A few months ago I decided to downgrade my Netflix subscription to save money. The subscription level I chose has non-targeted adverts. It’s annoying, but it’s cheaper.

Cosy in my freshly washed bedsheets last night, I put on Shiny Flakes AGAIN to fall asleep to. The ad breaks got me thinking about how much more susceptible I am to non-targeted advertisements. I thought so hard about it that I struggled to go to sleep.

I was comparing them to the absolute absurdity of the ads on social media sites that APPARENTLY use all of my data to generate ads in my general direction. The only thing I most commonly think when seeing a social media ad is, “WHY DO THEY EVEN SELL THIS?”

---

But I Am A Basic Millennial?

This is not the post where I tell you how I’ve trained myself to become resistant to consumerism because I played Cyberpunk 2077 and I really took on board everything Johnny Silverhand said. Although over-consumption drives me rather mad. WHY DOES ANYONE NEED 132 CUPS? Or 129 DIFFERENT SHAPED ICE CUBE TRAYS?

This is also not the post where I tell you how unique, special, niche and full of whimsy I am, and therefore algorithms completely fail to box me as a person. If you have to tell someone you’re whimsical, you are not whimsical. Other people, in my experience, just other you and call you weird. That’s real whimsy.

Whilst I find algorithms struggle to keep up with my hyperfixations, underneath I am VERY stereotypically a millennial. My living room is grey, for crying out loud. I love Uggs, sourdough, Starbucks coffee, winter hats, fluffy socks, blankets, anything that makes my house smell nice and aesthetic Pinterest-board-looking home items. I have to stop myself from Instagramming everything in Bo Burnhams “White Womans Instagram”. The only thing I do not have is a Stanley cup, but my OCD heard “contains lead” once, and it doesn’t care if it’s true or not – it’s decided it’s too much of a risk.

Have I been advertised ANYTHING on social media related to my basic millennial interests? NO.

---

Jeff Bezos’ Cow

Scrolling Instagram the other day, looking at Over-40 fitness content, perimenopause memes, pigeons, and several thousand Project Hail Mary posts my son had reposted, Instagram advertised what seemed to be a cow to me. I was very confused. DO AMAZON SELL COWS? It looked like a real cow, next to a lady.

I felt compelled to click on it. While my brain knew intellectually that Jeff Bezos probably had not suddenly added livestock to Amazon, I couldn’t stop laughing at the thought that, if he had, some poor warehouse worker had to lug Daisy the cow into an appropriately sized Amazon box.
Come on, Daisy get in the box!
Moooo.

My brain went on, imagining the driver delivering Daisy being delayed, because she ate everyone else’s order. Fortunately, it turned out to be a life-size cardboard standee of a cow. WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT THIS? Why does Instagram think that I would want this?

Then I had to live with the realisation that I’ve now made my targeted ads worse for the foreseeable future, because after clicking on ZERO ads for AGES, I finally clicked on one, and it happened to be of a life-size cow standee. What a load of literal bull crap my feed is about to be.

---

The Rage Bait Paint By Numbers

I understand the whole cow advertisement could have been deliberately weird to get me to click on it. Some ads even use rage-bait tactics, and I have definitely fallen for them. I have also experienced ads that just fill me with more rage than that time my printer would only print pages and pages of a single message, “Connect WiFi”.

The most rage-inducing ad I’ve seen REPEATEDLY on Instagram is vaguely related to art. Instagram does know that I am an artist, it can infer that from my several posted graphite drawings. Apparently, this was enough data for it to generate ads of a paint-by-numbers art kit. It’s not just ANY paint-by-numbers kit though, it’s a paint-by-numbers that include images that appear suspiciously AI generated.

They were quite recognisable to me because I’ve seen these exact SAME images used heavily on WordPress.

In what universe, is a traditional artist interested in AI generated slop? Would you like to paint an image generated by AI trained on enormous quantities of other people’s art, when many artists never consented to their work being used for training? I’ve been posting my own art online since around 2012. It could have used MY OWN and I’d have no idea.

I got pretty angry and went through the website, they go off about the fact it’s so good for you to “switch off”. That’s fine but the images they’re asking me to paint appear to have required the switching on of several data centres.

They even have paint by numbers for kids, so your kids can learn terrible basket-handle geometry apparently – a very important step in learning art. Little Jimmy will grow up painting questionable playing cards, and develop his unique artistic style based on the AI-looking images he painted as a child.

Of course I’ve made it worse again by trawling through the terrible suspicious art of this website. Instagram now presumably thinks it has absolutely nailed it.

---

“Jumping Over Commonly Skipped Section”

Then there’s YouTube ad reads. I have never ever bought anything because of a YouTube ad read. It’s worth getting YouTube Premium not just because YouTube doesn’t play 52 ads per video, but because the “Jump Ahead” feature skips the ad read for you.

It’s very much a relief, especially when that sex toy company has infected every YouTube video I watch with descriptions of vibrating features, touching yourself and sex-positive messaging. I’m asexual and repulsed by the whole thing.

I can be sex-positive for other women, but I have more feelings of desire about this four-hour Theranos video essay than I do about you explaining, in far too much detail, how great this confusing (to me) vibrating flower-looking thing is. Apparently, it’s an “entry level” vibrator. I’m confused. Aren’t they all?

Sex-positive doesn’t mean I want to hear about it on a four-hour video essay about a biotech start up that fell absolutely flat, even if there is a pun I could make here. I just don’t understand any of it, and I do not want to. Thanks. JUMP AHEAD.

