Just Say No

Episode 9 in which we learn something from Facebook.

So, ignore what I said before.

You know who you are.

When I first signed on Facebook, it used to annoy me with the ads it chose to shower me with in the ever present sidebar.

Diets. Hearing Aids. Hair loss.

Then it got to know me better in whatever sneaky logarithm fb, Google and other Net spammers use, and started offering ads closer to the mark.

Oh my dear, sweet fb, if it were only that easy.

Then, I discovered I had an opinion and clicked through some of the ads. Voila, fb knew me better than my own mother.

The Zombie Apocalypse and Dr Who joined the touts marching up the sidebar.

Oh no, all is revealed. I am exposed. Now my pool of fb friends know what they might have suspected. I want to shoot at the undead and go on trips with a floppy-haired, cutie-pie Time Lord. Or Daryl.

I feel so naked.

Last summer I had a horse experience that stuck with me and once I was loosed from the throes of I may buy a horse, I still clicked fb pages that displayed beautiful horse pictures.

And the sidebar changed to this.

And more of the same.

No longer was I a deaf fat bald woman in need of a career. Or a fan boy.

I was a horse person. A horsemanship fellow in need of saddles, boots, blankets and beautiful, beautiful horses. A cowboy.

Aha, she said.

So, I clicked and clicked and clicked and the sidebar filled up with equine temptations of every sort.

Which made me smirk and revealed an obsession of another kind.

Oh, they still throw a diet ad in once in a while in case I'm getting too big for my boots. But one new selection on CLICK IF YOU LOVE DARYL DIXON, eliminates that.

And here, at last, is my point. This is what those in journalism call BURYING THE LEAD.

As I read the news online, the stories I'm offered range from interesting to scary to WTF. I've decided to try my anti-fb-get-to-know-me trick out in the real world. The real world in this case being the online ether of the Internet.

Which is not the real world, I grant you, but it is one step closer to the real world than Facebook.

I will not click through to a story, any story, to read about that family who have made having no class pay big bucks.

I will not view any picture of any part of anybody's baby bump.

Maybe my Huffington Post sidebar will fill with stories about economics, women's rights, environmental improvements or Norman Reedus biographies.

If we stop supporting the horse's asses by tacit approval, maybe we'll get to see more of the horse.

That's my theory anyway.

Have a nice day.