Is This Pinarello Nytro Ad Sexist?

Introduction

In this post I tackle the question of whether this bicycle ad  is sexist.

The ad in question, from Pinarello hawking their new Nytro electric-motor-assisted racing bike, caused quite a stir on social media. In case you’re viewing this on a smart watch, or hastily while driving (that was a joke, please don’t), the caption on the ad says, “I’ve always wanted to go cycling with my [dickhead] boyfriend, but it seemed impossible. Soon everything will become possible.”

(I added “dickhead” because even if this boyfriend is stronger, he should be happy to slow down a bit to ride with his girlfriend. I am a former and occasional racer but I love riding with my wife and daughters no matter what kind of workout this gives me.)

Christine Majerus, a female pro cyclist, responded (via Twitter), “The only thing highly possible is that I am going to drop every single Pinarello rider from now on, even @chrisfroome if needed #PinarellNO.” The husband of the women’s WorldTour champ Megan Guarnier tweeted, “I’ve always wanted to cycle with my wife, @MeganGuarnier , but she drops me like a rock so I follow in the car. Soon everything will be possible. #pinarellNO.” Another pro, a Frenchwoman, wrote, “C’est quoi ce bordel?!” which I roughly translate, “What the hell is this?!”

I was particularly tickled by this suggested improvement on the ad campaign:

So, is the ad sexist?

To start off, I think it’s dangerous to position myself as an authority on sexism, particularly since I’m a guy. It’s a little easier to brush off somebody’s misconduct when you’re not the victim of it. The results of a Metro magazine poll about the above ad support this idea:

Granted, this is just one poll, but its conclusion is dramatic: women are twice as likely as men to think the ad was sexist. Clearly, women are still the hysterical, emotionally fragile drama queens they’ve always been. KIDDING! Fear not, I’m as grossed out by this statistic as you ought to be. In fact, the visceral reaction I had to the poll made it difficult not to reduce this post to a single word: “yes.”

Obviously, that wouldn’t be a very persuasive blog post, and moreover, there were lots of comments below the cyclingnews article that ought to be addressed. Not because they’re thoughtful statements made by reasonable people, of course; most of them, needless to say, are not. But in this modern era where all kinds of people automatically take umbrage at the very idea of political correctness, those of us who had to look up the terms “snowflake” and “SJW” ought to stick up for ourselves.

(What is a “snowflake?” Urbandictionary defines it as either “A hypersensitive, irrational person who can’t stand to have their world views challenged, or be offended in any perceived or even slightest of ways,” or “Referring to someone, usually the Alt-Right, Yiannopoulos, and Nazi Sympathizers (A.K.A. ARYANS), whose immense white fragility causes a meltdown when confronted with the most minute deviation from orthodox White Supremacy.” Meanwhile, “SJW” stands for “social justice warrior” and is used pejoratively. Both these terms seem to be favorites among the Internet whiners who whine about other people’s whining.)

Some other opinions

Since I don’t feel I can be a standalone authority on whether the ad is sexist, I asked my teenage daughters and my wife. My wife replied, “What? Huh? Oh ... I haven’t been listening.” (I made the mistake of starting my question with a little background, which included the word “bicycle.” It’s been a long marriage. Especially for her.) My younger daughter replied, “Seriously? Uh ... yeah!” (She did not actually use the word “duh,” but it was strongly implied by her tone.) My older daughter said, “Give me a second. I’m deciding whether the ad is heteronormative. I don’t think it is. Definitely sexist, though.”

To get the perspective of an older generation, I showed the ad to my mom and asked what she thought. Mom didn’t have an automatic problem with the idea that the electric bike could help a slower woman keep up, but she bristled at the wording of the ad: “I’ve always wanted to go cycling with my boyfriend but it seemed impossible.” The word “impossible” she took particular issue with—it struck her as defeatist that a woman would assume there was no way she could ever match the fitness of her boyfriend. Men may tend, on average, to have greater God-given strength, but surely the gap isn’t insurmountable. (I have personal experience with this as an assistant coach of my daughter’s high school mountain bike team. Lots of girls routinely drop lots of guys, and the guys have been very cool about not roaring a terrible macho roar, making stupid BS excuses, or quitting in a huff.)

