BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles

Subject: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: Fossil
Date: 08 Nov 13 - 02:14 AM

... not only wimmin, but *Asian* wimmin, wooo! At least that's what the current Mudcat ad asks me to do.

Not sure.

Maybe this ad doesn't chime too well with some of the (admittedly old-school) values and ethos of the community around here.

What do the wimmin think? And is there a corresponding website in another Mudcat dimension where Asian Babes are invited to browse profiles of ageing, broadening, white (ish), 12-string guitar players? What might they say?

Over to you lot...

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: Joe Offer
Date: 08 Nov 13 - 02:41 AM

Well, we do have Google ads to pay at least part of our bills. Don't think Google Ads would have something like that, but maybe so...

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Nov 13 - 08:13 AM

As far as I know my profile is private!

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 08 Nov 13 - 10:37 AM

I don't play a 12-string...

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 08 Nov 13 - 10:55 AM

Browsing women's profiles may give a better idea of the size of their 'attributes' than browsing them from directly in front :)

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: gnu
Date: 08 Nov 13 - 01:02 PM

A lot of the ads on Facebook are quite distasteful.

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: Elmore
Date: 08 Nov 13 - 01:15 PM

A lot of the non-ads on Facebook are quite distasteful.

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Nov 13 - 01:52 PM

The ad in the center of Mudcat right now wants to know how big my prostate is.

I shudder to think what it wants to know about 'wimmin' members.

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 08 Nov 13 - 08:55 PM

Mine currently says I can learn "How To Sing - Really Sing"

Seems appropriate : )

Dani

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: Charmion
Date: 08 Nov 13 - 09:46 PM

Funny ... I don't really see the adverts, never did.

It's a good thing Google & Co don't know, or they might cut the Cat's wage packet.

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Nov 13 - 10:18 PM

It must have been something to do with the way the discussion in the thread was going. I dread to think what some of them might throw up as relevant ads. Better watch what we say and how we say it. It's not just the Security that is spying in us...

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 09 Nov 13 - 08:51 AM

All I get is an offer of 20% off at Toys'R'Us. Do they have anything for the over 60s? (!)

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: GUEST,Ed T
Date: 09 Nov 13 - 09:20 PM

I keep getting the penis reduction ads. They are begining to know far too much about us.

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 10 Nov 13 - 02:06 AM

The Google ads here are very closely linked to what you have recently searched for using Google, so far as I've been able to tell.

When I searched for metal detectors to catch up on current trends for the thread on the subject, I got almost nothing but metal detector ads here for a couple of weeks.

When I tried to help "her" pick a used car, I got nothing but used car ads for a couple of months.

It does make me wonder what strange things others here have been looking for that prompts the targeted ads to be about subjects mentioned.

But maybe those things wouldn't seem so strange if my memory was a little better. At least I'd remember why someone might look for them. (??)

Or maybe I just don't search enough for stuff I already know enough about ??. Or at least stuff I think I remember. (I do sometimes remember things I'm pretty sure I never knew.)

The ads you get here tell what Google thinks you're interested in. They must have their reasons.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Nov 13 - 03:19 AM

JIK is right - he adverts you see here are somehow directed at your particular needs based on your browsing history in order to ensure - er - effective marketing.

Consequently all I get are adverts for vegetable spiral cutters & synthesisers.

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 10 Nov 13 - 03:36 AM

A popular "buzzword" in the tech world (know known more properly as "technical marketing") is "CRM" (Customer Resource Management), closely followed by "Big Data" based on a theory that if you have enough data, even if it contains no information at all, you can draw conclusions about the people you got it from - and make money off of them by using those conclusions.

Personally I suspect the profit comes from getting the data from those who have no information you can harvest, but I don't think they care much about that.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Nov 13 - 06:11 AM

Thing is, if they really knew me they'd realise I buy what I like / need regardless of the hype - so I guess Big Brother isn't watching too closely after all...

