Life seems to move so quickly now that I have a hard time remembering what I’m doing all the time. I spend countless hours staring at my computer screen every day, but if someone asked me what I was looking at, I would shrug and merely say I was surfing the web. If I actually wanted to find out what sites I was spending my time on, I could check my browser history.
But really, that seems a little pointless considering the Internet is creepier and more invasive than an online sex offender.
Not only are websites taking careful note of everything we do online, but also we get all that web history regurgitated back into our faces in the form of irritating advertisements. And by irritating, I mean more irritating than younger siblings who incessantly bring inconveniences into our lives.
I can’t argue that most the stuff I do online is significantly important. The truth is, it’s not at all. And even when I do something online of slight significance, I get reminded about it for weeks.
I recently booked my plane ticket home to Denver in a few weeks using Expedia, and now Facebook, Yahoo, and every other site finds it important to inform me of hotel deals throughout the Denver area. Why would I ever need a hotel room in the city where I live? I never would, but I guess the Internet came to conclusions about me a bit too quickly.
This is the trend about 90% of the time. Every few months I make purchases on GNC.com, which is an online health store. I buy the same multivitamin and protein every time, and then get advertisements in all my browsers for unknown supplements that Arnold Schwarzenegger probably wouldn’t even take.
I will however, give the Internet slight credit for knowing what I’m interested in and choosing appropriate advertisements. But like I said before, the Internet actually isn’t that smart, and is instead just regurgitating lots of the information it finds about me. I have a pretty normal amount of personal info about me on my Facebook, including political views, schooling, birthday, music, TV, and movie interests, some quotes, and a few other interests. This doesn’t seem like much, but considering the accuracy of pertinent advertisements, maybe I’ve been sharing too much about myself online.
The world is strongly motivated by business, and sellers capitalize on the copious amounts of private online info in attempt to find buyers. While in cases this is efficient marketing, the majority of the time its solely annoying. But even beyond the annoyance, it serves as a punishment to our loose concerns about online privacy.
