You should know me better by now, Google

J-Walk, one of 8,000 blogs I read daily, posted an entry with a link to Google Ads Preferences, which endeavours to “make the ads you see on the web more interesting” by tracking your cookies and guessing at your interests and demographics.

Here’s what Google thinks it knows about me, with the wrong bits crossed out in red:

Hovering over the little question mark after the last item reveals the text “based on the websites you’ve visited, we think you’re interested in topics that mostly interest men.” Which is probably true. Sexy ladies and sci-fi. Sexy sci-fi ladies. Taking shit apart. Computer nerdery. I’m pretty girly for a man, though.

Anyway, I’m also interested in accuracy, categories, lists, not having any privacy and repetitive activities. So I made a few corrections:

And now… I’ll go back to not looking at any ads in the first place on account of running AdBlock.

I don’t take (pathetic) bribes, not even on Twitter

And I don’t work for free. (Although, to illustrate my point I will be breaking this rule a teensy bit and giving away some free and undeserved attention.)

Down with this kind of thing:

MTV wants me to advertise MTV and ZYNC. They want me to spam my Twitter followers and Facebook friends. They want me to subject myself to a deluge of marketing. On purpose. They want me to tell you that I like it.

Do I look like a bitch? Then why you try to fuck me like a bitch?

This isn’t a good bribe. There is approximately 0.0000001% chance of any real payoff. You want me to annoy and to be annoyed for (almost definitely) absolutely nothing? I do believe I will pass.

I believe it’s true that everyone has a price. But if I ever do sell out (and as a big fan of Andy Warhol, it’s one of my ambitions in life), you can be damned sure that you won’t be buying me so fucking cheap. Free is way the fuck too fucking cheap. Tweets aren’t worth much, but they’re not worthless. And you know this if you’re trying to trick me into selling them to you.

I do not “RT to win”, and if you need to use this kind of persuasion to get me to promote your product it probably sucks eleventy-seven penises.

I’m all for shameless self-promotion. I’m promote things I’m actually interested in all the damned time. But my personal endorsement is expensive. Even my “this is awesome, *winkwinkIknowyouknowI’mdoingitfortheprize*” endorsement. Fuck the fuck off. If you want me to contribute to your brand recognition, you’re going to need to cough up.

And my dear followers… don’t be Twitter whores. Have confidence. You’re worth enough to be classy Twitter escorts.

“U” instead of “You” is the new “eXtreme”

This Kotex commercial has been making the rounds because it’s all snarky meta-commentary on how most feminine hygiene products have nothing to do with what they’re selling. Right. Because no one actually wants a commercial that says, “Put this in your cooze, it will plug things up for awhile.” — link

I do. That’s why I use O.B. I don’t want the flowery white spandex dreck, and I don’t want the the flowery white spandex dreck is dreck dreck. I don’t want pink, pearly applicators. I don’t want hip and trendy, brightly coloured applicators that come in edgy black boxes instead. I just want a wad of cotton with a string on it to shove up there. I think this commercial is even more retarded than all those other retarded tampon commercials. It’s for those dumb shit women who are still dumb as shit but think they’re savvy and feel superior when really they’re just not quite as shittily dumb as most other dumb shit women, meaning that they are at least slightly superior, I guess, but not superior enough to be so smug about it. I think that’s the target market they’re going for. Does that demographic have a more concise name? Teenagers? And actually, I’m not going to embed the damned thing. If I do, the terrorists will have won. If you don’t know what I’m talking about already, have fun searching for tampons on Google… Actually, try Jezebel. There’s probably a post about it over there that would make me hate the universe at least 10% more (which is why I stopped reading that dreck). Anyway, they’ve been advertising this junk in this way in at least one or two other countries for a few years, and it wasn’t very ground-breaking then, either. Something cheesy about a beaver.

(Haha, cheesy… beaver… I smell a new Monistat campaign… haha… smell… wow, this is only going to double my vagina-related traffic, isn’t it — and pretty much 90% of my traffic is vagina-related).

Okay, bored now.

How to Blogetize Your Money

How to Make Money With Your Blog. Blah. SEO. Blah. Monetization. Blah. Boring. Lame. Gay. Gay gay gay gay super gay.

Here’s the only tip that matters: have a blog that doesn’t suck. Then make money as an afterthought. Preferably by supplementing your excellent content with more excellent content, in a form that people might potentially pay for.

Or just do as everyone else does… Have an entire blog entirely about making money with your blog, for other people with blogs about making money (with your blog). Have fun with your little optimization clusterfuck of optimal lameness, and keep your shit off of the rest of the internet. Thank you.

