Seems to me that the internet has stiffened into mostly advertising, leaving ever-shrinking scraps of time for the actual content that we want to see.

Now, and memory may be playing deuces with me (it often does these days), things were not like this only a short time ago.

Because, when you couple the ordinary adverts with the adverts for elections, elections, elections, the online experience becomes a soul sucker, and the natural temptation is to turn from the horror. I’ll bet most of you feel that way also, and can barely wait for the day this election is settled.

But it may be worth a moment of your time to consider what’s in those ads.

Because what we know about this election is that other nations that mean us ill — for example, Russia, China and Iran — are working overtime to influence our election via social media and other means to further their goal of setting us against each other.

We also know that here at home, busy hands are making changes to rules in large and small jurisdictions throughout the nation — numbering some changes that may be possible up to the last minute — to juice the winning prospects of their candidates of choice.

And that we are likely not to know what we would really like to know on the night of Nov. 5. That is, who will be the winner of the big race that in the last year or so has gripped the nation’s attention.

Thing is, weeks may pass before we know the result of the presidential contest. I expect multiple lawsuits, appeals and protests will need to run their course first. I predict the down-ballot candidates who win will not raise the alarm on their own success — they’ll accept their result without demur as they did the last go around.

How curious that the winners whose names appeared on the same ballot they claimed was tainted by fraud and rampant cheating as far as the top tier was concerned could not rise to the occasion and demand their own results be tossed? After all, how could one contest on the ballot be tainted, suspect, a stinker, and all of the rest not be tainted? I have never gotten a decent explanation for that.

It’s a bone stuck in my throat.

Another is that we would accept that unless “Candidate A” over there wins, the results are bogus and must be scrapped. Listen even to the youngest kids playing games, and you’ll discover that they already know and are keenly aware of cheating. They know that such a predetermined result would stink. In this, they are wiser than their elders.

I’ll also wager that the ones who protested how long it took to know the results will then complain again, finding the fault in the nefarious actions of others, not the many roadblocks they themselves have set up.

Given all of this, do your homework and think, think, think of the subtle attempts and lies detectable in the advertisements to influence your vote.

Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@auburn-reporter.com.