Facebook ads fail to target student's interests

By: Kirk Cooper

Posted: 4/9/08

Facebook thinks I'm a bisexual Arab with an STD.

Let me explain.

It started off innocently enough. One day, while avoiding work, I noticed that pictures of drunken women - drunken women in my area, nonetheless - had started making their way into the margins of my Facebook profile.

Even better, the drunken women in these pictures wanted to meet me within the next five minutes. Flattered, but busy, I kindly ignored their serpentine wiles and returned to the important task of counting the tiles on the ceiling (137).

A few days later, several smiling and shirtless men on a beach kindly asked me, from their perch underneath my applications, if I'd like to be in their "gayborhood." Again flattered, but this time confused, I ignored this invitation, too. Instead I chose to use it as a way to meditate on what a great and open country we live in.

And eat a sandwich.

Advertising is a way of life. Advertising is humanity's greatest boon and its greatest tragedy. Advertising is what pays my salary. So I really can't complain when my spam e-mail box is crammed with messages about a part of my anatomy that shouldn't be coming up in polite company.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that soulless, self-aware Facebook robots read through your profile and try ever so hard to tailor ads that best fit who you are. For instance, I noticed that after adding "Arabic" to my interests on my profile, a giant ad for ArabicNightLife.com found its way into my news feed, replete with great deals on the new "Kiss me, I'm a Cypriot!" classic thong.

(Weirdly, Cyprus is part Greek and part Turkish, and neither group speaks Arabic nor is ethnically Arab. But for $14.99 a mug, we can overlook that glaring ethnopolitical faux pas.)

I've made it a hobby of mine to try and figure out which ads match what parts of my profile. For instance, my interest in "working out" yields about a million angry-looking men telling me that I can have a six-pack in six weeks, assumedly by developing one abdominal muscle per week and scowling at a camera.

My minor in Spanish pulls up ads for volunteering at orphanages in the Dominican Republic. The fact that I am listed as male automatically brings up offers for $5 Xboxes.

These things make sense, and while it's a nuisance, I can understand the logic behind stereotyping me. Market research confirms that stereotyping is not only fun, but it works. Being half Mexican and half Anglo, I'm surprised I don't get ads for sombreros and bathtub moonshine.

But this morning - hand to God - the bond of trust was broken. I woke up completely baffled to see the following ad on my profile:

"Lonely? Have herpes? Come to the largest dating site for people with herpes! As featured on CNN.com."

No. No. NO.

I do NOT want to date anyone with herpes, and I don't know why the advertisers at Facebook would think otherwise.

The only thing that shows up on my profile even remotely related to herpes is the name "Enrique Iglesias," and that's just because doctors can't figure out how to kill Enrique Iglesias, either. They can only prevent outbreaks.

Yes. Even though it masquerades as a social networking Web site, Facebook is really just a giant swirling toilet bowl of ads. We know. MySpace is the same gimmick. And as a generation, we accept this charade because it allows us to post compromising photos of ourselves for our future employers to see.

It also helps us to get around those pesky restraining orders when stalking love interests.

But if you're going to judge me the same way my first dates do - by looking at my Facebook profile and trying to find something we have in common - get the technology right, advertisers. Palladium may be the new titanium (buy it now!), but I'm more than just a tennis fan. There's more to me than my quotes from The Brak Show.

And for the record, I do not have herpes.

Kirk Cooper is a journalism junior from El Paso and is assigning editor for the NT Daily. He may be reached at kmc0191@unt.edu.