Category: Advertisements

I’m used to seeing ads for the “I am from Wisconsin, but I live in Missouri” t-shirts that indicate that I’m a Packers fan or a Milwaukee fan or something.

But I got this one:

The Milwaukee Braves are juuuuuust a bit outside my lifetime.

My oldest baseball card, though, is a Del Crandall Milwaukee Braves card from about 1952 that I probably found when I was living in the projects; its corners are rounded and I think it’s taped together. But that doesn’t make me an Atlanta Braves fan. And I’m not sure when Facebook tossed my closet to review my baseball card collection.

Perhaps Facebook listened when I wasn’t talking to it, as I’ve started getting more masculine outfit frames for t-shirt ads compared to the shoes and jeans layout:

To be honest, I wore a layered look a lot in my youth with generally a collared shirt over a t-shirt (and a classic fedora to top it off).

But I’m a man now, and unless I’m going to a sporting event or athletic event, I wear a button-up collared shirt. Although I’ve been wearing jeans and sneakers as I rehab a perpetual sports injury these days, so the full Grant is mostly off and the fedora gathers dust.

But, yeah, t-shirts are not a part of my official wardrobe, really.

But I bought a couple from Facebook ads, so I get ads for t-shirts all day long.

Facebook shows t-shirt ads in the feed in the following formats:

• Just the shirt.
• A celebrity holding up the shirt, wherein the celebrity probably held up a green shirt and t-shirt vendors paste anything they want on it.
• A shirt lying on a surface with a pair of shoes and maybe pants, like this:

  

What is that all about? Are they expecting people to coordinate their cheap t-shirts with shoes and whatnot? Come on, what kind of person does that?

Just take whats at the front of the drawer and go about your business like a man. Perhaps I have answered my own question.

Ha! I kid, but in a way that could be true. I mean, Facebook recommended this group to me:

Given that I’m in only a few groups (several related to my martial arts school, a couple related to multisports/running, a couple and the Legion of Metal Friends), I can’t figure out why the algorithm spit out this particular suggestion.

Unless Facebook on my beautiful wife’s phone heard me mangling some Spanglish and reported it to home base.

Ha! I kid. Or did I say that to cover my actual, raging paranoia?

Facebook has offered me the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy a tactical coin purse.

You know what would be better? Using your fanny pack, which has more range.

So Facebook, which thinks I like two things in the world (virtual athletic events and t-shirts), pushed this into my feed yesterday:

And I wouldn’t have known who that was except that I watched the Clint Eastwood movie Kelly’s Heroes in which the Donald Sutherland character Oddball (depicted on the shirt) appears. And I watched it, on DVD or videocassette in a device not connected to the Internet.

But I probably had my phone nearby….

At any rate, I did not buy this shirt. To be honest, although I bought the Scipio t-shirt, I am generally not in the market for them as athletic events keep my drawer bursting with them, and I have been relying upon them a lot for birthday and Christmas presents lately, so I probably won’t buy more than a couple a year.

Meanwhile, I get the ads. Also, Facebook seems to think I have a thing for otters, but really, I was just talking about Pauly Shore (the Weasel) movies recently. Well, okay, Encino Man, because it also stars Brendan Fraser. So who knows what the Facebook AI thinks?

All it knows is that it can extend advertising reach if I make fun of it.

I mean, the picture is of an attractive young woman, and the ad is something something reverse mortgage, which is a (foolish) divestment strategy for people who own their own home:

I mean, look at her; she’s too young to own her own home, and if she inherits her parent’s (single person possessive because this is the 21st century, you know; intact families are so 19th century) home and does a reverse mortgage on it, she’ll get an annuity for fifty years spinning off a hundred dollars a month in income. So, yeah, this is not addressed to young people who own their own home.

I mean, I suppose the message if you click through (not me, brah; I’m already getting enough senior-themed advertising as it is) might be your kids won’t inherit the house, but, come on, your kids don’t look like models. I mean, mine are strikingly handsome and do, but we’re talking about your kids, gentle reader, and they probably look like you (mine do not; they take after their beautiful mother).

So, yeah, this is all about the sugar babies. Or just another instance of ads putting an image of an attractive woman in them to catch your eye. Alright, my eye. I plead guilty. Because I look for pictures of ads with attractive women who really have little to do with the product/service being teased. Also, I like to look at pictures of pretty women.

But I know this t-shirt is not 266 years old.

That’s before the t-shirt was even invented.

Also, I know, I’m misquoting the film in the title. But you knew what I was alluding to anyway, you purist.

I got this in the mail today:

When my sainted mother called me both names, I’d best heed!

A mail merge that somehow picks up both the first name and the middle name field or a miskey where both were put into the first name field? Not as binding.

Although my mother was the one to initially sign me up for AAA when I got my first car lo, those twenty some years ago. Yes, I was a late driver.

When I moved to the St. Louis area in the middle 1980s, when I introduced myself to the other children, they would invariably say “Like the taco?”

So I won’t be ordering this shirt any time soon.

I mean, not only was I scarred for life when my last name was confused with that of the chain, but I was further traumatized in learning that the chain name was misspelled in the Motley Crüe book The Dirt as my last name. In a not exactly encouraging passage.

Every couple years I see something about someone trying to revive the brand, and I think, here we go again.

Perhaps I should instead think people will ask, “Noggles? Like the blogger?” instead.

Oh, and Facebook? Although I’ve bought a couple of t-shirts from ads on your site, I probably won’t buy any more since the one I ordered a month before my son’s birthday and took two months after I paid for it to ship (it’s actual arrival yet to be proven). So I’ll not, thanks.

And to be honest I’m not really sentimental or nostalgic for anything in St. Louis.

I guess we can ascertain whom the models on the new Kohl’s flyer are expected to resemble.

I don’t tend to shop at Kohl’s because I don’t want to look like faux royalty.

I shop at Walmart so that I’m only out ten bucks when I inevitably ruin my clothing.

Good on ya, gentle reader, if you have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s these people, who are of little consequence and really only represent limey hereditary Kardashiania.

I’m actually not sure if that’s true or not, as I did not click through on this ad:

I get it: it’s stock photography, and it doesn’t really offer anything but a sort-of pretty face to draw your attention.

But, still. I put some effort into the stock photos I select for various things (which are few and far between). But I am not a bot.

On Facebook, I frequently get advertisements for a local dentist in Spanish, but today I got my first ad with Russian in it:

The Russian says “Visit us at.”

I am not entirely sure how it would have gotten inserted into the ad copy. Perhaps it was the RUSSIAN BOTS ON FACEBOOK.

The New York Times has taken to advertising to me on Facebook.

One of the largest papers in the country is not exactly what I would call “independent” journalism. I’m not even sure who would be “dependent” journalists would depend upon in this formulation if not a full-time job with a prestigious newspaper.

Also, “Every Fact. Every story.” oversells what the paper actually delivers.

Seen on my Facebook feed:

Yeah, that’s some upbeat news right there. I’m not sure any of the words in that site’s name are true.