Advertising The Truth

“What in God’s name is that?” My husband was looking over my shoulder as I scrolled through Instagram stories. I put my finger on the screen and paused. It was, well, I think it was a Kegel exerciser. I mean it was either that or something that to exercise your bum from the inside out, I couldn’t be certain. What I was sure of though was that I wasn’t going to click on it to find out. Husband was non-plussed, “why are you looking at that? “. I tried to explain but he’s not a man for Instagram, and he just walked away as I explained that my phone was profiling me. “You must have searched it” he said as he shuffled away. But reader, I didn’t. I did, though, listen to a woman on the radio talk about the importance of exercising your Kegels a few weeks ago (yes I tried her technique as I drove) and I did tell my mum and sisters about it, back in those heady days of late summer when I could still see them in a garden.

When I got my new phone in January, I made some jokes about the people listening in being really bored by me – it’s a brand that’s been accused of spying. Of course, that was before the world turned to hellfire and I stopped leaving my house completely - they must be absolutely comatose listening to me now. It started as a joke but I didn’t realise just how much every single digital move I made would result in being so completely and utterly profiled that I’m basically being served ads only aimed at 42-year-old women called Jennifer living in North Kildare. The ads are so specific that I’m often shocked and sometimes, I have to admit, embarrassed. It’s basically the inside of my mind being shown to me in ad form.

It did get me thinking though that the ads we’re served on social media a true reflection of our lives in a way that our profiles often aren’t.

We all know our phones are listening to us and that apps that we download are harvesting data that is often sold to third parties. There’s plenty that we could do about that if we were so inclined but companies are hoping that most of us are too lazy to turn off our microphones and take enough of an interest in our digital security to protect us from this virtual espionage. The result of this laziness is that we end up with ads for things that we wouldn’t want anyone to see.

My ads are currently a mix of mattress toppers, botox, wooden toys, kegel exercisers and Iceland (the supermarket, not the country) because I’m very tired, am very tempted, am organising Christmas, that woman on the radio and because I just got a new freezer and have spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the things I’d like to put in it.

I’m not particularly careful about what I put out on my social media. My Twitter is basically just me making quips about politicians, the radio and the Late Late into a void. So far, so middle-aged right? My Facebook page has long been abandoned and gets the very occasional child update or holiday photo. I mean who really uses it for anything other than looking up people you went to school with or snogged a million years ago, but Instagram; Instagram is where I live. I don’t have a highly curated feed. Nothing is the same colour or the same filter. My stories are generally just me losing my mind while cooking the 14th meal of the day or working alone in my basement and my feed is just once a week or so cute picks of me, my kids or my and my kids. See? Boring.

But even though I don’t chronicle every minute of every day I still find myself scrolling way more than I should. As I flick mindlessly through stories I’ve started paying more attention to my ads and I’ve begun to wonder what everyone else’s are like.

Does everyone else portray an image of a woman who loves fashion but gets ads for very unflattering but hugely comfortable granny nighties? Do other mums, who obviously love their children very much, fantasy Google full-time live-in nannies and so get served ads for potentially bankrupting childcare services? Do other women think casually about botox but end up down a rabbit hole of facelifts and procedures and so have to look at ads that combine cosmetic surgery and your small children and offer you a tummy tuck.

Now what we google in the middle of the night or after two glasses of wine follows us around the internet never letting us forget that we’re not the well put together, have-it-all-in-hand women we’d like everyone to think we are. But what would happen if our ads became embedded in our feeds? Would it make the internet a more egalitarian place? That super cool stylist? She has persistent verrucas. The fabulous interior designer with the amazing kitchen? Dyno-Rod ads every single day.

Would seeing inside people’s Google search history actually make us feel better about ourselves as we realise that no matter how curated their feed, they’re falling apart just like everyone else?

I nearly had a breakdown a few months ago when I realised that I hadn’t been alone since last January and I almost panicked booked myself a night away in a hotel. A local lockdown put end to my fevered escape plans but an ad for the hotel suite that nearly was, pops into my Gmail every single day, taunting me. “You could have had a bath and a glass of wine and room service in peace” it sings to me. ‘F*%k you’ I sing back each day as I delete it. It was making me feel even worse until I reframed it and now, every time I see it I wonder how many other women have the solo hotel room taunt them and I smile at the thoughts that we’re really all the same and just want to have a bath in peace.

Jennifer Stevens, November 2020.