Targeted Ads
A few years ago, I was having lunch with a group of friends when one guy started to complain that he’d recently started receiving ads on Facebook for butt plugs. Most of us began howling with laughter and explained to him that for the most part, ads we see online are targeted based on what we’ve googled, social media accounts we follow, etc… Bottom line, if he was getting ads for butt plugs, he’d probably been looking for them at some point. Nothing to be ashamed of buddy! Just order them!
The frequency of targeted ads has only grown since then. We built this very website using Square Space, and now all the ads I get on YouTube are for Squarespace! Siri, Google, Facebook, they’re all watching, waiting and listening. Get out of my head internet!!!
The moment I found out I was pregnant with Lola and used an online due date calculator, I began receiving ads for diapers and sponsored posts for strollers. These were overwhelming, but tolerable because for the first time in a long time, I had hope that I’d soon be holding my baby in my arms and would need these very items. They weren’t out of place, they were my future.
Fast forward 9 months later to when I was being told my baby had died, my future looked very different. No longer did I need a stroller or diapers, but instead I was searching for funeral homes and infant urns. Funny, there weren’t any ads popping up for those.
Given my world had crumbled, I was hardly functional so the last thing I was doing was scrolling websites or social media on my phone noticing ad content. It wasn’t until about a week after delivery, during a fit of rage against the universe that I unsubscribe from all the pregnancy groups I’d joined and noticed all of the baby related adds still flooding my social media feeds and web browser add space. It was too much to deal with at the time so I deleted all of my social media accounts and returned to my grief.
A few months later, I decided to log back onto the ol’ internet and again was inundated with baby ads. Like just fuck off already. It had been months!!! Couldn’t my accounts just reset and give me an ad for whatever the hottest new gadget was!? No. Apparently not.
The traumatized and bereaved were not in the minds of the marketing mavens who designed the targeted ad model. I’m sure there are others who have had very different losses but who have also been retraumatized through ads. Hit by a car? Check out this fancy new suburban! Without the ads, life is already full of reminders of the futures we lost, we really don’t need the barrage of reminders. We are already spending most of our time online trying to dodge the landmines of pregnancy announcements, birth announcements and generally posts about happy people living happy lives unmarked by grief or trauma. To this day, nearly a year later, I am still asking Facebook and Pintrest to hide adds because they are “too personal” or “too sensitive” and I’m over it.
So, to the overlords of the targeted ads, this one is for you -
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
My baby is dead.
So, fuck you!!!!
Emily xo