Facebook's free, slightly annoying personal shopper

The internet, like television, is an entertaining advertisement mill.  Nowadays, I'm sure even grade school students understand the concept that the more popular a website or television show is, the more companies are going to want to advertise around it.  Unfortunately, the internet didn't go the way of Super Bowl Sunday. 

     Since the Super Bowl is one of the most watched televised events in our country, the advertisements are better and funnier, and we hold them to a higher standard. 

     One girl I know got semi-excited about watching the Super Bowl with her boyfriend last year, and she told me, "I'm there for the commercials, and hopefully a scandalous halftime show. I've got my laptop, so I'll be editing my MySpace during the actual game."  But unlike the Super Bowl, which has nowhere near as many viewers as social networks have users, sites like MySpace and Facebook fail to have amusing and engaging advertisements. 

     The other day I was actually at a computer and logged into my MySpace profile, an amusing distraction that I haven't had time for in a while.  The first things I noticed were the advertisements.  With the hectic beginnings of midterms approaching, I've just been keeping up with my BlackBerry applications, and those are advertisement-free.  But after being logged in for the first time in a long while, I took notice of the advertisements, but probably only because there were three advertisements for weight loss products. 

     Brazilian acai, hoodia, and "Are you fat!?" were bombarding my personal billboard space.  My only reaction was, "Hey Tom, why do you think I'm fat!?"  I was talking about it all day and to any unfortunate soul who would listen.  I'd say, "MySpace thinks I need to lose a few; does your page constantly try and sell you miracle diet pills!?" The answer I usually got was no.

     I absolutely had to figure out why MySpace thinks I'm fat.  After about 10 minutes of lying awake in bed that night, it came to me in a vision.  I envisioned this grouchy computer nerd sitting there in the sad glow of his monitor screen thinking, "Well…if she were thin, she'd proudly proclaim it in her stats. Let's try and sell this insecure girl some hoodia."

     Most of my friends fill out the details section, but the only people I know who display "More to love!" as their body type have an abundance of personality to love.  I've never actually had a big-boned friend  select the "More to love!" option as his or her body type.  Personally, I leave my details section without many answers (no stranger needs to know how tall I am, how I would define my body type, and whether or not I drink and smoke), and  because of this, what I'm now calling the "advertising engine," assumes that I am overweight.  The advertising engine works in mysterious ways, but on Facebook it is much simpler and less insulting. 

     Facebook has been trying to get me to buy a "Big Lebowski" t-shirt for years.  A while back it was urging me to buy the new Death Cab for Cutie album, and yesterday it was enticing me to check out some new singles matchmaking site. 

     From what my simple mind can gather, someone decided to design a program that scans all the words and information on your profile, and after creating a list of key words for advertisements, the program then matches the ads to the words on your profile; the end result being advertisements targeted to your very own personal tastes that display just for you. 

     The social network advertising engine is effectively your very own free personal shopper, but it's quite unfortunate that we can't have reciprocal conversations with this personal shopper.  If the advertising engine came to life, and  manifested itself consumer-savvy self as a really chic lady trying to get me to buy everything I've never had the foresight to want to buy on my own, I would tell her, "Well lady, if I wanted to lose weight I'd buy a gym membership.  I won't be caught dead in a t-shirt I didn't find at Urban Outfitters.  Thanks for letting me know there is a new Death Cab album — I'll steal the popular tracks off Limewire later, and about  that matchmaking service …I don't think so."