> Can't understand why they put up with it

To see which (rare) sites don’t put up a million ads and actually care about the reading experience.

A lot of the top-listed sites on HN are small blogs without ads (or in the case of danluu.com or lwn.net - without almost any formatting).

daringfireball.net is notable for actually having small, non-intrusive ads that I wouldn’t ever feel the need to block (unless you consider the entire site an ad for Apple but that’s a seperate concern).

> do they just think that it's part and parcel of the internet to have every page look like a slot machine from hell?

It is integral to the business models of the sites putting up those ads. And if those sites don’t make money then they’ll also be unable to pay writers. Much like herd immunity or financial speculation there will always be “somebody else” to watch the ads and essentially subsidize the ad-blocking audience, but I’d rather not be one of those people, I want my usage to be worth the while for the writers.

I am sometimes (rarely) willing to pay for an ad-free experience if I’m a repeat visitor. But more often I’d rather not visit at all if a site is too annoying. Another unfortunate situation is that even if you pay for a subscription, some sites have no ad-free option, such as the New York Times.

The big exception is YouTube, where I visit often, am bombarded with ads but also don’t want to pay Google.

Immediately turned it off.

That's a bit hyperbolic. The areas of the internet I frequent do not have egregious ads (for example, this page). Areas where I really would like good ad-blocking (youtube) are often not covered by these ad blockers. Thankfully Youtube Premium isn't too expensive and solves that issue.

Maybe it's better these days but I always found browser extensions (including uBlock) had a pretty big performance hit, so I've always shied away from them (with the exception of a password manager).