Facebook’s Targeted Ads

Don’t you love these things?

I pulled up my profile today, and FB plopped in this on the side to greet me.

The title was “Flabby 27 year old?”

What’s funny is that below each ad, you can click a link that takes you to more ads. I got curious. Turns out, that ad above doesn’t say “27 and Overweight?” when you look there. I think that’s because you can report inappropriate ads, and that might look a bit like a condescending tagline. So, on the ad page, it just talks about energy drinks.

They certainly feel justified in calling me chubby on my own page, however.

Some of the other ads I’ve had were for “Coeds” or “Gay and Single in New York.” Obviously, the first one would presumably take you to pornography or things of that nature. I really don’t want to speculate on the other one.

The thing that bothers me is that these ads are obviously targeted at me because Facebook knows my age, sex, and relationship status. I mean… that’s a bit intrusive, I feel. Not to mention that I’m straight like a machinist’s edge (queue “straight pride” fistpump). So, they certainly missed on orientation.

But the real humor in the situation, to me, is that if you were to use these types of inflections in your workplace, you’d be fired in heartbeat. If I presented someone a card insinuating that they were fat, or asked if they were interested in a homosexual encounter, or proffered free porn (or things of that nature) they wouldn’t be able to get me out the door fast enough.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I really don’t care. If that happened to me in the workplace, I’d probably just laugh. But American culture is declining toward a situation where in ten years we’ll have to hand someone a note asking for their signature of permission before we can wish them “Good Morning!” I mean, you can’t really do or say anything publicly anymore. Not anything with meaning at any rate. I think this is why all our politicians seem so fake. They aren’t able to actually talk like real people without being lambasted for it. I’ll get into that later.

Advertising though… it’s a bastion of free speech and expression, even if what it expresses is dumber than a box of hair.

So, what are the stupid/inappropriate ads you’ve had targeted at you?

Playing with Soft Focus…

Messing around with some shots I took a while back.

I wanted to try something different. I had some pictures with some softer light in them, and wanted to try to accent the delicacy of the image. I know… that’s a bit artsy fartsy coming from me, but hey… it’s worth a shot.

So. Here’s what a normal image I output looks like.

And here is after I used a “Soft Focus” action in Photoshop.

It’s a subtle difference, but I like it.

Here are the rest of the ones I took. I really like the little magnolia.