Concerned About Aggressive Advertising That Exploits Your Personal Info? Stop Shopping!

Okay, so this is a bit over-simplistic, but as I continue to get bombarded with news about Facebook's invasions of privacy and how they render us helpless saps who just throw our money at any company that happens to show up in a newsfeed, I just keep thinking . . . this is completely irrelevant to me.

But then I have to wonder, because, you know, social pressure is REAL! Should I be more concerned that Facebook has carefully mined all of my online communication to determine highly sophisticated ways of manipulating me into abandoning my retirement goals so I can buy, say, a new sofa? I mean, I did just test this:

I went to Facebook (an ever-more-rare act these days), and started to scroll. I eventually came to the first unsolicited advertisement, for a sofa. Now, granted, this test example is actually quite creepy, because, as it turns out, my wife and I have been talking about buying a new sofa for about six years. I don't recall either one of us crowdsourcing info on sofas, so maybe Facebook is listening to our dinner conversations, but that's a different post. My point is, with all the hubbub about social networking and privacy over the last six months, it really seems that the big conclusion is that as we willingly give up our privacy, we end up seeing advertisements for things that companies think we want to buy today.

Source: How To Not Buy Anything

My test above is ironic, because I truly do not believe that I saw an advertisement for a sofa due to some sinister surveillance technique. We have been discussing a new sofa ever since our two children decorated what is perhaps our most prized possession with several years of spit-up. At first, like a lot of the trappings of baby raising, we thought the interesting, camo-like pattern on the sofa was kind of intriguing, and personalized in a cute way, as if our babies tagged the living room furniture in their own unique way. They were barely out of the larval stage and already expressing themselves artistically! A few years later, nope, its just pretty gross. Especially when our rich neighbors show up on occasion. Come to think of it, I have never actually seen a neighbor sit on our sofa, but they probably freak out a little internally when we put a video on for whatever kids have congregated during an extended happy hour that started out on the sidewalk.

My point here is that my wife and I are not like most people, I get that. We put our money into these things, in this order:

1. Food, mortgage, utilities, etc
2. Savings for emergencies and early retirement
3. Travel and other fun family activities that usually involve camping in some way or another
4. Tearing parts of our house down and rebuilding it the way we want it
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. Replacing things like spit-up covered furniture.

We are frugal, to say the least. But what is very ironic about this is that, along with the fact that we likely have the lowest income of any of our friends or neighbors (my wife and I are both in public education), we often feel as if we are the wealthiest people we know. When I say that, what I realize I mean is that we experience very little stress in our lives. The stress we do experiences tends to involve only what is immediately in front of us; a tired kid having a meltdown, an aging parent who is requiring some additional hands-on care, someone forgot to close the egg box and the chickens are eating the newly sprouting vegetables. You get the idea. Some of these stressors are real, and have an impact, but they are the kinds of things that everyone deals with. To me, being wealthy means taking advantage of a modest but steady income to live in ways that do not add unnecessary stress.

But back to Facebook and those creepy ads that seem to be more fine-tuned than a carnival psychic. I don't wish to comment here on the deeper aspects of our privacy. I think everyone should take stock of what they are doing online and assess the impact it might have on them. I am not naive to the fact that we are gradually moving into uncharted territory with things like law enforcement using facial recognition. My purpose here is on a more practical level, but perhaps one that more people truly need to consider.

Right now I feel completely immune to Facebook's use of my personal information because I never, ever engage in impulse buying. When I take my kids shopping, and they inevitably ask for something (anything!) on the shelves of crap lining the check-out lane, they no longer whine when I say, "no." They have to ask, and they already know the answer. This is just one of thousands of ways that a child's brain is wired to cause slow, steady insanity in their parents, but its fairly mild and probably has less of an actual impact than the slow, steady march of low-grade Alzheimer's. (Stay on track, stay on track!) If you are in any way prone to impulse buying, or retail therapy, or any other type of non-deliberate purchasing of anything other than necessities (with travel and entertainment being necessities when they are deliberate), then you are likely falling prey to Facebook's advertising and privacy policies.

The real kicker here is that no matter how up-in-arms the public gets about online privacy and advertising, it is completely irrational to think that it is somehow going to stop. I knew it was inevitable when I saw Minority Report in 2002, with Tom Cruise being spoken to directly by billboards. But if you remember that film, Tom Cruise did not immediately stop trying to save the world, or whatever else he was doing, to go buy a new pair of shoes. Nope. Tom was focused on his own life goals, and he knew that every cent he made was another nano-second of retirement.

So, in conclusion, be like Tom Cruise, minus all the weird Scientology stuff. Or with, your call. But for God's sake, stop spending your hard earned dough on a new sofa, just because Joybird said they will build you a new one on Facecrack, when the old spit-up blanket works perfectly fine to hold your fat ass in place while watching the tube! And if you must upgrade the sofa, do it because it is actually important to you and not because of a creepy, well-timed ad. As I write this I am simply amazed that I even feel compelled to write it. It is so basic. But the public/media uproar tells me it is needed.

If you are concerned about the fact that you gave up your privacy to help make Mark Zuckerberg rich and famous, and are now helping him get richer and famouser, but clicking through the ads he is feeding you, maybe the solution is simply to revisit your spending habits. If you really want to stick it to Old Zuck (actually, you technically can't, since he already stuck it to you so long ago that its way too deep up your butt to ever hope to remove it), set up a system where every time you think of buying something being pushed on you on facebook you deposit the value of that item into your retirement savings.

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