Good morning. Hello. How are you? #794
Amazon ads, Twitter ads, movie reviews, quarantine continues
Good morning. Hello, there, friend. How are you? I am good. Don’t feel sick, but still positive, still stuck down here in my sick cave. Emma pointed out that this really was poetically necessary, what with me writing GMHHAY as a pandemic journal for, oh, three years now. Would be kind of a cop out of a pandemic journal if I never actually got sick, wouldn’t it?
On that note, I was talking to Lisa, the editor of the GMHHAY book, and she is up for doing a volume 2, so that is exciting. We’ll get that started in the new year. I couldn’t do it without her, she has a special knack for knowing which parts of these endless words are wheat and which are chaff. Editing in the more universal, holistic sense, not just copy editing. She is irreplaceable.
I was chatting on the WITI Slack group and Guan told me I should me I should buy a gas detector. I didn’t know they made such things but realized that was a good idea, because I am paranoid about gas and really want to get rid of my gas stove and get an induction one but at the very least I can get a gas detector.
So I go to Amazon and look for the one he recommended and I type in “GasKnight natural gas detector” and… jesus. Amazon ads are out of control. The entire first row is ads. The entire second row is ads. The first “organic” result is on row three, under the fold, and it is only one row, four items. The fourth row is sponsored, and it says “HIGHLY RATED Sponsored | Based on star rating and number of customer ratings.” What does that mean? Like if you’re the most highly rated item, but you don’t pay them, you don’t get listed? Fifth row: Sponsored. From then one, every other row is sponsored. It is insane. Absolute garbage. And of course it’s like this for every product, and of course half the products aren’t even what you were searching for.
I mean, I know I’m in advertising and all, but can’t people just chill? Everyone goes on and on about Amazon’s advertising machine and how they are taking on the duopoly and blah blah blah but it is unsustainable. There is no more room. And why would you even pay them for an ad when all you’re doing is sharing space with, like, literally fifty other advertised products? Oh because if you don’t pay, you’re not gonna show up at all. What a racket. Literally.
In any case, I didn’t buy my gas detector from them anyway. I really need to redouble my efforts buying shit from other places instead of Amazon. Thank you, Shopify, for making the checkout experience on the rest of the web tolerable.
Poor Shopify. Stock really took a beating this year.
At least Mr. Beast named that mountain after them. That was perhaps the weirdest shit I have watched while stuck down here in quarantine.
I think I’m near an inflection point between Twitter and Mastadon. Twitter seems dead, Mastadon is slowly coming alive. I had a nice chat with Damon Krukowski yesterday about the April 3, 1991 Galaxie 500 show at the BU Walter Brown Arena, so that was pretty exciting. One thing I’ve noticed is that as people I follow on twitter announce their Mastadon handles, often I think “nah, I’m good,” and I don’t follow them on Mastadon. The whole thing is acting as a bit of a follow reset and that is good, it’s healty. The balance of whom I follow is moving away from tech and vc bros and even Very Online Journalists (though I can never quit Taylor) and toward more artists and musicians and that is very nice.
That ad at the top of my Twitter feed was intolerable. I blocked every account that was behind each of the ads that were served to me there. I even blocked @apple. Then they served me another ad from @appletv those sneaky monkeys. I blocked that too.
Eventually, though, it just… stopped serving me an ad there? Did Elmo realize this was a mistake? Did I make my outrage known to the robots? Are other people still getting an ad at the top? No idea.
Ads, man.
Hi. I work in advertising.
I swear. I am trying to make ads better. It is a long climb, though. Long climb.
Anyway. Let’s do our tv and film reviews of the day.
I watched an episode of Slow Horses last night because I am a sucker for Gary Oldman going deep into a role but I am sorry to say it was not very good writing. It must be such a bummer for an actor to commit to some project, especially a TV project, and give it your all for, like, a year of your life and then find out it’s not very good. That must be very deflating. We only have so long to live. It has a second season, though, so maybe it gets better, but I don’t think I can bring myself to continue.
I finished the six episodes of Willow on Disney+ and I was not particularly into it. Very Arrowverse. Lotta attractive young adults. Willow himself is kinda annoying, which is sad. I like the drunk old guy (naturally). It did that thing where someone was kidnapped and everyone is supposedly upset about it but they, you know, dance at dances and have feasts and stuff. I always think that’s really weird. Would I participate in a feast if my wife was kidnapped? I don’t think so!
Actually, come to think of it, the same thing happened in Confess, Fletch, which I watched because I loved the old Fletch movies, I read all the old Fletch books, and Don Draper is a great actor with underrated comic chops. I appreciate how ever since Mad Men he has been putting much effort into letting us all know he has great comic chops. And they are on full display in Confess, Fletch, which isn’t quite as good as the old Fletch movies but was fine and pleasant and made me laugh a few times and it was filmed in Boston and that made me all nostalgic and they even mentioned Allston. I am sad Fletch didn’t end up with the AOC lookalike cop lady. It was also like a cool hour forty, so props to that.
The Woman King was pretty bad-ass and a solid epic drama with fantastic battle sequences and great acting and emotional resonance. Nothing bad to say about it except it was 2h14m, and they coulda cut 20 mins or so easy.
After Yang was poignant and moving and a little slow and a little… I dunno. Raised a lot of interesting questions but didn’t really delve into them too too much but I think that is okay? I like the way its universe-building was just there and they didn’t spend too much time explaining it. I absolutely would not want to be in that marriage and it saddens me to see marriages portrayed like that on screen, but I suppose there are plenty of marriages like that in the world, where virtually every sentence out of each other’s mouths is either unhelpful or passive agresssive. Poor communication bums me out. But there’s nothing unreal about it. And it works in the film, even though, like, why? I dunno. That was a little weird.
Got a smoooth playlist for you. Been a while. I am just now realizing there are two Sault songs on it but I don’t have the energy to fix it and man, they put out like five albums this year so that seems fair, props to them on their work ethic.
Until tomorrow.
every morning i hope you’ll announce that you can reunite with emma and jane. even in its milder form, COVID manages to disrupt so much.
switching gears, i was so excited for Slow Horses and couldn’t get thru the first epsiode 😞 i feel better than you don’t like it either, so many folks have told me that i must watch it…
How do you feel about ad blockers? Do they work on Amazon? Or, you’re in advertising so maybe ad blockers are the devil...?