I recently had a pretty big life event occur, so of course, Facebook was the first to be informed.
This turned out to be fairly wise, as many major life decisions can be difficult to spread to everyone immediately and depending on their nature can be down right awkward to discuss. That's not to say that awkwardness was entirely avoided. Thankfully not everyone is consistently glued to their Facebook and actually still need direct human interaction to be educated about the current state of their friends' lives.
For the most part, I was pretty grateful that Facebook was there to aide me and my now ex in a transition that was already quite difficult and extremely long. It meant we didn't have to discuss it with a huge amount of people and were able to keep professional things professional and friendly things friendly, which was exactly what we needed.
What I didn't expect, and what was pretty unsettling was Facebook's reaction. I'm not talking about my personal Facebook community, I mean Facebook, the creature itself. It was no shorter than my very next log-in session after my relationship status had been altered that I noticed my advertisements for Netflix and life insurance had been changed, without any sort of finesse whatsoever, I might add, to available singles web sites.
Really, Facebook? I understand that you're an intelligent series of algorithms that is wired to cater to me and figure out my specific demographic based on what I like and ignore and what precious little information I choose to share with my community (like the status of my current romantic relationship), but by that you should also very well know that I had been in that relationship, unchanged since I first began my account with you in 2008 (and in reality, the relationship actually began long before that) and you're already hitting me with internet dating sites? Jesus, Facebook, have some Goddamn class. Even (mostly) every dude I know laid off the creep factor for a very respectable amount of time. But not Facebook. Facebook has no shame.
While the singles ads have been unsettling (and quite persistent) what's been more disturbing to me is the rapid increase in weight loss tips and weight loss drug advertisements. I should hope most of us now know that it's not just Facebook that can figure out who we are and what we want out of life (or what they would like us to want, more accurately), but it's the whole internet. But that's a
This weight loss business concerned me for a variety of reasons. Having never really been a single adult before, I'm still figuring out how all of this works. Do all single women want to lose weight? Do all men want single women to lose weight? Am I now deemed more vulnerable to the weight loss ploys because I don't have a boyfriend to constantly tell me how rockin' my bod is? Is self-esteem and confidence assumed to only come from one's significant other? Where are the ads that promise me a bigger butt? Why do they all refer to "One weird old tip"? And why is belly fat the root of all evil everywhere? I have so many questions!
I suppose this all came to me as a surprise mostly because I was filled with a myriad of concerns when my life changed drastically. There was a huge priority shift in most aspects of my life. Weight loss was not one of them. Housing. Friendships. Moving. Second guessing decisions. Judgement. Family. Paying Bills. Moving. Division of shit. Moving. Thirty day notices. Heart Break. Moving.
The last thing on my mind was how much I weighed, or which single men were available to me online. In fact it's pretty rare that women with countable ribs or men who post selfies make me swoon for any reason. My theory is that Facebook casts a wide net though, because they did hit one thing pretty right on.
Shoe ads.
Well played, Facebook creature. Well played.
