest my organs let alone my data, it’s hard not to just give in and say “LOOKIT GWAN SO I DON’T CARE ANYMORE”

Occasionally there are websites which pop up about cookies and just as you are about to moan, you see the Holy Grail. A “Reject All” Button. The equivalent of finding a fiver in your jeans. 

I feel positively disposed to any website that has this shortcut. I’ll buy whatever they’re selling. It could be PretendingToBeTheRevenue.com.

The mood sours when I’m back there 20 minutes later and they’ve forgotten they’ve ever met me.

Apparently the reason websites keep asking you for your cookie choices is that by rejecting all the cookies the first time, you’re also rejecting the cookie that would remember who you are. 

Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequence of my own actions. Like the small print at the bottom of the insurance premium.

Between cookies and the endless ads that appear on pages, paging the normal internet now has become as frustrating as the days of dial up and Netscape loading the page one per cent at a time.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe we’re all headed to the apps anyway, completely at the whim of mad billionaires who want to be trillionaires.

In the meantime, there is talk of changes. One suggestion is that you set it once in the browser. 

Although there will be a certain cohort of people for whom “change the setting in the browser” is like saying “press a different button on the microwave”.

Whatever they do it needs be easy. This is a good example of how a safeguard becomes useless if it’s a pain in the hole. We all put on our seatbelts, for safety, to not get the penalty points but a big part is that it is very easy. 

If you had to put on 46 seatbelts before popping to the shop, there’s a chance you might chance it.