And Facebook. Yes there is a correlation and I’ll get there eventually. I hope. Facebook and Mark Z have been lambasted for privacy issues and basically selling your darkest secrets to the world. Although I am a truly brilliant Boomlennial, did anyone really think all those targeted ads were just popping up randomly?? I don’t even think FB was trying to hide that it is a data-seeking machine that almost screams at you to tell more…. I have taken a quiz or two (or twenty) to find out where my doppelgänger lives. Or what my manfriend’s tie length says about him. (All true). Silly stuff that is fun and games until it’s not. The blatant information cultivating surveys don’t even try to sneak in the back door. You are asked ‘what are twenty things no one knows about you’ or some other data beg. People answer. And strong arm their friends into answering with some threatening language alleging you really don’t care about me if you don’t play. The ads just start popping. Red lips you say?? Try this gorgeous color that Melania also wears. George Clooney does want you. (Also true). Join this dating site. Yet Mark Z was grilled by grand-standing politicos who didn’t seem to quite understand what Facebook is, and MZ was cleaned and shined and used his best serious voice while trying hard not to roll his eyes. I did it for him. Geesh. Maybe because I work in a field that is data driven, I know how little privacy I have. Unless a person is totally off the grid without a phone or address and eating berries and wiping with leaves, everything/everywhere/everyevery is tracked and pretty easy to buy. While MZ took the heat, the other gazillion apps wiped their brows. You might think it’s the beginning of the end, but more like the middle of the end. Quietly quietly churning through data. Which brings me to The Four Food Groups. (Bet you forgot tsk tsk). FB had one of those little quizzes asking what one thing could I give up. Choices: coffee, chocolate, cheese, wine. Noooo I cried! More choices!!! I’ll give up chicken! Tastes like chicken. Beef! Gives me the meat sweats. Fish! They are cannibals that eat their own and taste like it. What is FB trying to learn from me by digging into my modis operandi?? I didn’t take the survey because sadly my will to live would have gone with it. But it probably would have benefitted me somehow because I actually like targeted marketing. Let someone else do the leg work. Here’s a tip I learned too late. If you are looking for sporting apparel, don’t type in Dicks. That can never end well….