Obsequious Bouffant

I received an e-mail about a a going away party for a post-doc who's moving on. What was most interesting were the ads that gmail displayed at the side of the message -- I like to click on the links, the advertisers have to pay, and I never purchase anything. One of the links took me to a site that earnestly explained how to end a friendship. At first I thought it was some absurdist joke, but who would pay to have people read a joke? The article, hosted on a site called LifeScript.com, went on for better than five pages.

Walking home I decided to see what advertisements I could conjure by sending myself strange e-mails. I started with this message, "I have an obsequious bouffant." with a subject that was the same as the title of this post. There were several ads for surgical scrubs (??) and one for hairstyles for different face shapes. What was most interesting was that the hairstyle ad was a link to a page also hosted by LifeScript.com. Now, I'm not the most with it guy, so maybe LifeScript is in the midst of going supernova, but I've never heard of them. Further, the link didn't take me to a page relating to obsequiousness or bouffants, rather it was a result of a search of LifeScript.com based on the keywords, 'face-shape' and 'hairstyle'. 

The whole thing got me thinking that the ads Google displays aren't chosen based on the content of the e-mail alone. I suspect that Google is beginning to form a profile of me based on all the e-mail (and, perhaps, use of other Google products) and is choosing advertising based on that. 

Creepy, huh?

On an unrelated note, I found this '50s ad for thorazine via Boing Boing.