Writing is like being able to put life into a snow globe. It takes the things that are too big and scary and reduces them into a form that I can put away when I want and look at from a distance. It also takes all that’s good in life and captures it into something I can take out when I want and look at close up and keep forever. It makes the bad things into something I can hold…and the good things into something I can hold onto. Both help so much that I need that little souvenir of life.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

10 Deeply Insulting Ads That Show Up on My Facebook Homepage

  1. Wrinkle creams. These ads have been there since I first signed on to Facebook. But from this very first one, I’ve wondered if there is an actual, human Wizard of Ad hiding behind a curtain somewhere who looks at your picture and decides what you need, or if it’s automatically generated when you enter your birthdate? Either way….
  2. Diets. To throw them off I’ve actually Googled things like “clothing for people who are way too thin,” and “products for really skinny people,” but for some reason they don’t believe me.
  3. Plus Sized Clothing. I may not be minus-sized, Facebook, but I’m not plus either. In fact, size shouldn’t enter this equation in the first place.
  4. Ads about ridding myself of belly fat. Again…you know what you can do with your ads.
  5. Ads for older single men who are looking for faithful women. Who says I want older ones? Or that I’d be faithful? Let’s be fair here. Is my picture appearing on some 30-year-old man’s wall as an older woman looking for faithful men? 
  6. Orthodontics. Really? Bite me, Facebook.
  7. Truly unflattering photos of celebrities. Am I supposed to care that they look ugly sometimes, too? Is that supposed to make me feel better by comparison? It doesn’t. It just kind of confirms for me that you are skanky and low in your advertising practices.
  8. List of suggested movies that I might like. Exactly what about liking “Pride and Prejudice” makes you recommend “Curse of Chucky?”
  9. Free Trucker Schwag. I don’t know what that is, but I bet the wizard who thought I’d like this was the same one who suggested the Chucky movie.
  10. Ads inviting me to join Alzheimer Trials. This one appeared right after I posted that I’d caulked my hair. Which also happened to be right before my birthday. The hair-caulking had more to do with not having a decent and honest handyman than with dementia. I was outside, and caulk was naturally on my work gloves, because how else are you supposed to smooth it down? I had climbed through some bushes to caulk some siding, and suddenly I could feel something WALKING in my hair. And the footsteps felt rather large. Not only am I known for attracting spiders, but I once had a hidden alien pod filled with baby praying mantises hatch in my sunroom after I brought the plants in for winter, and those things are the stuff of which nightmares are made. For one thing, they have necks—which no bug is supposed to have—and they have these robotic movements and little E.T. faces that they tilt just so to give you the evil eye. And then there are the big, green, spikey Popeye arms—like if Popeye fell into a vat of radioactive spinach and sprouted Edward Scissorarm blades from his anchor tattoos—that they hold out in front of them like dukes-from-hell. Praying? Ha. They are ironically holding out their giant green lobster-arms to threaten you like pointy Mohammed Alis with vicious little scythes where the boxing gloves should be. So this was what it felt like was taking giant steps on my head, so naturally it would have been a sign of dementia not to have swiped at it, even if it did leave a big plastic loogie in there that was horrible to get out. Ads for Alzheimer trials? Just because I caulked my hair? And the day before a birthday? Facebook, you are deeply evil.

I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. ~Monty Python and the Holy Grail


20 comments:

  1. You are so funny! I just ignore them. I am driving FB crazy by not filling out where I live. They are trying to figure it out by where my friends live or the pictures that I post where I go on vacation. I'm never telling!

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    1. Love it! Although here's a fun little irony: I took a FB quiz that's supposed to reveal where in the U.S. you should be living based on your personality. Mine said Oregon!

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  2. Oh, Tammy, you crack me up. And you never did say what was walking in your hair just before you caulked it.
    I love Oregon G of C and Joy's trick of not filling out where she lives. Driving FB crazy sounds like a great hobby. I don't, however, want to drive Blogger any crazier than it already is.
    And yes, the day before your birthday, FB should have been advertising bouquets of red roses, strings of pearls, or even $500 electric mixers, to tempt one of your FB friends to buy you some or all of the above for being so young and pretty.
    Luv, K

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  3. Kay, I love your suggestion and agree 100%!! And I swiped that mystery critter so hard, I don't think it would have been identifiable even if I'd been able to find it.

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  4. Tammy--My head-in-the-sink adventures pale to your caulk-and-creature nightmares. I bow down to you...

    (And I agree. Praying mantises? manti? ARE creepy, but not as creepy as goats.)

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    1. Mantises or mantes. I looked it up. ;-} And you're right - goats in the hair would've been worse!

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  5. Well, thank goodness you didn't have a goat walking across your head, or a pod of them hatching in your sunroom. They are not really creepy. It's just hard to look them in their rectangular-pupiled eyes. I had a large praying mantis on my classroom window, right behind my desk, watching me all day. He was a prying mantis.

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    1. I'm liable to have nightmares about hatching goat-pods thanks to you. I hope your prying mantis was on the outside of the glass!

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  6. Tammy, I am still LOL! Like Donna, I like #6, but also #8. I've had "Curse of Chucky" suggested to me too and thought "Now where did that come from?" It must say something about us, but I'm not sure I want to know what.

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    1. I suspect what it says is that somebody over at Facebook invested in Chucky movies. And thanks for stopping by, Ters!

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  7. Oh my goodness, I am laughing out loud. This is hysterical. I can so relate. I get this chick who shakes her jelly belly and tells me how to lose weight in a week. Someone has been spying on me.

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    1. I get the belly-shaking chick, too! I suspect what annoys me so much is that it looks a little too familiar....

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  8. I've been ignoring the ads on Facebook. It seems better that way...

    Pat
    Critter Alley

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    1. Good advice, Pat. Wish I could, but...see above.

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  9. OMG. I will never look at a praying mantis the same way again.

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    1. If you're like me, you'll hope you never have to look at one again, period!

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