What’s particularly interesting is that both the ad agency that created the ad, and Pinarello, who paid for it and ran it, didn’t seem to think this ad was sexist—until this was pointed out to them all over the place and they issued an apology.

I don’t buy the idea, suggested by numerous Internet commentators, that this flap was all contrived in advance for free publicity. These wannabe pundits cited the old adage, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Yeah, right. Just ask the guys who promoted the Ford Edsel, or, more recently, the ignoramuses behind the racist Dove ad that backfired. I can’t imagine any company runs an ad that it hopes to have to apologize for.

So how did Pinarello get this so completely wrong? Probably a lot of men at the ad agency thought there was nothing wrong with implying that a man might need an electric motor because he has “no time to work out during the week” (the text from their ad featuring a male) whereas a woman needs a motor just because she’s a woman. And when a bunch of men at Pinarello looked at the ad they didn’t see anything wrong with this disparity either. Why? Because they’re men. Stupid ones. (Okay, it’s possible that sexist women were involved, but the poll I cited earlier suggests this is only half as likely.)

There’s a big difference between these clueless types and the angry males making comments such as “Never apologize! That’s when the feminazis think they’ve won,” and “I doubt if the young gals can afford the 6,000 euros without the help of their boyfriends.” But the non-aggressive, passively clueless types are a big part of the problem. They’re controlling budgets and influencing public perception (not to mention creating situations that inflame outspoken misogynists) without realizing that they’re harboring antiquated, unfair attitudes toward women. They apparently never got the memo that women don’t want to be patronized or coddled.

Why none of this matters

Of course sexism matters. It should be fought on every  front. But the Pinarello Nytro doesn’t matter whatsoever. It’s a completely stupid bike, and here’s why.

First of all, the Nytro is not going to help riders of differing abilities to enjoy riding together. Its motor puts out up to 400 watts, which is enough to drop a pretty decent club racer on a long climb without even pedaling. But the motor cuts out when the bike reaches 25 km per hour (about 15.5 mph), which is a lower speed than the club racer can easily sustain on the flats. So on climbs, the weaker rider on the Nytro will crush the stronger one on the regular bike, and then on the flats the stronger rider on the regular bike will exact revenge. In the case of a couple, this looks like a recipe for disaster. (I’d love to watch this play out, actually.)

Second, almost anybody serious enough about cycling to drop $7,000 on a racing bike is going to want to earn the glory of dropping people, rather than claim the empty victory of “beating” somebody through a totally unfair equipment advantage. (The existing differences from a basic bike to a top-end bike are not anywhere in the ballpark of 400 watts.) Real cyclists want to improve, not outsource their ability to a motor. Naturally there are filthy rich douchebags who might love the idea of this bike, but they’ll surely sour on it when real cyclists crush them on the flats.

Where Pinarello ought to put their R&D money is into motor-assisted commuting bikes. Think of all the people who don’t commute by bicycle because they don’t want to get to work all hot and sweaty, and/or don’t want to tackle that one big hill on the way home. Giving an electric boost to a basic bicycle—or, if you prefer, putting out a new kind of electric scooter that you can easily carry up the stairs to your apartment, and/or bring on the train—is a great way to get more people commuting by bike. According to this article, there are already 200 million e-bikes in China. Why would Pinarello go after the impossibly small niche of shameless rich douchebags who want electric racing bikes, instead of serving a legitimate societal need?

More food for thought

I hope that I’ve made a strong case for Pinarello and their ad agency being sexist. But here’s a thornier question: is it sexist if a guy on a bike team, upon seeing his male teammate roll up on a Nytro, calls him a “little bitch”? I will leave this question for the reader to ponder.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Cough Drops & Mimetic Theory

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language and an instance of shocking grossness.

