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What they try and sell you, and what it might mean

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    What they try and sell you, and what it might mean

    Since lockdown and pandemic, my online ads have gone crazy: more intensive, bizarre, unpredictable, speculative.

    At the moment there's several things that come up time and time again: weighted blankets, which I hardly knew existed, and muscle massage tools, likewise.

    What are they thinking, I wonder? Do they have me down as an anxious person in need of comfort? Not wholly inaccurate I suppose, but I've never purchased or even googled any product to that end. As for muscle massagers, I'm no health freak, I just do a few online exercise classes now and then, but I can't be alone in that at the moment.

    It seems to me the technology understands me even less than usual – but maybe it knows something I don't know?

    #2
    I've noticed an increase in ads. I get loads of travel ads, which is fair enough, and slippers which is odd but probably related to my age., But for no reason I can fathom, I'm also deluged with ads for investment, new houses, private medicine, random clothing and loads and loads of bras.

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      #3
      There's an election coming up in Romania, so all mine at the moment are for that. I can't vote in this election, but the ads I'm getting are for parties and politicians who i wouldn;t vote for anyway, so at least i feel like they're throwing their money away on me

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        #4
        I don't so much tend to notice ads really. Now and again when I look for something on say Amazon I might notice the odd ad for something similar in the middle of an article on some ad-heavy site like the Independent or something. But mostly I don't really notice them.

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          #5
          Originally posted by TonTon View Post
          I don't so much tend to notice ads really. Now and again when I look for something on say Amazon I might notice the odd ad for something similar in the middle of an article on some ad-heavy site like the Independent or something. But mostly I don't really notice them.
          This.

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            #6
            That's what they want you to think.

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              #7
              We bought a muscle massager, but Mrs P and I are spending a lot of time sitting at our respective desks and getting into bad habits lie not moving enough.

              As for seeing ads, I'd recommend either downloading the Brave browser* or Edge, and putting the uBlock extension on it. Stops a lot of the shitty ads.

              *I like Brave, but I believe that there has been some online controversy around one of the people behind it.

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                #8
                So is it just me who sees ads for “hot middle aged singles near you”?

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                  #9
                  No, I see those too!

                  Using Worldometer for COVID-19 statistics I keep on getting adverts for a women's clothing retailer called Yoins, whose style seems to involve using as little material as possible in its merchandise.

                  I mean, I suppose I could try to block them...
                  Last edited by Nocturnal Submission; 22-11-2020, 09:11.

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by Snake Plissken View Post
                    *I like Brave, but I believe that there has been some online controversy around one of the people behind it.
                    One of the founders is Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla. It came to light when he was appointed to that position that he had donated funds to support Proposition 8, which was the CA ballot measure outlawing same-sex marriage, which considering Mozilla is based in San Francisco, with the associated local workforce, went over about as well as a fart in a crowded elevator*. He lasted less than two weeks before resigning.

                    * - People at the time tried to decry this as a political correctness issue, where your job can be at danger for personal opinions. Regardless of your stance on that, I knew multiple people working at Mozilla at the time who felt that this didn't describe what actually happened internally -- Eich had to resign because he did not fit in the company culture in the sense that the company has an expectation that these sort of things are talked about and worked through -- collaboration and consensus decisions were very highly valued and Eich's response to this was the expectation that everybody would just accept it and move on without having a conversation about it. One of my good friends there, who also happens to be gay, said that he felt that Eich could have rode it out if he'd engaged with the other employees in good faith instead of trying to make everybody just move on.

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                      #11
                      I don't actually use any ad blockers for various reasons. Partly it's work reasons, and I always want to make sure I see exactly what I'm intended to see on websites including my own. Also, when it comes to magazines of various sorts, I want them to get whatever ad recenuves they're due, however paltry.

                      Of course if ever you want to reassure yourself how stupid AI still seems to be, it's always worth a look at "categories used to reach you" in your settings if you have a Facebook account. My eclectic collection of interest apparently includes horseback riding, black cats, dentistry and Mercedes-Benz cars.

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