Spring Break
Facebook ads fail to target student's interests
Kirk Cooper
Issue date: 4/9/08 Section: OPINION
Facebook thinks I'm a bisexual Arab with an STD.
Let me explain.
It started off innocently enough. One day, while avoiding work, I noticed that pictures of drunken women - drunken women in my area, nonetheless - had started making their way into the margins of my Facebook profile.
Even better, the drunken women in these pictures wanted to meet me within the next five minutes. Flattered, but busy, I kindly ignored their serpentine wiles and returned to the important task of counting the tiles on the ceiling (137).
A few days later, several smiling and shirtless men on a beach kindly asked me, from their perch underneath my applications, if I'd like to be in their "gayborhood." Again flattered, but this time confused, I ignored this invitation, too. Instead I chose to use it as a way to meditate on what a great and open country we live in.
And eat a sandwich.
Advertising is a way of life. Advertising is humanity's greatest boon and its greatest tragedy. Advertising is what pays my salary. So I really can't complain when my spam e-mail box is crammed with messages about a part of my anatomy that shouldn't be coming up in polite company.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that soulless, self-aware Facebook robots read through your profile and try ever so hard to tailor ads that best fit who you are. For instance, I noticed that after adding "Arabic" to my interests on my profile, a giant ad for ArabicNightLife.com found its way into my news feed, replete with great deals on the new "Kiss me, I'm a Cypriot!" classic thong.
(Weirdly, Cyprus is part Greek and part Turkish, and neither group speaks Arabic nor is ethnically Arab. But for $14.99 a mug, we can overlook that glaring ethnopolitical faux pas.)
I've made it a hobby of mine to try and figure out which ads match what parts of my profile. For instance, my interest in "working out" yields about a million angry-looking men telling me that I can have a six-pack in six weeks, assumedly by developing one abdominal muscle per week and scowling at a camera.
Let me explain.
It started off innocently enough. One day, while avoiding work, I noticed that pictures of drunken women - drunken women in my area, nonetheless - had started making their way into the margins of my Facebook profile.
Even better, the drunken women in these pictures wanted to meet me within the next five minutes. Flattered, but busy, I kindly ignored their serpentine wiles and returned to the important task of counting the tiles on the ceiling (137).
A few days later, several smiling and shirtless men on a beach kindly asked me, from their perch underneath my applications, if I'd like to be in their "gayborhood." Again flattered, but this time confused, I ignored this invitation, too. Instead I chose to use it as a way to meditate on what a great and open country we live in.
And eat a sandwich.
Advertising is a way of life. Advertising is humanity's greatest boon and its greatest tragedy. Advertising is what pays my salary. So I really can't complain when my spam e-mail box is crammed with messages about a part of my anatomy that shouldn't be coming up in polite company.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that soulless, self-aware Facebook robots read through your profile and try ever so hard to tailor ads that best fit who you are. For instance, I noticed that after adding "Arabic" to my interests on my profile, a giant ad for ArabicNightLife.com found its way into my news feed, replete with great deals on the new "Kiss me, I'm a Cypriot!" classic thong.
(Weirdly, Cyprus is part Greek and part Turkish, and neither group speaks Arabic nor is ethnically Arab. But for $14.99 a mug, we can overlook that glaring ethnopolitical faux pas.)
I've made it a hobby of mine to try and figure out which ads match what parts of my profile. For instance, my interest in "working out" yields about a million angry-looking men telling me that I can have a six-pack in six weeks, assumedly by developing one abdominal muscle per week and scowling at a camera.
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