So I play these games, and all games seem to have ads. I keep app tracking turned off so they can’t customize and send me down some weird psychological rabbit hole. But apparently that just means I get the default human package, which includes ads for bras, women’s garments, and just about anything else you can imagine.
What I’ve noticed, though, is that ads come in waves. It’s like the algorithm has seasonal moods. The current wave I’m seeing? Those ab crunch machines — the ones that stimulate your gut and promise to make you exercise while you’re scrolling on your phone. Because apparently the modern fitness plan is: don’t change anything about your life, just vibrate your stomach while doomscrolling.
Another one popped up today: a guy talking about how he’d been listless and out of shape, not caring, sitting on the couch. And yeah… I identified with that part. Then he starts talking about this product that gave him energy and made him want to go do all sorts of things.
And that’s where they lost me.
Because I remember being in that mode before — tons of energy, wanting to do everything — and also feeling wildly anxious that I wasn’t getting enough done. That restless, never-finished feeling. Honestly? I kind of like being able to know what I’m doing, do it, and not constantly worry about all the other things I’m not doing. Calm productivity beats frantic productivity. So… hard pass on the miracle energy.
Then there are the ads for games that proudly claim they contain no ads. These are often delivered via two-minute unskippable ads. I’m sorry — how exactly am I supposed to believe you? Your entire business model, as presented to me, is “interrupt people with ads.”
And then my brain took a hard left turn, as it does.
What about food? Stuff we eat every day without thinking. What if one of these things turns out to have some bizarre long-term negative effect? Take cinnamon. I love cinnamon. But what if, two centuries from now, aliens show up — and we’re advanced enough that they can talk to us — and they’re like:
“Yeah, so… if you guys hadn’t been eating cinnamon, you would’ve advanced three centuries earlier.”
And we just have to sit there, holding our little cinnamon rolls, realizing spice was the thing that held back interstellar civilization.
Anyway. Those are today’s random thoughts. Modern life is strange, advertising is stranger, and I’m choosing nervous system stability over vibrating ab machines and miracle energy.
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