Introduction

Does advertising work?  Clearly.  Does it work on me?  I’d like to think it doesn’t (like most people, I imagine).  But advertising is complicated.  In this post I examine the matter by looking at a product brand—Halls cough drops—that I am loyal to, both because of and in spite of its manufacturer’s methods of hawking it.

A bit of history

Back when I was a teenager, when we all watched TV because it was all we had, Halls ran TV commercials. Most, such as this ad from 1979, were variations on a single script, which ran something like this:

MAN #1:  “Wow, smell that bacon!”

MAN #2:  “Nothing can penetrate this stuffy nose.” (Because he has a cold, this comes out as “Nothig can penedrate dis stubby dose.”)

WOMAN:  “This can!”  (She holds out a package of Halls.)

MAN #1:  “Halls Mentho-Lyptus?”

WOMAN:  “Mm-hmm.  With vapor action!”  (MAN #2 is shown undergoing vapor action treatment, with cheesy special effects and the helpful caption “PENETRATING VAPOR ACTION.”)

WOMAN:  “Halls vapor action penetrates deep into clogged nasal passages to help your stuffy nose feel clearer, while Halls soothes your throat to help your cough!”

MAN #2 (after using Halls, and while inhaling deeply, with evident satisfaction, through his nose):  “Hey, this is somethin’!”

MAN #1:  “The bacon?”

MAN #2:  “No, the Halls!”

The commercial I remember best involved the regained ability to smell roasting chestnuts.  I actually envied that guy with the cold, because I’d never had the opportunity to smell roasting chestnuts in the first place.

So did this ad work?  Not exactly—at least, not right away.  For one thing, I was so healthy back then I never needed cough drops.  But the commercial did get my attention, obviously.  And why did it?  Because, even for its day, it was pretty corny.  I guess that’s what drew me to it—the unabashed earnestness of it, which I respected even as I mocked it.  (Of course I mocked it—I was a teenager.  I mocked everything, as do all teens everywhere.)

In college I started having frequent sore throats and congestion (which afflict me to this day).  So, remembering the Halls ad, did I run right out and buy that product?  Nope.  Being highly skeptical of ads, and probably even then having a natural desire to punish companies for advertising at all, I bought some other brand of cough drop I’d never seen advertised.  They were cherry.  They didn’t work worth a damn.  I don’t think they had any active ingredient.  Only after they failed me did I think back to that commercial.

I wondered:  could Mentho-Lyptus be an actual drug?  And could vapor action really be a thing?  My back to the wall, I was just crazy enough to try it.  And guess what?  This Halls shit is for real.  The cough drops do work.  Halls actually has a bona-fide active ingredient, menthol.  (Is it fair to say I totally respect the company?  No, I won’t go that far … they make other non-medicated products, Halls Super Defense and Halls Breezers, that are essentially candy masquerading as medicine, which is pointless and confusing.)

My brand loyalty to Halls has held up.  My wife sometimes gets seduced by Euro or boutique-y products, such as Ricola or these weird Thayers Slippery Elm lozenges.  Ricola are basically candy and the Slippery Elm taste and smell like the ‘70s.  (You know, like the floor of somebody’s filthy old Ford Pinto after the AC has flooded the food-littered carpet.)  These other products don’t work.  I always go back to Halls.

(By the way, I did not get any free product or compensation of any kind for promoting this brand.  I think I’d be legally required to disclose this if I did.)

Past vs. present

Okay, fine, a stupid ad in the late ‘70s worked on one guy—big deal, right?  But wait:  if you’re old like me, you’ll recall that many, perhaps most ads used to be sincere and informative like that.  They were a basic appeal to reason, and showcased attractive features of the advertised product.  This camera is easy to use!  This car gets great gas mileage!  This lite beer won’t slow you down!  Peanuts in peanut butter nougat!  Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum!

I, for one, feel nostalgia for those days.  Needless to say, other than Shane Company radio spots (which I adore), ads are much slicker now and often make no outward promises of any kind.  They just show really sexy, happening people juxtaposed with (and not necessarily even using) the advertised product.  Instead of gas mileage figures we get “the heartbeat of America.”  Instead of “flame broiled!” we get “I’m lovin’ it!” 