Most of the businesses they advertise are American-only anyway, like ZocDoc. It is funny when a British person tries to recommend them. “I really needed an eye doctor fast”. You should have gone to Specsavers, then.

As a Welsh person it just feels like more Americanisation of the internet, especially when a British creator you’re following does an American-only ad read.

---

Bang! And the Dirt is Gone.

I grew up with generic TV adverts. Most of them became permanent vocal stims. “Washing machines live longer with Calgon!”, “Itchy, flaky scalp, relieved by T-Gel”, “BANG! And the dirt is gone!”, “Go Comparrrrrreee, Go Comparrrreee”. They must have done something to my brain, because I’m still pretty suggestible to them.

Netflix generic ads informed me that Bold had a new scent. I was VERY EXCITED about that, my beautifully clean soft sheets are filling my bedroom with Eau de First Day of Spring. I also got the fragrance beads and fabric softener, I fell in love with the products and it gave me plenty of novelty scent dopamine.

Last night, mid Shiny Flakes, I learnt of bin air fresheners, I didn’t even know such a thing existed. We actually need that, we have to take our rubbish down many flights of stairs into the communal bin room. There’s only two of us, so we don’t generate much rubbish. I also eat a lot of vegetables including red onions, which smell ATROCIOUS in the bin. Seriously, why does healthy food smell so BAD after exactly 24 hours in a bin? A pack of three-month-out-of-date biscuits has never done that kind of offence to my nostrils.

That wasn’t ENTIRELY what got me to buy it today though. It was the “Fights up to 99% of bin odours*” and legal had added, ”*Common bin odours only”. I have QUESTIONS. It says it can get rid of old fish smells, nappy smells, but only common bin odours, so what on earth did they think we were going to put in the bin? Petrol canisters full of petrol? A badger? Cardboard cut-out cow poop?

There was also the Flash direct-to-floor I bought today which Netflix also advertised a few days ago. I’ve had an awful problem with Zoflora. I used to use that for my floors, but it’s made them all slippery. I’ve slipped on my bedroom floor twice since I cleaned it. Hopefully the Flash helps me not slip into my room at the speed of The Flash.

I guess what these generic ads have given me that the targeted ads haven’t is usefulness.. AI paint-by-numbers isn’t useful, neither is a life-size cardboard cow standee, but my bed smells heavenly, my bin smells lovely and my floors will hopefully be less slippery.

That isn’t to say that everything on the internet is useless and I’m a generic ad endorser. In fact, social media has probably changed my behaviour in much more significant ways than convincing me to make my bin smell nice. It just wasn’t when anyone was trying to sell me something.

---

GUYS!!! PERIMENOPAUSE PROTEIN MAX™ LINK IN BIO

Forget all of the obvious, “Influencer tries to peddle stuff in increasingly ridiculous tones”. You know, the “OMG GUYS YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHAT I GOT THE NEW LIMITED EDITION VIRAL TOILET PAPER! IT’S IN TIKTOK SHOP GUYS! CLICK THE LINK IN MY BIO! NEW TIKTOK SHOP USERS GET 20% OFF!” for stuff that ABSOLUTELY is NOT viral AT ALL. But there is still a value in social media influence.

There are the perimenopausal women running n=1 clinical trials on themselves. That one lovely lady who uploaded a TikTok video saying how she found protein timing really helped her perimenopause anxiety. She showed herself eating plain eggs for her first breakfast, before later having second breakfast, explaining how when she eats protein first thing in the morning, and last thing at night it really helps. She wasn’t trying to sell me a PERIMENOPAUSE PROTEIN MAX supplement. She was just eating eggs.

I actually tried it, although the thought of eating eggs when I get up is HORRENDOUS to me so I drink protein shakes or eat a protein bar. I was baffled because it did actually help. Now I do that every day. I don’t even know her name or who she was, it was just a recommended TikTok on my For You page.

Then there was the woman on Instagram who showed me proper deadlift technique. I work out at home and never go to a gym so I need all the help I can get. It REALLY helped because she explained the breathing mechanics very clearly and showed herself breathing into her abdomen. I suddenly understood how to brace with breathing.

There’s also the fitness man on YouTube who explained how for someone with long legs and a short torso, which I have, I could get deeper in my squats by raising my heels. I have been doing squats that way ever since and now they’re a million times less wobbly and a million times deeper.

Seeing how other women adapt strength training around chronic fatigue syndrome and hypermobility has been especially useful to me. I wouldn’t be strength training at all if not for that, because I didn’t think it was even possible with my body. I assumed lifting was six days of strenuous training a week. Not two days a week, sometimes one or none depending on my conditions. I wasn’t able to do it all of last week but it’s fine it takes a lot to lose muscle. There is a heck of a lot more resting than I thought between lifting heavy things. Being consistently inconsistent is enough to maintain muscle mass, who knew?

There’s all the fun too, the Mass Effect players continually mentioning Cyberpunk 2077 on social media made me play it, eventually. It turned out to be my favourite game ever. They weren’t giving me an affiliate link to buy it, they were just passionate about it.

When we’re overloaded with EXTREME LEVELS of excitement over VIRAL toilet paper or vitamins or a protein powder SPECIFICALLY FOR WOMEN (because apparently female muscles need collagen instead and pink packaging to build, when collagen isn’t even a complete protein and is inferior for muscle protein synthesis) it can drown out the actually useful Internet influence from regular people just living their lives and sharing their experience.

I wish there was more of this influence on my Instagram instead of life-size cut-outs of farm yard animals. I doubt there is much whey protein in a cardboard cow to be useful to me.

Me, a Millennial, wondering what to post on Instagram :-