Context Is Everywhere #2

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In Today's Email  ✍️ Short-Short | 📺 TV | 🎙️Podcast

An Ad is Not Served, It is Force-fed

“What I’m telling you is that I clicked on it by mistake,” I told the woman on the end of the phone call. She said she was in Mountain View at the Facebook headquarters, but I didn’t believe her.

And what I’m telling you,” she said in a thick accent, “is that I don’t really believe it was a mistake.”

I think we were both surprised she said it out loud. We had been skating around the sentiment for close to 50-minutes. I suppose she lost her patience in the fierce heat of Mumbai.

“What I mean to say is," she continued, "whether it was on purpose or not, our algorithm takes all of that data equally into account. The advertising algorithm does not discriminate.”

“Well,” I said, "that's exactly the problem. Now I'd like you to change it.”

“Change the Facebook algorithm?“

"Please."

“Because you clicked on a digital advertisement for an adult male nightgown?”

I still cannot say for sure how the ad was clicked. Regardless, from there I was ushered into a dark world from which even Facebook itself apparently could not extract me. The website that sells said nightgowns is so goddamn well-optimized that traveling through its funnel– from product page to checkout– was beyond my control. I’m only human, after all. In less than two business days the nightgown was delivered to my door and so gorgeously packaged that even I couldn’t resist opening it and buying another. What followed was an algorithmic journey through adult sleepwear items related farther and farther still from my original purchase. Each item growing progressively distant from its origin; my powers to resist buying them becoming equally out of my control. I was no longer being served these ads as much as I was being subjected to them. Somewhere along the way– where exactly I cannot recall– I was placed into a demographic so targeted and despicable I would never be allowed out. I had been transformed from a thinking, feeling, man, into a male between the ages of 24-35 likely to purchase voluntarily-worn diapers. 

“Are you wearing the diaper now, sir?”

“Of course I'm not.”

“According to data from your Facebook Home Assistant, we disagree.”

📺 Younger is a welcome break from "prestige" TV. It's the most authentically televisiony TV show I've watched in a long time. Its premise is so outrageous– and stretched so goddamn thin– that watching it becomes a thrilling, enraging, absorbing experience. Created in 2015 by Darren Starr (Sex & The City, Emily Goes To Paris and Cares Only About Herself Just Like People In Real Life Do), it's a throwback to a time when the only thing that separated the old and the young was knowing how to use a hashtag. Great couples-show. Great for taking a bathroom break and not caring enough to pause. It also has Hillary Duff. [30-mins, dramedy, 7-seasons on Hulu].

🎙️I hate Dax Shepard's podcast with the same passion that I love his character on Parenthood (shouts to my boathouse guys). I'm sorry, Dax, but your podcast being in the top-10 doesn't count if you only book celebrities. His interview with BJ Novak turned me around. They both get honest, vulnerable, and shucks– they're beloved celebs for a reason. The whole ep is a great insight into the awful reality of trying to get famous, and then actually being famous. I hope one day to share in their misery. And Dax's confession about his relationship to Vince Vaughn is just **chef's kiss** 

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Michael Weber is a writer and private misinformation reporter for a wealthy, illiterate, family. If you received this email, you signed up for his newsletter at some point. If you'd like to stop receiving them, please unsubscribe here.