I have a friend who’s alcohol consumption has gotten out of control. Me and his other friends/family are planning an intervention and so I’ve been doing a lot of research/reading on the topic.
NEVER and I mean NEVER have I seen so many fucking ads for alcohol in my LIFE. Instagram? 15 ads in a half hour of scrolling reels. YouTube? Ads. Google results? Ads. Twitter? Ads.
It’s fucking everywhere and it’s SICK. I’m researching how to help someone stop drinking and I’m getting inundated with ads for anything from gin, beers, vodkas and more. I can’t even imagine having an alcohol issue and trying to find help for myself with the web being this way.
It’s fucking sick.
I would say the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon plays a bigger role here. Alcohol ads are super common and wouldn’t be surprised if you just zoned them out before.
I am not going to deny that searching for anything alcohol related can increase the amount but I highly doubt it would be by such a large margin.
I searched for husavara images once because we were watching an old b sci-fi movie where they dressed one up with crappy “prosthetics” but didn’t paint it and I wanted to prove that’s what it was.
I got huskavara and John Deere ads all over my socials pretty much exclusively the next day and extremely frequently for a week afterwards. There’s just no way those were there prior to that search. I turned off targeted ads and never saw them again.
I believe op when he says he was inundated with them.
I always second guess this now. It’s a logical argument, but I’ve experienced this ad attack too.
Someone close to me had a medical scare and the entire web flipped from “blah blah buy this crap” to “when I found out I had cancer…” I saw red. It wasnt just me, several other households were hounded immediately and relentlessly.
They had a huge helping of privacy education after that. Browser plugins, privacy tips, and I built a Pihole for their network.
There are no ethics in online advertising. Once you are categorized as a premium marketability consumer (life events like health, pregnancy, and I suppose alcohol/sobriety now) the web turns on you and your close associates.
That year 4 families joined the online privacy and Adblockers forever club.