First visit? Check out some of my favourite (and most popular) posts: It’s not *quite* the same as the wind beneath your wings; Elmo Goes XXX; Something about leopards and spots and Modern Love: Communicating in the Digital Age.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled program:
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I’m in a pissy mood. I really despise that word, but in this case it just fits. So instead of getting all bitchy at home and passive-aggressive at work, I figured, hey! why not just vent right here!
Top 5 Things That Drive Me Crazy
5. Cookies. Not the yummy delicious kind, but the Internet kind. I know, I know – they facilitate a lot of what we do and serve some useful purposes, but check this out:
One day, I’m looking at a pair of shoes on Zappos.com. They’re cute, I contemplate it for a millisecond before I realize I could never buy shoes online.
But since then, almost every site or blog I go to, I see a Zappos ad for those shoes. And I don’t remember ever seeing Zappos ads before. I’m starting to think the universe is telling me to buy the shoes.
But that’s just ridiculous.
So I dig a little, and discover when I visited the Zappos site, a cookie was placed in my browser that allows Zappos to target their ads down to the very shoe I looked at.
I hate that.
4. When people write about something somewhere, anywhere, on the Internet and then get upset about the way people respond to it. You cannot dictate how or why people react to your words. When you write something, especially something controversial, you are inviting people to critically examine what you’re putting out there.
If you can’t deal with that, write in a journal.
3. Having to chase after my husband. For anything. Whether it’s to do the dishes, write me a cheque, change a light bulb… I just hate it. I hate the sound of my voice nagging him. I don’t want to nag him. I walk to talk to him. I want to enjoy his company. It sucks. But he just doesn’t listen…
2. When drivers don’t give a courtesy wave in heavy traffic. In any traffic. On the road, in general. I let you in. Easily. Just say thank-you, for fuck’s sake. Is that so hard?
1. That the first thing my son said when my husband returned from a week-long business trip was, “Hello, Daddy. Mommy hardly yelled at all when you were gone.”
Great.
Edited 8/30/10 – To be clear, I’m not opposed to advertising on the Internet and I don’t use ad blocker for this reason. Everyone has to pay their bills, right? BUT – I am opposed to this kind of marketing. I don’t think it’s effective and it’s annoying as hell. And just because they’re not ‘technically’ violating any privacy laws, it doesn’t make it any less creepy.
[Y3VV9CA9CBHM]
Hey, I consider “hardly yelled at all” to be a success!
Ha, ha! The last one made me laugh. I can so relate!
Hope you have a great day, in spite of it all!
COURTESY WAVE!! my BIGGEST pet peeve. In Nova Scotia, we’ll let anyone in, even if there is no traffic, wave and invite over for tea in the kitchen. That’s just how we do.
Courtesy wave…. Aaarrrrrgggghhhh I don’t think you know how upset I get when I let someone in and they don’t wave to thank me, even pedestrians too, if I’m waiting longer at stop sign for them to pass I expect a little wave a head nod and walk a lil faster too. I thank everyone on the road all the time and it really gets to me when others dont
Ah! Obviously you guys have people driving sanely. Why don’t you visit and try driving here? Please? You won’t mind the missing courtesy
Courtesy wave? Meh. Gallic shrug.
Here’s an article from Ad Age (“The Pants That Stalked Me”) that explains how to escape the cookie tracking phenomena of Zappos: http://adage.com/digitalnext/post?article_id=145204
I wholeheartedly agreed with you over the word pissy – not only is almost solely applied to women and infers that we are not only “being hormonal” but also that we are incontinent.
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1st: Get Firefox.
2nd: Install the add on AdBlock Plus.
3rd: All ads will be gone. No ads, ever, anywhere on the web.
As an added goody you can also block any other parts of a website you don’t like (don’t want to see that twitter feed because it constantly moves and therefore distracts – right clock ‘block’ and it’s gone)
Additionally make Firefox forget all cookies whenever you close the browser (therefore you start each online session with a rather blank slate – at least a lot blanker than if you keep the cookies).
Use Firefox, but thanks for the AdBlock tip!
But – if I forget all cookies, I have to reenter login info, etc. every time I visit a password protected site…
Agreed, and also install BetterPrivacy to clean out the flash cookies too. This will not erase passwords and such.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/
Have you checked out AdBlock Plus? I’ve been blocking ads on web sites for years with this. Also, depending on what browser you have, you can set it so it clears cookies after each browsing session, while designating sites whose cookies you want to keep.
Thanks, Becky.
With Firefox, you can also install something called Privacy Choice that lets you get rid of other kinds of ad tracking.
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Pingback: Il caso Zappos: targeting, retargeting… o stalking? | YDL
The irony of me getting a re-targeted ad from Zappos on this post is quite rich.
Pingback: The Zappos case: targeting, retargeting or stalking? | YDL