You Want Me to Buy What?
If you're like me, you get a little creeped out by the notion of targeted advertising.
If you have Gmail, you know just what I mean. Gmai scans one's mail for keywords and then puts up ad banners that relate (in however strange a way) to these words. For instance, if I get an email that contains the phrase "Yankees suck," it will be attended by, say, ads for Louisville Sluggers and Hoovers. It's unsettling.
Then there's the guy who's designing billboards that will change their message depending on what station a car has its radio tuned to. That's just nuts.
We're not just plugged in. They're plugged into us.
Advertising has developed smart bombs, need-seeking missiles designed to activate our own private commodity fetishism.
It makes me wonder, all those emails I get about Megadik and off-brand Viagra: Do they know something I don't? Have there been complaints??? LADIES?
We're surveilled, we're hacked-into. The Ministry of Propaganda for the corporate fascists is no longer just constructing reality, it's constructing tailor-made realities, reflecting and recreating individualized inadequacies that can never be remedied but may be temporarily slaked by purchase after purchase after purchase after....
Christ, Feemus--you're getting kinda paranoid.
Well, I do sometimes get a little on edge about these things. Which is why there was something reassuring this week about getting TWO phone calls from someone trying to sell me a new windshield and a letter in the mail trying to get me to switch my auto insurance.
I haven't owned a car since 2002. It's rather comforting to know that I still have a few secrets.
I think this post started off as a rant against some letter I got from the Southern Poverty Law Fund. I don't know where I went off topic.
If you have Gmail, you know just what I mean. Gmai scans one's mail for keywords and then puts up ad banners that relate (in however strange a way) to these words. For instance, if I get an email that contains the phrase "Yankees suck," it will be attended by, say, ads for Louisville Sluggers and Hoovers. It's unsettling.
Then there's the guy who's designing billboards that will change their message depending on what station a car has its radio tuned to. That's just nuts.
We're not just plugged in. They're plugged into us.
Advertising has developed smart bombs, need-seeking missiles designed to activate our own private commodity fetishism.
It makes me wonder, all those emails I get about Megadik and off-brand Viagra: Do they know something I don't? Have there been complaints??? LADIES?
We're surveilled, we're hacked-into. The Ministry of Propaganda for the corporate fascists is no longer just constructing reality, it's constructing tailor-made realities, reflecting and recreating individualized inadequacies that can never be remedied but may be temporarily slaked by purchase after purchase after purchase after....
Christ, Feemus--you're getting kinda paranoid.
Well, I do sometimes get a little on edge about these things. Which is why there was something reassuring this week about getting TWO phone calls from someone trying to sell me a new windshield and a letter in the mail trying to get me to switch my auto insurance.
I haven't owned a car since 2002. It's rather comforting to know that I still have a few secrets.
I think this post started off as a rant against some letter I got from the Southern Poverty Law Fund. I don't know where I went off topic.
posted by Feemus at
2:09 PM
8 Comments:
It may at least be comforting to know you USED to have a few secrets, anyway.
And you know manys-the-paragraph in my book about this stuff. They are classic vampires, these.
Why am I talking like that?
Feemus, you should have a column at Slate or Salon, by the way. I love this blog!
By
Anonymous, at 3:49 PM
Targeted ads are creepy, more so because they remind me of a science fiction book I read where the ads studied your pupil dilation, skin temperature, etc. to create the image that pleased you best. Thus, the woman in the soda pop ad would morph into your dream girl while you watched.
*shudder* Only a matter of time...
By
jjdebenedictis, at 4:36 PM
Holy Crap, JJ. That IS pretty scary. But it makes me very very curious as to what my dream girl would look like via an advertisement. And how they would skirt the line between interest in the project and interest in the cleavage.
Transmet. Apparently at one point Spider Jerusalem is watching TV when an advertisement Bomb goes off. Despite the warning of his friend or assistant, he goes to sleep and then when he awakes, he has the irrepressible need to BUY shit, specifically the shit loaded into the bomb that his eyes couldn't decipher but his brain, while sleeping, was able to unzip and absorb. Scary stuff.
Also, I listed to a story on Escape Pod, about a future where advertising firms hand deconstructed the proteins that produce Craving, then licensed these formulas to companies such as McDonalds, Target, or whatever. These companies would then hire rogue agents who run around with needle guns, shooting people with these drugs that basically make you crave (like, Heroin-addiction level crave) their particular product. The feeling wouldn't go away till you bought the product.
The Google thing bothers me. But I think thats going to be the tip of the iceberg. Imagine a world where RFID's implanted in licenses or even skin had a range of over 100 feet, so that whenever you entered a store, all the advertisements called up your size, your demographic info, your purchasing history and on the fly created adds, sales, deals tailored to you, all without actually having to interact with anyone. Tracked from moment to moment 24-7, advertisements could FOLLOW you from device to device, surface to surface, until it's message was finished.
Or how about, as a "helping hand" to families about to go into foreclosure or buried in credit card debt. Advertising companies got to use them as Viral Advertising Breeders, seeding all their digital equipment (cars, phones, computers, all provided for free, of course) with aggresive advertising that radiated from their particular loci out into their neighborhoods, jobs, social circles, email groups, etc. Sure, you can keep your house, but all your clothing will now have flexible E-labels that receive and display advertisements depending on your GPS-coordinated location.
sigh...I'm paranoid too, Feems.
Benticore
Out
By
Benticore, at 9:12 AM
I'm glad to know that I have company in my paranoia! "Licensed craving"--that's even more disturbing by not seeming that far out. *shudder* indeed!
It IS science-fictiony--we are being made complicit in the advertizing. It's blurring the us/them line when the ads respond to our desires (hot girls and soda) or our insecurities or our interests or whatever.
I mean, I guess it's just an extension of what's always gone on in the print media--Tiffany's advertizes in The New Yorker, Coppertone advertizes in Runner's Quarterly, etc.
But the technology that allows it to become not just demographic but personal is deeply deeply creepy.
I called for a cab the other day and the guy answered the phone: "Hello, Mr. Feemus. Are you going to the airport today or the train station?"
It's not quite the same thing, but still...get me the fuck out of your computer. Before I get my friend Claud over here with a stake and some holy water and some kick-ass syntax. Then you'll be sorry that you entered my digits. You know?
I never thought about it, Claud--I maybe shouldn't be spilling all my secrets here. Yikes. I'll be more careful once I get that column....
By
Feemus, at 8:09 AM
and by "advertize" of course I mean "advertize."
I am not a good speller.
I make up for it by being cute as a button.
By
Feemus, at 12:18 PM
And I'd say, "cuter."
By
Anonymous, at 3:39 PM
I'll see your "cuter" and raise you a "cutest".
By
jjdebenedictis, at 5:33 PM
Aha! My propaganda is working!
By
Feemus, at 10:16 AM
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