Okay, I’ll admit these examples could be a bit dated already (I don’t watch TV … sue me).  So I googled “most popular TV ad” and got this one, for the web domain company Squarespace.  It’s a perfect illustration of what I’m talking about: it shows the actor John Malkovich getting really frustrated because some other John Malkovich has already taken the domain johnmalkovich.com.  Naturally, the viewer is expected to share the actor’s frustration. But think about it:  aren’t we much more like the average joe—in this case the mere mortal who snapped up johnmalkovich.com—than we are like the famous actor?  And since all domains are first-come-first-served, isn’t this scenario utterly irrelevant to the value of Squarespace?  Yes, of course—but only by old-fashioned ad standards.  In our modern advertising era, these things are beside the point.

Why this shift in advertising approach?  Hard to say, but it seems like modern consumers are just too cool to be pandered to in the traditional check-out-these-great-features! way.  Maybe today’s ironic, knowing, sneering ads have shaped us this way.  Maybe this modern mindset, that cares more about what this product will make us into, is just a natural extension of our growing insecurity in this youth-and-beauty obsessed culture.

Rather than continue this indulgent bout of mere speculation, I’ll share with you now the literary theory of mimetic desire, as described in a great book, The Possessed, by Elif Batuman.  The theory comes from René Girard, a Stanford professor in the ‘60s, and was (as Batuman puts it) “formulated in opposition to the Nietzschean notion of autonomy as the key to human self-fulfillment.”  Now, I hope you know more about this Nietzschean notion than I do, because I’m not going to explain it for you.  I’m afraid to read Nietzsche, because in my experience the people who admire and cite him are usually tools.  I’m not alone in this; consider this cartoon by the wonderful Gahan Wilson:

Just think of autonomy in general and Nietzsche’s popular uber-mensch concept, and that should be enough for purposes of contrast.

Batuman goes on to say: 

According to Girard, there is in fact no such thing as human autonomy or authenticity. All of the desires that direct our actions in life are learned or imitated from some Other, to whom we mistakenly ascribe the autonomy lacking in ourselves… The perceived desire of the Other confers prestige on the object, rendering it desirable. For this reason, desire is usually less about its purported object than about the Other; it is always “metaphysical,” in that it is less about having, than being.  The point isn’t to possess the object, but to be the Other.  (That’s why so many advertisements place less emphasis on the product’s virtues than on its use by some beautiful and autonomous-looking person; the consumer craves not the particular brand of vodka, but the being of the person who chose it.)

At the risk of warping this explanation a bit, I’ll try to say it more succinctly:  ads have gone from “Enjoy this product” to “Be someone else—someone good.”  In terms of modern insecurity-based advertising, L’Oréal was an early adopter with its slogan “Because I’m worth it.” This message may seem affirming, but it’s also a challenge:  “If you don’t spring for this product, you’re accepting that you’re not worth it; i.e., you’re beneath it.”  Moreover, you’re beneath the beautiful woman presenting the product.  You’re beneath the Other.

It probably goes without saying, but I despise the cynical whatever-works ethos behind this approach.  I love this indictment, from the TV writer George Meyer:  “I hate [advertising] because it irresponsibly induces discontent in people for one myopic goal, and then it leaves the debris of that process out there in the culture.”

Where does this leave Halls?

Let’s face it:  products like cough drops will never be sexy.  It will never be possible to advertise them in the modern way, and the corny old-school style of product-feature-based advertising would be laughed at today (unless somebody were to tweak the ad to be ironic and meta and knowing, which would only work like once).  So how do humble products like Halls hold their ground in this Brave New World?

For one thing, manufacturers can put messages on the product packaging itself to reinforce the consumer’s choice to purchase it.  These messages need not be limited to product information.  For example, a message might take something humdrum and unpleasant like a cold and make it seem empowering.  I’ve actually seen this more than once.  As I’ve noted before, a Kleenex box included this consumer-oriented text:  “Say goodbye to the stiff upper lip.  Tell calm, cool and collected to take a hike.  When tons of stuff stuffs up your nose, blow it loud and blow it proud!” 