I dunno. Do you really want readers who are lame enough to stick around as regulars to read your PayPerPost BS, anyway? I don’t like lame readers. I don’t have a terrible lot of readers, but the ones I do have are typically not idiots, or at the very least, are smart enough not to make stupid comments. I could never tolerate the kind of reader who might actually believe that I was motivated to try out such and such a software package on my own, or that I’m seriously looking into a vacation at some dumbshit resort. Or worse, to know that it wasn’t the case, and read with interest anyway. You dopes with sites like this might not be lying, but at the same time, you certainly don’t come off as genuine, and reading your textual diarrhea makes me textually vomit (as seen here).

Bleh bleh. Fuck, I can’t wait until the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own stupidosity. Does anyone visit any of those sites with any regularity, other than people trying to do the same shit? Oh, wait. I might be doomed to deal with it a little while longer, until people smarten up (riiiiight). Because while you’re looking for regular readers to visit on a regular basis and comment with regularity (and they will — but only because they want the regular return traffic), what you really want is organic traffic. In other words, hits from people who are probably looking for something other than your dumb shit site, but are too dumb to find it, and miss their target. In which case, your entire website is a giant hunk o’ spam. Shit they weren’t looking for, and don’t want. They might stick around, because like attracts like, but the ones that click your ads are looking for a way out. Hopefully one that leads them to what they were looking for in the first place. Please delete. Your niche-garbage is polluting my internets with stupid. And ugly.

I have one freakin’ block of ads on my site, and I use it to cover the whoooole $5 that my hosting costs (in fact, I’ll probably start taking it down after I reach that point each month), and I really do hope that the majority of you are using an ad-blocker, because really, I only want the people searching for vagina and fucking vagina and penis fucking vagina and gay penis fucking vagina (what?) etc. to see the darn thing. If I knew that any of you regular readers were stupid enough to move their mouse-cursor anywhere near it… (hm, is it against the rules to tell people not to click my ads? I’ll have to check into that…)

I liked the internet better in 1994.

How about we start calling this shit what it is, though. If making money is the first thing on your mind… if you’re picking a “niche” specifically because you think it will earn you cash… if you’re optimizing things for search engines first and regular, intelligent readers second (or as often seems the case — not at all)… You’re not monetizing, you’re blogetizing. And I don’t like you.

Watching TV. It has commercials.

So Dove… Are you saying that I don’t possess “real beauty” because I’m above average height, below average weight, and young? Who’s going to campaign for me, huh Dove? I feel so excluded…

As for you, “The Learning Channel”… Life lessons: collect them all by watching TLC. Or alternatively, by getting a life.

You might get no cards, you might get AIDs

I’m getting an awful lot of hits lately for the search terms Uno Attack AIDS. I’m the number one result, hurrah. Apparently the commercial has been featured on VH1’s The Best Week Ever, and so, welp, here’s a video clip of the commercial for you guys, since it’s what most of you showing up here seem to be looking for:

And here it is on YTMND, in case you want to see it five hundred times in a row.

P.S.

The real lyrics are:

Hit the launcher
Tempt your fate
You might get no cards
You might get eight

Happy Generic Holiday Season

I know several people (including my husband) that work at Starbucks, and I’ve been told by them that the word “Christmas” is off-limits this year, and that “holidays” has been suggested to them as an alternative. Indeed, itsredagain.com, Starbucks’ holiday website, doesn’t include the C-word anywhere (except where it’s been submitted by users). The whole campaign is based around the slogan “on with the tradition”. However, they’ve slipped up. Sean brought home some food in a Starbucks paper bag, last night. The text printed on it includes the phrase “suddenly, like the flipping of a yuletide switch”. Hm. Maybe archaic synonyms for Christmas are considered acceptable? Or maybe Starbucks has decided to celebrate a pagan form of Yule this year? Starbucks, you are fail! Oh, whatever. Don’t use the word Christmas. Fine. It doesn’t make your red and greeny, holiday tree-y, Nutcrackerry, candy caney, twinkling starry, wassailingey holiday any less Jesusy. Who do you think you’re fooling, here? Is anyone about to mistake a red and green Generic Holiday for blue and white Hannukah? Diwali and Ramadan are both over. Chinese New Year isn’t until the end of January. So I’m not tricked. And I’m still terribly offended. Terribly. And I’m still going to boycott you. But only because I hate coffee. And excluding any free food friends or family might bring home from work.