DAMN YOU, NEIL GAIMAN.
So I was just going to check my flist quickly before I settled in to write a bit, but in Neil Gaiman's latest post, he'd added some widgets for his Last.fm account. And I've never bothered to pay attention to that site before, but the fact that one of his most frequently-listened-to songs right now was by Brenda Kahn made me check it out. And I ended up signing up for an account. And...man, talk about something that could completely suck away hours of my life.
I've been testing it, playing really obscure bands in Winamp to see if it can identify them. Jetenderpaul, a Kansas City band that hasn't made a record since 2002? Check. Jale, a Canadian group that I think broke up before the turn of the century? Check. The ultimate test: Gone Daddy Finch, a Toledo band that we loved in college 15 years ago? CHECK. I'm freakin' impressed. (And in a weird moment, one of the top listeners for GDF is a guy who lived in my dorm who used to write and perform his own songs. I need to get a tape deck that will connect to a computer to allow me to make MP3s of the stuff he did. The politically active part of my flist would enjoy "New World Order Limosine" in particular - but I digress.)
My flist is so filled with Moonlight posts right now that I feel like I need to post SOMETHING related to Heroes fandom. So...here is something.
A few days ago, I left a perfectly innocent comment on a perfectly innocent post in
aurilly ’s LJ. Here is what I said:
Oh dear sweet Jesus on a stick...this is hilarious. Though it's probably sick that the moment where I laughed hardest was when Micah unexpectedly popped up to remind everyone that he's an orphan now, thankyouverymuch.
Also? This:
Mohinder: Why don’t you come live with me? I’ll never have to worry about Sylar offing you. We can be clueless and loved by a small but passionate subsection of the fandom together
...is totally my new email signature, even though no one I know in real life will ever get it.
And she replied back with a perfectly innocent reply that said:
I wish the writers understood the tiny but very loyal following Lyle has and increased his role. He's like the Boba Fett of Heroes... a tertiary character with an inappropriate following (I actually don't understand the fuss about Boba Fett; I'm personally a Wedge Antilles fangirl).
Now. I glance over from the email that contains all this text, to the Google Ads sidebar. You know how Gmail stores info about emails that all its users receive and send, and displays ads based on words that appear in the email you're currently viewing? The first ad on the sidebar is this:
...which makes perfectly innocent sense, since Boba Fett was name-dropped explicitly in the email. (Boba Fett always reminds me of the poker game episode of NewsRadio, by the way...but I digress.)
However, the second ad on the sidebar is this:
And the third ad on the sidebar is this:
Now, this third ad is actually a link to a site about the guitarist Slash. However, there clearly isn’t any reference in the email text that would lead to keywords like “guitar” or “rock” or even “Chinese Democracy is totally Axl’s fault, not mine, so quit asking me what I think about it”, that might lead Google Ads to think I wanted to buy some heavy metal merchandise.
So, after re-reading my and
aurilly ’s perfectly innocent comments, I can only conclude that so many Gmail users have sent emails including the terms “Sylar”, “Mohinder”, and “slash”, that whenever Google Ads sees the characters' names appear in an email, it now just automatically pulls up ads involving “slash”.
I blame Jeph Loeb.
I've been testing it, playing really obscure bands in Winamp to see if it can identify them. Jetenderpaul, a Kansas City band that hasn't made a record since 2002? Check. Jale, a Canadian group that I think broke up before the turn of the century? Check. The ultimate test: Gone Daddy Finch, a Toledo band that we loved in college 15 years ago? CHECK. I'm freakin' impressed. (And in a weird moment, one of the top listeners for GDF is a guy who lived in my dorm who used to write and perform his own songs. I need to get a tape deck that will connect to a computer to allow me to make MP3s of the stuff he did. The politically active part of my flist would enjoy "New World Order Limosine" in particular - but I digress.)
My flist is so filled with Moonlight posts right now that I feel like I need to post SOMETHING related to Heroes fandom. So...here is something.
A few days ago, I left a perfectly innocent comment on a perfectly innocent post in
aurilly ’s LJ. Here is what I said:
Oh dear sweet Jesus on a stick...this is hilarious. Though it's probably sick that the moment where I laughed hardest was when Micah unexpectedly popped up to remind everyone that he's an orphan now, thankyouverymuch.
Also? This:
Mohinder: Why don’t you come live with me? I’ll never have to worry about Sylar offing you. We can be clueless and loved by a small but passionate subsection of the fandom together
...is totally my new email signature, even though no one I know in real life will ever get it.
And she replied back with a perfectly innocent reply that said:
I wish the writers understood the tiny but very loyal following Lyle has and increased his role. He's like the Boba Fett of Heroes... a tertiary character with an inappropriate following (I actually don't understand the fuss about Boba Fett; I'm personally a Wedge Antilles fangirl).
Now. I glance over from the email that contains all this text, to the Google Ads sidebar. You know how Gmail stores info about emails that all its users receive and send, and displays ads based on words that appear in the email you're currently viewing? The first ad on the sidebar is this:
...which makes perfectly innocent sense, since Boba Fett was name-dropped explicitly in the email. (Boba Fett always reminds me of the poker game episode of NewsRadio, by the way...but I digress.)
However, the second ad on the sidebar is this:
And the third ad on the sidebar is this:
Now, this third ad is actually a link to a site about the guitarist Slash. However, there clearly isn’t any reference in the email text that would lead to keywords like “guitar” or “rock” or even “Chinese Democracy is totally Axl’s fault, not mine, so quit asking me what I think about it”, that might lead Google Ads to think I wanted to buy some heavy metal merchandise.
So, after re-reading my and
aurilly ’s perfectly innocent comments, I can only conclude that so many Gmail users have sent emails including the terms “Sylar”, “Mohinder”, and “slash”, that whenever Google Ads sees the characters' names appear in an email, it now just automatically pulls up ads involving “slash”.
I blame Jeph Loeb.