Halls has also gotten into this game, via inspirational messages (A pep talk in every drop™) printed on their wrappers:

So you won’t have to squint, here are some example messages: 

• The show must go on. Or work.
• Seize the day.
• Nothing you can’t handle.
• Get back in the game.
• Impress yourself.
• Tough is your middle name.
• Be resilient.
• Hi-five yourself.
• Be unstoppable.
• Elicit a few “wows” today.

These aren’t ads per se, but they serve approximately the same purpose:  using consumer-oriented messaging to build brand loyalty via positive associations.  Do these miniature pep talks fit the modern advertising model?  Sort of … after all, they’re pithy instead of earnest, and slightly snide (e.g., “The show must go on. Or work.”).

On the flip side, this way of reaching consumers doesn’t offer any version of the Other.  Where illness is concerned, you can only present the consumer with a better version of himself (e.g., one who is productive even when fighting a cold).  After all, it’s not like you can just show sexy people frolicking on a beach saying, “Look at me not having a sore throat anymore!” or “Look at me being able to smell the sunscreen!”  The hundreds of people surrounding us who don’t have a cold aren’t obviously superior; after all, everybody gets colds.

As I see it, the Halls pep-talk messages are more in the Nietzschean model:  eliciting wows, being unstoppable, and impressing yourself invoke the idea of the authentic, autonomous uber-mensch.  (At least, as far as I can tell given my glancing acquaintance with Nietzche’s ideology.)

So if memetic theory is in opposition to the Nietzchean notion of autonomy, and I hate the way memetic theory is applied to advertising, and the Halls pep talk campaign embraces Nietzschean autonomy and thus opposes memetic theory, does that mean I admire or respect the Halls pep talk campaign?

Well, no.  I can and do dislike either—perhaps any—approach to advertising that leverages behavioral theory in order to subconsciously manipulate consumers.  Moreover, the pep talk snippets on the Halls wrappers are disappointingly trite, predictable, and tame.  Halls could do a much better job with these, not just by getting back to product information but by being funnier, more varied, and more surprising.  I could really get into this pep talk stuff if the wrappers had stuff like this: 

• Mentho-Lyptus.  Because we’re not fucking around here.
• Does your spouse have morning-breath? Quick, spit me out! Be congested!
• Know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong.
• Vapor-action … now we’re talkin’!
• Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!
• The lice dwell in the folds of my testicles. It is their El Dorado.
• Step 1: suck on this. Step 2: shred some gnar’!
• With patience and saliva the ant swallows the elephant.
• Wake up, pop this, and smell the coffee!
• The biggest sin is sitting on your ass.

But you know what?  I’m glad I don’t like the Halls pep talks.  I’d rather be confident that I’m using this (or any) product only because it works, as opposed to admitting that I’m swayed to any degree by a company’s consumer-oriented messaging.  I won’t be Madison Avenue’s bitch!

Postscript: a few Halls suggestions

As I said before, I rely on Halls a lot of the time.  All matters of complicated theory aside, here are some practical tips to maximize your cold relief: 

• Buy the oval-shaped cough drops in the bag, not the square ones in the stick.  The ovals are easier to suck.
• Buy the sugar-free Halls.  No sense letting sugar foul your teeth (especially if you use these at bedtime).  Also, over time the sugar ones start to dissolve and get sticky, so they’re harder to unwrap.  The sugar-free ones don’t do this.
• Get the honey-flavored Halls because they have the most Mentho-Lyptus. 
• Don’t mess around with Ricola, no matter how compelling their ads are.  Seriously, Ricola cough drops don’t work, and sucking them won’t make you Euro or “authentic.”

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

AdNonSense

Introduction

Wøw, whåt’s ůp wíth thís tėxt? Why åll thė stråy mårks? Ås yøů shåll sėė å bít låtėr, Í’vė crėåtėd å tėxt-líttėríng tøøl tø cømbåt whåt Í sėė ås å vėry ånnøyíng tėchnøløgy crėåtėd by Gøøglė.

