A Wild Young Under-Whimsy

The depressing terrain of predictive ads. At best, you can find them funny or mystifying; at worst, they reveal the pathetic emptiness of your life. I'm talking, of course, about predictive online ads. Here are the ones I currently have.

My personal email: 6.69% Low Rate Home Loans - FoxSymesHomeLoans.com.au - Banks Said No? We have options for you, Refinance your home Today!

Oh dear. As if I will ever be in a position to own, let alone refinance, a home. To some extent I have been infected by my baby-boomer parents' obsession with property, so I brood on how absurdly unaffordable it is and how, perhaps if I were to live very far away, I could perhaps afford a small shipping container in a paddock somewhere. But first I would have to be able to afford a car. At least where I live, I can walk and catch public transport everywhere.

Enthusiast email: Learn Internet Marketing - www.MarketMotive.com - Online Internet Marketing Courses, Enroll in Courses Now at $299/Month

This is especially depressing as I have spent a large chunk of yesterday and today wrangling the new(ish) Enthusiast mailing list. I just don't know what to do to encourage people to check out our online magazine, apart from slaving my guts out trying to write interesting stories that people might like to read, and then posting about them on Facebook and Twitter, and then putting them in a weekly newsletter along with lots of interesting tidbits that we've come across during the week, and links to interesting stories from our archives. I am not a marketing person – I just don't know what people want, and in any case I feel like I am already at the limit of my resources to deliver what they want.

Professional email: Local Business Removalist - www.yourlocalmovers.com.au - Your Local Business Removalists. Quotes Online or Call 1800 004 065.

This is also hilarious, seeing as I work from home and can be my own removalist.

Right Angle email: Stop Paper Jams For Good - www.DoubleA.com.au - Transform your copier. Runs smoother. Less Paper Jams.

Because god knows that when working for an online network of city guides I am constantly plagued by paper jams. However I am plagued by a cat who loves to eat paper, and who re-enacts this video every time I try to use my printer. Also, he gnaws on the corners of paper and cardboard, so I have to be careful to keep important documents, student assignments, etc, out of his reach, but I have given up trying to stop him from biting cardboard boxes and the packaging that review books come in.

Facebook:



The "you deserve better" dating ads are the worst. There is also another dude in them who looks like a rapist from the Jersey Shore – all shiny walnut skin, threateningly slitted eyes and carefully tended facial hair. I think he might have a backwards baseball cap on, too.

I often get Facebook ads directing my romantic efforts towards single dads, which is basically admitting that most men have already bred with other, more attractive women than me, but that they're willing to settle for me now their previous relationship has broken down.

Also, I tend to get Facebook ads suggesting, preposterously, that an already waif-thin Hollywood star lost vast amounts of weight using "these simple tips".