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 10 Nov 13 - 08:07 AM

These adverts on, say, Google do make me smile. I've been searching recently for ladies slippers, as Christmas presents for some of my friends. So now dozens of urgent ads for slippers have been showing up, together with thick cardigans and warm throws. But rather incongruously I'm getting ads for Viagra, ladies interested in 'naughty sex' (whatever that involves!) and suggestions that I may not be as well-endowed as I'd like and might welcome some additional width/length. The geeks at Google must have a very strange idea as to my requirements and tastes. Perhaps they see me as a very old lady who is also a sex-starved hermaphrodite with a tiny willie?

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 10 Nov 13 - 12:32 PM

Google - and a number of other advertisers - are sophisticated enough to link the peculiarities of your "friends" to you, on the assumption that you are likely to want the same things as those with whom you correspond. (I'll probably continue coming here anyway.)

You can, of course, cop out with the excuse that "one of my friends must have looked for that" if you want to talk about the bizarre ads you see here.

We, of course, won't believe a bit of your flimsy excuses, but the more considerate of us likely won't make (very) rude comments about your tastes. We might ask "did you find one yet" but that would be only out of our concern for your successful satisfaction of you weird ambitions. (And we'll only discuss them - mostly - offsite with people who probably don't know you - until we tell them ... .)

It has been said that "a bad reputation is better than no reputation at all," although I've thought that applied mostly to politicians.

Being mostly kind and thoughtful, we'll resist ever saying "we know what you've been doing."

John

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: GUEST,Musket evolving slowly
Date: 10 Nov 13 - 12:45 PM

My mudcat.org Google ads tend to be either offering me Bible courses or Amazon links for car accessories. Thus summing up the threads I drift into and my recent browsing history elsewhere. Presently sourcing winter tyre and wheels set.

How does one get photos of Asian wimmin? A link to a replacement wheelbarrow would be useful too whilst I'm at it.   Bloody hole in mine. Trail of soggy compost down the gravel path today. Grrrr..

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 10 Nov 13 - 02:52 PM

LOL John!!

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: GUEST,CupOfTea, no cookies
Date: 11 Nov 13 - 03:29 PM

I saw this thread title and expected it to be Bobert being entertained by gawking, in turn entertaining us with his observations.

I find the ads irksome, particularly the kind that moves/switches/reloads/what-ever-the-heck-it's-called. However, what PROFOUNDLY toasts my Wheaties (tm) was the ad that showed up while reading this thread for

                            "Online College 's"

Seriously? I won't say "how dumb do they think we are?" because this is the sort of mistake that comes up with depressing regularity in things online that SHOULD have been proofed by someone who got past elementary school. The irony of improved technological communication coupled with decreasing literacy and concern with grammar, punctuation and dictionary use, frequently makes me want to break something.

Joanne in Cleveland

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: Fossil
Date: 11 Nov 13 - 05:04 PM

I am becoming profoundly depressed - and would like to make it plain to both Mudcatters and Google algorithm designers that - online - I have never browsed profiles of Asian, or indeed any other sort of wimmin and I don't know why those sort of ads keep popping up on my 'Cat page.

Offline, like most other guitar players, I confess that my interest can indeed be attracted by an appropriately shaped profile... but these days, the interest tends to be theoretical, rather than practical.

And Joanne in Cleveland - I'm right with you on the linguistic incompetence and sheer dullness of intellect that seems to surround the advertising industry these days. Not only the Wandering Apostrophes, a host of other silly mistakes obscure the message and irritate the discerning reader.

Subject: RE: BS: Browsing wimmin's profiles
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 01:10 AM

the ad that showed up while reading this thread for

                            "Online College 's"

Some years (actualy decades) ago, a local university announced their creation of "the first ever school of entrepreneurship."

I noticed a minor discrepancy the first time I saw their TV ad, and watched for a couple of years to see if they would make a correction.

Didn't happen.

Twelve years later, when I returned after several absences, they were still running the identical ad - until after a few weeks someone pointed out to them that they had misspelled it -

        ENTERPERNEURSHIP

I guess it was sort of a "Business School" so it probably isn't too surprising.(?) (They weren't the first either.)

John