When people at parties tell you about the Internet and how it's changed the way we work and live, leading to huge gains in productivity and the freedom of information and overthrow of dictators, I want you to think of the above picture. Facebook is a billion-dollar company that makes money by...uhhh...targeted advertising? Maybe? Does anyone really know? I know you can pay facebook and they'll send your friends a happy birthday cake or whatever, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly the targeted advertising. Maybe people who make the apps have to pay a fee to get facebook to post them? I don't know.
But I do know that there are very few places that annoy me as much with their advertising as Facebook. Sure, there's that mother of 2 who lost 50lbs. of belly fat by taking a pill. That's annoying. But this is at a whole other level.
I've never met the woman with the eye-black and sports jersey who wants to buy me drinks. It's possible that she's really nice, likes sports, and honestly, truly, wants me to have a drink for free because she is charitable and wants me to be happy. But I'm also really sure that thetaoofbadass.com is not my kind of place. It's openly manipulative, slightly misogynistic, and just generally juvenile in its view of human interaction. And I know this within 10 seconds of reading the ad that that's exactly what thetaoofbadass is all about.
I don't want to learn a technique to get girls to buy me drinks. I want to meet a woman I like and trust that sometimes buys me drinks, and who I sometimes buy drinks for, but we mostly just buy ourselves drinks when we want them. And if she likes sports and doesn't care who knows, then ok, and if she doesn't like sports, no big deal.
There's a similar advertising failing with the BeerStache. It's not that something you clip onto the side of a beer bottle that looks like a mustache isn't cool. I can produce my own mustache very easily, thankyouverymuch. It's that Facebook is a place for defining your identity: what you look like, who your friends are, what you like and dislike, your causes, concerns, jokes, videos, and games. And defining myself as 'the kind of person who clips a fake mustache on a beer bottle' is just entirely foreign to my (carefully cultivated) Facebook self-image. Again, I've never met the two young ladies with mustaches drinking beer at what appears to be a rocking party. Perhaps they have many virtues. But I'm pretty sure that we would not get very far in a conversation. (This is what a psychologist would call 'projection' of my personal hangups and distastes onto the blank beer-swilling slates of these two women as an explanation of how they must behave)
And as much as I like ROCKER girls, the dyed hair, Johnny-Depp-in-Pirates-of-the-Caribbean eye shadow, look-I'm-not-smiling-in-my-picture-because-I'm-quirky-and-countercultural expession, and complete lack of a front of a shirt are all signals to me that there is no place in my identity for a complementary part like this, like her. Not that there seems to be a place in my identity for a complementary part like anyone, but you get the point.
As for the MBA in Sustainability, I'd consider myself lucky to one day get a job where my immediate supervisor will have an MBA in Sustainability and will constantly talk about 'best practices' and 'lean processes' and the 'triple bottom line' while I roll my eyes and dream of a world without MBAs.
8 comments:
Good rant. I feel that you accomplished your intended goal. Mostly, I'm just commenting to let you know that I read it. I don't have anything witty or substantive to say.
I spend 0 time looking at advertisements (except on Super Bowl Sunday).
I read it too!
We're all good at reading! THANK YOU FOR YOUR VALIDATION.
Are you excited for the Super Bowl?
The fact that facebook is populated with sponsors (with terrible targeting) selling novelty products should be a sign that facebook isn't making money hand over fist in targeted advertising.
So you have to look elsewhere for the money. I recently read a story about Goldman Sachs selling "shares" of facebook to potential clients. I've also noticed a lot of established companies embracing facebook by creating profile pages for their brands. That tells me that facebook currently makes its money by convincing old rich people that there is a great, as of yet, unrealized potential for profit in by facebook because it is currently the best and most widely used social networking tool. Selling user data to parties interested in targeting products or tailoring brands comes to mind.
I really dislike advertising for sustainability degrees. To me they seem like empty promises of a challenging and fulfilling career path. Not that there is anything wrong with MBA's in general. I have no doubt that operating an organization as complex as
many multi-national companies. Having people operating within the same mental framework has got to have some use. There is probably a mathematical/organizational skill set that is developed in the pursuit of an MBA as well. Ask Chrissy. (Did I ever say "Congratulations Chrissy!" If not, consider it an oversight. Congratulations Chrissy!
Yes, congratulations, Chrissy. My antipathy for MBA's does not include you. But should you ever be my boss, I think that our friendship demands that I roll my eyes and cough rudely if you ever say something like 'sustainable growth status'.
And don't knock targeted ads, Jordan. To make money for facebook, the ads don't have to generate revenue, potential advertisers just have to THINK that they do. And more to the point, though I have never, ever, ever clicked on a facebook advertisement, there are like 100 million people on facebook. Surely some other sucker visits plentyoffish.com or thezenofbeinganasshole.org or whatever.
I agree that targeted advertising need not actually be effective in order to be a money maker for facebook. I am only pointing out that the ventures and organizations that are using the targeted advertising are not mainstream profitable businesses. Shouldn't a major profitable company like Target or Ford Motors be able to out-bid the makes of novelty beer bottle mustaches for advertising space? Why don't you see ads for cars or major retailers on your facebook home page?
You don't see those advertisements because those companies are allocating their advertising budgets to other avenues. Maybe Ford and Target pay a fee to have a facebook fan pages. I don't know. I just know that I don't see those "targeted" ads on my facebook page.
What ads *do* you see? Because facebook thinks I'm single (correct) and also the kind of asshole who buys BeerStaches. But I think that's more because I'm in the 18-to-25-yr-old-male demographic than anything else. That's a demographic just teeming with crap.
Also, GOPACKERS.
Dear David,
I don't know your history, so I can't be sure what has led you to pen this sick, twisted post, clearly written in order to further marginalize those of us who can't grow the thick beautiful facial hair that you apparently take for granted. Your complaints about not finding women fall on deaf ears and hairless upper lips. I constantly see jerks like you prancing around with women they can trust, buying each other beers, watching sports together, and slowly stroking that thick, lustrous mustache you can apparently "produce very easily."
Hey David, I got some news for you. Some of us CAN'T easily produce a beautiful mustache on our beautiful Wisconsin faces in front of our big brain full of expertise in both civil AND environmental engineering. Some of us have mustaches that make us look like rat people. Some of us only had one major and don't really understand Apocalypse Now. Some of us have been waiting for a product like the BeerStache our entire lives, and thank God that Facebook brought it to our attention.
So thanks David C. Miller. Thanks for reminding me what a reject I am for trying to spend the few seconds that I bring my beer bottle up to my lips in the world of a guy who's got it all. The guy who has it all, and apparently think it's still necessary to prove their place in the social hierarchy by kicking the mustacheless guy when he's down.
I hope you're proud of yourself.
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