"Google-plotzing" by Tom Chiarella

Stories like these are why I prefer men's magazines over women's:

I have a lot of e-mail addresses, which seems to piss some people off, so recently I picked up a Gmail account to unify them. This despite the fact that Google scans every e-mail sent from or received by every Gmail account and slips in ads it thinks you might find interesting and clickable based on keywords. It's old news that Google is creepy. What do I care? I just wanted my seven gigabytes of storage space. Most of my e-mail exchanges lately have been with my business partner about an apartment we have for rent; it doesn't matter to me that Google papers the margins with ads for apartment finders in Boca. I don't really believe anyone is reading my e-mail. And if they are, I invite them to weigh in on whether we should install a new stackable washer/dryer in unit 2.

But I wanted better Gmail ads. I wanted something useful. So I started sending myself e-mails in an attempt to nudge the algorithm toward something I'd want to see. I figured I'd start positive. I sent myself a one-liner: "You are the best!" It generated an ad for a twelve-inch Pez dispenser. Banking on conflict, I replied to myself: "You're an asshole!" producing an ad for a Hello Kitty bracelet. This made me think Google might actually consider me an asshole. So I apologized to myself in the next reply, which generated an ad for a service to learn French.

Read the rest of the story HERE. It's really quite fascinating!