The technology is called Adsense, and it’s what generates the Sponsored Links (i.e., advertisements) that you see alongside Google searches and Gmail. These ads never bothered me when I saw them in Google’s search engine; even when I starting using Gmail, I found the ads unobtrusive and ignored them—at first. But over time I’ve come to dislike, and fear, where Adsense is taking the advertisement industry. This post describes my misgivings, and my humble attempt to combat Google’s technology.

My problem with ads

Google aside, I dislike ads. They’re a nuisance, like telemarketers. It bothers me that ads of all kinds are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Now you get them in movie theaters, in elevators, at the gas pump, even on the back of hotel room keys. I assert that a company’s need to advertise is generally based on one (or both) of two scenarios:

1. Their product isn’t good enough to compete in the marketplace on its own merit;
2. Their product isn’t really necessary, so demand for it must be created.

Notice how best-of-breed products don’t need to advertise. Think of your favorite restaurant: does it advertise? It probably doesn’t need to: word of mouth and good food are probably all it needs to thrive. On a larger scale, when’s the last time you saw a Google billboard? (No one can deny the quality of products like Google search, Picasa, Blogger, and Google maps. Similarly, Google doesn’t need to tout them.)

The ads that create demand for unnecessary products usually do so by suggesting that we’re somehow not complete or optimized without them. Many years ago I came across a really memorable quote in a profile of George Meyer, a writer for the TV show “The Simpsons”: “I hate [advertising] because it irresponsibly induces discontent in people for one myopic goal, and then it leaves the debris of that process out there in the culture.” Think of the fictitious syndromes created by advertisers, like ring around the collar (which I’ve never seen in my life). Or, “Cute guy, but he’s scratching his head … could be dandruff!”

That said, I see many kinds of advertising as generally harmless—a necessary evil, perhaps—especially in traditional forms such as print ads. From an environmental perspective I’m against publications like fashion magazines or newspapers where the ads greatly outnumber the pages of actual content, but I can live with the ads in, say, the “New Yorker.” These ads are generally for things I would never consider buying, so I don’t really notice them, and I can prove it: from time to time the magazine sends out online surveys, and the first page will ask, “Do you recall an ad for [such-and-such] in the issue of [date]?” I (honestly) answer “no,” and then the next screen shows me the ad: “Does this look familiar?” D’oh! It does! So I have a vague awareness of these ads, but I can count on zero hands how many Rolex watches I’ve bought as a result of seeing them.

How Adsense changes the game

Adsense, however, tailors the ads to other text on the page—your text. If you search on, say, “computer printers,” above your search results will be sponsored links from, say, HP, Epson, and Geek Squad. Or if you’re a Gmail user and, in an e-mail to your brother, you describe a problem you’re having with your printer, you shouldn’t be surprised to see similar ads alongside your message and his response. The ads are tailored to you, which the Gmail folks pretend is a service. (New this year: if Adsense can’t tailor an ad to a current Gmail message, it’ll give you ads based on other messages in your Inbox. Presumably this could allow unopened quasi-spam messages, like solicitations from charities you’ve supported in the past, to spawn solicitations alongside a message you did choose to open.)

I don’t have a problem with Adsense as a part of Google’s search engine, because when I visit google.com I’m looking for something. Likewise, I have no problem with amazon.com suggesting that if I like Radiohead I might also like Coldplay, because amazon.com is a retail site—I’m there to look for things and buy them, after all. But putting ads alongside my personal e-mail is obnoxious—I’m there to enjoy correspondence, not to shop. Google isn’t the first e-mail provider to do this, of course, but Adsense greatly increases the chances that I might actually pay attention to an ad: that is, it increases the chances that the blurring of lines between personal and retail time will be successful, which I don’t want it to be.

What’s the problem?

