What does Facebook Advertising tell you?

I’m here on Facebook this evening because … because that’s what I do to relax, get ideas, spy on people, and keep from eating ice cream indiscriminately. Most of the time I completely ignore the ads, but when I’m waiting out the time to go to bed (so I don’t look like a wuss going to bed super early, but don’t get involved in anything to let the second wind kick in), I let my eye wander over the ads and stop on their way to checking out who’s online right now.

I’m reminded I’m not too worried about Big Data, or folks digging through and making appropriate connections of all the information they collect and secretly legally or illegally sort through.

What Facebook Thinks I Need Today

Tonight’s stunning combo of ads, supposedly targeted to me by marketers who think they know what they’re doing and submitting ads to Facebook’s demographic-based algorithm, programmed by nerds who likely rarely, if ever, interact with any human being or understand critical thinking and actual analysis of human behavior, was particularly amusing in the story it told through the series of ads.

Uh, excuse me Mr. Zuckerberg, your programmers are dorks.

… and I don’t mean that in the kind, supportive way in that they are cool nerds who follow Dr. Who. I mean, get your team together and hire someone who can teach them what real live human beings are.

The first one was ominous, Facing cancer with you, it said. Oh, how friendly and supportive, once you get past the terrifying notion that while hanging out on Facebook someone, somewhere decided it might be a nice idea to raise the scare of the big C when you don’t have it. Do they know something I don’t know? Am I at an age and demographic profile when damn, this chick should have abnormal cells growing with abandon in her system. And the picture has these 12 faces of supposed specialists staring you down, as if to say, we know something you don’t know. Damn, that wasn’t a nice way to spend the moment. How’s about we just X that one out, and for giggles, lets say it was offensive in our reason. Yeah, that’ll show them.

But right under it were shopping ads. Hey, why not, if you’re in denial, go buy something, get something pretty for yourself, and of course, let’s not forget the shoes. We know you like shoes, and they’re always distracting. Summer shoes, too. They remind of of the beach, which brings me back to summer, which brings me to sun, which brings me back to thinking about those cancer docs staring at me sternly. Ok, we’ll X out the shoe ad, too.  Oh, look, the next one is a face cream, to help get rid of all the damage I’ve already done, and since I’m CLEARLY not dealing with what Facebook thinks is obviously a massive melanoma somewhere hidden because I’ve been so careless over the course of my life, I might as well just take a baby step and buy a good repairing moisturizer.

If I continue on, it sends me over to ancestry.com. Probably to make me look at death certificates that they’ve already combed of my relatives, and are just waiting to point out that they’ve all died of cancer of some sort probably, despite there being more than a couple who lived to ungodly ages as if in defiance of their personalities that would have stacked the odds against of them ever becoming parents at all.

The whole column of ads really should have ended with a picture of Grumpy Cat. That would have been appropriate!