Notes from Maine - 2021/10/17
There are some things that I’m afraid to Google. You search for the wrong thing and then you’ll be getting all kinds of ads and suggested videos for that thing for the next three months. There’s that story about the father of a teenaged girl who went in and yelled at the manager of Target.
He said:
“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”
(This quote lifted from an article in Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/?sh=4b6e09a86668)
Target was just paying attention to what the young woman was buying (certain vitamins, unscented lotions, and cotton balls are examples given in the article). From data analysis, Target can guess the due date of a customer within a week or so.
Anyway, it’s the same with Google, except they know everything. They know what articles I read, what I buy at Amazon, and which videos I spend time watching. They have a very clear picture of who I am. I’ve ranted about this before. Some people think that Google/Amazon/Facebook are listening in on us. To me, the scarier notion is that they have no need to listen to our conversations. They know what we’re talking out just because of all the other data they have on us. Trying to predict and influence buying behavior, these big companies have perfectly modeled us. All the information they have is freely given. They don’t need to steal it.
In fact, depending on how you’re reading this email, Google has already scanned it and they might use it to target you in the near future.
Oh well.
I have no way to combat this, but when I Google something that I don’t want to show up in my upcoming advertisements, I always open a different browser in “Incognito” mode. I’m sure it doesn’t help. Maybe I’ve eliminated a couple of clues that big tech could use to pinpoint me (browser signatures, cookies, magic pixels, etc.), but there are still plenty of ways to tie the traffic back to me.
I just Googled, “Dry Drunk.” It was a hot topic of a dream I had last night. In the dream, I was talking to another alcoholic and I was suggesting to that person that they look up the term. Honestly, I had never sat down and read the definition, but it turns out that my understanding was accurate. When someone quits drinking (or any addiction, I suppose), they can ferret out the root of their issue and attempt to resolve it, or they can just quit and keep all the triggers and symptoms of an addicted person. In AA and other programs you might say that a Dry Drunk hasn’t “worked the steps.”
This is all controversial—some people don’t like this categorization of different types of sobriety.
I suspect that I was a Dry Drunk for years. I quit drinking when I was young. Based on the destructive force that alcohol was in my life, I realized fast that I had to make a choice. After a few tries, I made it through a week, a month, and then a year of sobriety. I stayed dry enough to fold it into the definition of myself and then it was a fact of my existence. There was no triumphant moment when I conquered the desire to hide in that fog. It’s like balancing an egg and then slowly backing away. After a while, you’re afraid to even look at it, for fear that it has silently toppled.
Hey, Google? Are you listening? This email isn’t a request to show me ads for addiction centers and crisis hotlines for the next three months, okay?
Do you think it worked?
It has been a long time since I had to fret over drinking. Given enough time, I think the impulse is just easier to control. I’ve realized that I’m fully capable of facing the world without hiding under a blanket of alcohol. I’m hoping that Google understands that as well.