Okay, fine—if I don’t like ads in Gmail, I just don’t use it. So what’s the problem? Well, I do use another company’s e-mail product (paying $10/month for the privilege of ad-free e-mail), but I’m still involved in the Adsense scheme every time I send an e-mail to a friend or family member’s Gmail account. My e-mail content will dish up sponsored links that my recipient might be inclined to click on. I want no part of this, but I can’t opt out. I have discouraged my brothers from using Gmail, but they can’t resist its great design. Tyranny doesn’t have to come via brute force: we’re all too susceptible to being lulled into it. As an Aesop’s fable has said, “Persuasion is better than force.”

Which brings me to another issue I have with Adsense: it’s furthering the widespread acceptance of ads in general. People used to pay extra for cable TV because it didn’t have ads; now it does. People grumbled at first when commercials started playing in movie theaters—imagine, paying good money to see ads!—but once they showed up those ads never went away. Now I see ads alongside blogs. Adsense can be invoked on any blog hosted by Blogger (aka Blogspot, aka Google). One of the main links on my Blogger dashboard is “Monetize,” and by clicking it I get breathtakingly close to changing albertnet from a place to read in peace to a vehicle for advertisers. Suddenly, your average Joe can go from ad audience to ad generator with just a few mouse clicks. Google is the kind of juggernaut that can influence society in untoward directions; that their corporate motto is “Don’t be evil” isn’t much of a comfort.

What is to be done?

It’s probably too late to recommend that people not use Gmail for their primary personal e-mail (by one count it currently has 146 million subscribers). Moreover, anybody who uses Blogger or Picasa (myself included) is required to maintain a Gmail account. Some anti-Gmail websites advise people not to send e-mail to Gmail addresses, but this is similarly impractical.

I’m not expecting happy Gmail users to abandon their e-mail provider; I would just like them to think about what Google is doing with Adsense. I would like people to recognize that by using Gmail, they’re giving up something: not privacy, per se, but another little corner of their world not infected by marketing. I would like people to take a moment pondering exactly what brave new world they’re being lulled into. And I think Gmail users ought to accept responsibility for helping to inch society ever closer to an advertising climate like what we saw in “Minority Report,” where a person’s every waking moment is spent being bombarded with targeted solicitations.

If you would like to prod Gmail users into considering these things, and/or don’t want your e-mails to generate content-specific ads for your friends or family members who use Gmail, you might consider using my Anti-Adsense macro. It turns your e-mail text into something Adsense cannot decipher. Spėcífícålly, ít rėplåcės yøůr vøwėls wíth qůåsí-ėqůívålėnts thåt thė hůmån bråín cån håndlė, bůt whích tůrn yøůr wørds íntø gíbbėrísh frøm thė Ådsėnsė tėxt-scånníng pėrspėctívė. Here’s a short video showing how simple the macro is to use:

Below are a couple of screen shots showing how the macro foils Adsense. The first snapshot shows you a normal-text sample e-mail with the customized ads alongside. The second snapshot shows you the same e-mail with macro-revised, fouled-vowel text, with Adsense forced to dish up unrelated ads alongside the message. Click to enlarge each image:

The macro-revised text is a bit annoying to read, of course, but that’s half the point: when your Gmail recipient asks about the funny marks above the vowels in your e-mail, you can send him or her a link to this blog post, and ask (rhetorically) what’s worse: stray marks around the vowels, or customized ads turning personal correspondence into a retail opportunity?

I doubt anybody would actually bother to use my macro, but I’d be happy to send it to whoever wants it (e-mail me at feedback@albertnet.us). I’m sure there are much cleverer ways to foil Adsense than I’ve come up with; I’m just a recovering English major, after all. I’m sure a good programmer could quickly code something that would hook right into the browser and twėåk thė vøwėls, or perahps mkae smoe ohter chaneg ni teh tetx thta aslo fiol Adsesne. I’ve pondered an e-mail footer in a tiny white font containing just the right text to elicit a bunch of inline ads for innocuous products like Carmex or Rolex, ignoring the real e-mail text. If you have any ideas, please feel free to post them below, or e-mail them to me.

Ad-haters of the world, unite!