My own complicated relationship with Facebook is very much public knowledge. I was struck again by how weird a thing such a platform is when I opened 'my news feed' to read posts by friends which seemed to me, a boy from the South who was taught that the only proper way to play one's cards is as close to one's chest as possible, to be so personal that I found it embarrassing to read them. (But of course I did.)
In my own journal I wrote that such posts seem more properly to be journal entries than news, and that although perhaps one should always tell nothing but the truth, it is probably neither necessary nor helpful always to tell the whole truth. Besides, how one sees oneself is seldom truthful.
Also in my news feed was a post saying that Brian Acton, founder of WhatsApp, says to delete Facebook: 'If you want to have ads thrust in your face, go to town.'
When I have wanted to quit Facebook, it has never been about the ads. The ads are almost always the best content on the platform. Ads are probably, as McLuhan claimed, the only real American art form. I much prefer them to the angst and anger that so often appears in friends' posts.
More important than their artfulness, I would suggest, is that the adverts are a really useful kind of data about me. In the great debate about data, I am pretty near the 'no data is private' camp. I mean, one might like to think that one's Social Security Number is private, but the US government long ago violated the terms of use with which it was introduced, and without sending anyone an email explaining the changes.
Facebook, Google, Amazon, and I, are all in the business of trading data. And so are you, dear reader. Do I need to explain this statement? I think that I won't for now, but instead present this blog's central thesis: targeted advertisements are a mirror of one's desires, desires one sometimes even hides from oneself. They are data that can provide clearer understanding. But, as is so often true, we want to kill the messenger. In the famous case of Target sending adverts for items needed by pregnant women, it was Target who was targeted as the meanie. But the girl who received the adverts was pregnant.
You may have watched, as I did, the Netflix movie The Great Hack, which is billed as some sort of expose of Cambridge Analytica's use of data. What did Cambridge Analytica really do that was so heinous? They recognized the real desires of a nation which was intent on hiding those desires from themselves. CNN had told us that we were kind and gentle, which got more of us to watch, so they could charge more for their adverts.
Ah yes, but advertising is turning us into a nation of consumers, right? I was amused by the coincidence of two posts on one friend's news feed. 'We are no longer bound together by religion, but by vacuous consumption addictions' followed close on the heels of a quote my friend attributed to Upton Sinclair about the difficulty of a man's understanding something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. My friend is a priest. So far as I know, the number of five star reviews of iPhones by verified purchasers is rather higher than the number of any reviews of heaven by verified purchasers.
Of course we are consumers. A great accomplishment of the modern industrial society is that not only do we have enough food to consume (remember, those who don't consume starve) but that we have many other things to consume as well. Great books, trashy art, skinny jeans, ear buds, dildos, soy milk, hymnals, iPhones, the list could go on for a very long time.
So, dear reader, the next time you have an ad thrust in your face, ask not what the ad is saying about Facebook, but what the ad is saying about you. (Insert here your preferred quote about the value of truth.)
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