On FaceBook, against my better judgement, but - finding rentals out here you leave no stone unturned, and there are the various groups, local, it is after a fashion a way to keep in touch with my less frequent local acquaintances.
Anyways, these acquaintances, there's always a few that are over-sharing, that's the point, some, 4 or 5 times a day posting a fucking picture of every goddamned sausage they eat, the "filtered" selfies that - if you ran into them on the street you would never recognize them, the lie of the camera that it adds weight when in fact most cameras have been used to hide it. Really, if you've ever tried FaceBook you know exactly who and what I mean.
And scrolling through my "FaceBook News" (Oxymoron?) there are videos, little segways that are designed to amuse or briefly entertain you, keep you on their site in lieu of postings from your friends, viral videos, memes or highlight reels from movies with titles like "WHY YOU DON'T BULLY KEANU REEVES..." and I'm wondering what the fuck up Keanu Reeves is a nice guy and all but I'd hardly call him a friend and why is he sending me this shit is he worried about me bullying him and you watch the reel and it's a dumb-ass collection of nonsense movies he starred in and all the voices are a pitch too high to avoid getting taken down for copyright infringement, it's no longer Keanu Reeves it's "Squeaky" Reeves...
Strange thing is it just pops up, like it's "My" sort of content, my own circle of friends isn't painful enough FaceBook's finding me more? Giving me "Humorous" or "Thoughtful" insights (rarely to never!) into the minds and likes of people it judges to be my peers.
I need to figure out this algorithm. Presumably it's a little more sophisticated than Reddit's formula, which is if you scroll too far they start showing you pictures of pretty girls "2Busty2Hide" and sexualized anime children and then they hit you with the ads for a Therapist or Suicide counselling because, really, if you scrolled that far into Reddit you're probably at high risk...
But todays complaint isn't about FaceBook. You can't really complain about it anyways, I'm just perpetually surprised by it, the whole "Stranger in a Strange Land" Schtick. Complaining about FaceBook is a little like complaining about the government, or taxes, it does nothing, and at the moment I kind of have to have it.
No, todays complaint isn't about Facebook. It's about their fucking ads.
As a kid I bought a "Boney the Skeleton", from the back of a comic book, 6' high, glow in the dark eyes, $1.00. And so I saved up and sent off for it to receive, many, many weeks later after I'd long forgotten - a 6' plastic printed sheet poster of a skeleton with glow in the dark dots that you stuck in the eyes. "SCARY". Not.
My disappointment was profound. I genuinely thought I was going to get a skeleton.
Anyways, an early lesson on advertising and skepticism about the mail-order comics business, which in many respects resembles the internet and in every way resembles FaceBook.
Adverts that popped up in my feed over Christmas included the Astronomia by Jacob & Co., original retail price over $500, 000 US, now knocked off on Facebook for under $50.00 per watch. The ads are shot for shot rip-offs (by which I mean directly copied) from Jacob's promotional material. And then there's the Jacob & Co. Bugatti Watch, with a real working V16 Engine inside...
Why not? The half million dollar price tag reflects it's uniqueness, limited run, why shouldn't China reverse engineer one, knock off a few thousand for a fraction of the price, why, they have entire factories devoted to doing nothing but this!
There were others and I look and kind of want them but ... well, now a lot older and only slightly wiser. I bookmark the links, they've since disappeared. The most likely explanation is that they never existed in the first place. Not on FaceBook anyways, and surely not for $50.00.
Now I'm besieged with ads for a Magic-Tapestry, which you can see here (click here) or here (click here) or here (click here).
See? Real Cool. And a bargain at double the price. And it must be a hot product, look at all the different vendors selling it. Read the comments.
Wow. I'll have to get one. Maybe 2. Perfect...imagine tripping on acid, or mushrooms, or maybe just smoke a joint or hang it in your tent for the next big music festival.
Really, I need to have it. Goddamn it I'm not going to let it disappear on me I'm going to order one right away....
Just right after I do the teensiest bit of research..."Buyer Beware", "Due Diligence" and all...I shouldn't have to do this, really, it's FaceBook, that's all they do is sell advertising, they're a huge company worth billions, surely they vet their advertisers?
But, the slightest bit of sleuthing and you find out that, in fact, it is a complete fraud. That there's nothing like this for sale, it doesn't exist, period, and the whole "Magic Tapestry" thing was a rip-off of some DJ's light mapping, which was pretty cool, but it wasn't a fucking magic carpet and I'm damned sure that these bastards aren't making or selling anything close to what they're advertising, but as long as FaceBook is making money no one's complaining. Not for another 6-8 weeks, at which point the products will start to arrive and the reviews start to come in and all the vending websites will have mysteriously rolled up and disappeared...
You can see where they ripped off their promotional materials here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKwcfDHQx5E
So, I wasn't going to complain about FaceBook but they have one job - know who's paying you - and they're clearly not doing it.