The internet is too clever. If you go over here to a website or something, and do a bit of searching around, you’ll suddenly find that other shopping sites and social media are offering you adverts for the thing you searched for. How do they know? How are they so effectively tracking me around the place? It’s crazy.
Sometimes the suggestions that come scrolling past your face are so uncannily pinpoint accurate that it’s scary. Other times you feel like maybe the algorithm didn’t have enough to go on and it’s making a wild stab in the dark.
Recently on Instagram (follow me if you like, I never post anything) I’ve been seeing the same advert coming up again and again, posted there by some robot working for Amazon who clearly doesn’t have a very firm grasp on what I want to buy. Its headline suggestion is this all-plastic portable bath with a lid. You can apparently poke your head out to look at something on a laptop, presumably while out and about. Perhaps it’s for people who have sudden irresistible urges to take an immediate bath while, I don’t know, in the car park at Sainsbury’s or half way up a hill in the Peak District.
If you then scroll right, the rest of the suggestions are a real mixed bag. There’s a green leather Chesterfield-style chair and a frog-shaped plantpot. However, there’s also a bed covered in Lego studs that you can build Lego models on, and it even has a display area for minifigures in the headboard. Now that’s something I really do want.
8 comments on “Personalised shopping recommendation”
You’re quite a ubiquitous fellow, aren’t you?
That’s not a frog-shaped plant pot, mate, that’s a Pokemon. Your favourite, Bulbasaur, right?
I’m a very ubiquitous fellow. People often remark on it as I walk down the street. “Good Lord”, they say, “that chap’s remarkably ubiquitous”.
There’s also no ‘I’ in ubiquitous. Except there’s two of them. Well, there’s no ‘u’ or ‘us’ in ubiquit… dammit.
I forgot what my point was. Which of these did you want for Christmas? The Bulbachore? You could use it as a very small drinks cabinet.
The Chesterfield arm chair is growing on me, actually. I think I’d go for that. I’d put it next to the drinks cabinet and sit in it while quaffing port. I’ll be so damn ubiquitous.
I don’t know if our future amazon overlords are following our every move, (or if someone has too many collapsible bathtubs in a warehouse somewhere and committed some serios budget to sponsored amazon suggestions) but since you posted this I keep getting recommendations for the very same collapsible bathtub. I even clicked on it to try find out what the fuck it’s supposed to be for, or why it exists, but I was left none the wiser.
You should buy one. Only by taking your first collapsible bath will you understand its charms.
When someone spends a serios budget to advertise their collapsible bathtub we should all take note.
I don’t have any space for one, at least what with Mildred’s chair still taking up half my bathroom, but when that’s gone I’m getting ten (hopefully for £10.10).
But that’s the joy of a collapsible bathtub, you can just stick it in the kitchen or Reuben’s room, or even just pop it out on the lawn so you can have your collapsible baths in full view of all the kids down the hill.