For the last six months, I have gotten a bi-weekly call from LifeAlert. Someone I know (they won’t tell me who, so I can hunt them down) was nice enough to think that I, at 34, might be interested in the services LifeAlert offers. It turns out, LifeAlert has a lot of services, getting taken off their call list doesn’t seem to be one of them.
Tonight, I got a LifeAlert sales call. A few minutes ago, I opened Facebook and found all the ads on the side of the page were for baby clothes. So, the universe seems to think I desperately need LifeAlert for my imaginary baby who obviously needs non-imaginary clothing.
What?!? I have no idea why Facebook decided to target me for baby clothes – a waste of advertising dollars, I don’t do baby showers, baby gifts, or anything else with the word “baby” in it and I’m convinced pregnancy is contagious, so I avoid pregnant women as much as possible. Now, I did watch a video about a baby otter at Shedd’s Aquarium, but I’m pretty sure that the otter does not want nor need clothing and I am certainly not responsible for purchasing said items. Just out of curiosity, what size is “baby otter”?
Netflix is very confused by my video viewing habits and decided that it’s top pick for me tonight was Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. This confusion seems to stem from my watching a horror film yesterday, Turbo tonight and following that with some reality show about aliens that is narrated by William Shatner. These three things made Netflix’s algorithms decide that Bill & Ted was the next perfect movie for me. Only, I’ve seen it and I hated it. I have no desire to watch it a second time (I’m a child of the ’80’s and ’90’s, of course I’ve seen it… along with Wayne’s World and Clueless).
Amazon is also very confused about my reading habits. When I opened Amazon today it said something like this: Based on your reading preferences and recent browsing history we recommend Blah, Blah by Nicholas Sparks. Um, Amazon, you seem to be malfunctioning. I’m sure he’s a superb writer. I am just as sure that I will not enjoy his books. My last browsing preferences were books on demonology and the Reader’s Digest hard backs published in the 1970’s-1990’s and are now out of print. They include titles like Mysteries of the Unexplained. How does Nicholas Sparks fit in with demonology and unexplained phenomenon? Did he write a book about a demon who mutilates cattle until the heroine falls in love with the man of her dreams? Actually, I wouldn’t read that either… too much romance…
We could talk about Barnes & Nobles suggestions, but they’re just depressing. The last book I bought from them online was The Rise and Fall of Practically Everybody, before that it was The Encyclopedia of Mythology. Now, it thinks I should be reading books by Danielle Steele. I have news for these people, the closest thing to a romance novel I’ve bought in the last ten years has been the Plum books by Janet Evanovich and I stopped at number 15 (I loved One for the Money with Katherine Heigl).
Since no algorithm seems to be able to figure out what I like, I rarely look at recommendations. I know I’m going to have a WTF moment.
Hadena James 
Lol…those are hilarious “recommendations” for you…you don’t do romance…lol…they do seem to make some odd choices for me too…lol
LikeLike
I think it’s a social experient… If we recommend it enough, we can brain washing her into buying it… Of course, I did buy an in-depth book on demons and demonolgy today and they made more suggestions bases on what others had bought with that book. One was a novel by Sabrina Jeffries. I didn’t catch the title, just that some guy on the cover was topless. Who buys a book on demons and a romance novel at the same time? And how often has it happened that Amazon thinks EVERYONE will be interested in this pairing?
LikeLike