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How did a White American in Guatemala Get Targeted Marketing For Asian Pilates?
The internet is weird
Two days ago, I started getting blasted in my Facebook and Instagram feed with ads for “Asian Pilates.”
A super buff Asian woman began screaming at me about how she started doing Asian pilates at 50, now she’s 62 with the body of a 25-year-old, and doctors “are asking her for advice.”
My first viewing was, “Okay, that’s weird,” not because of her pitch, but because Asian pilates was in my feed. Yes, I’m a long-time yoga instructor, but I’d done no searching or talking about Pilates, or anything else Asian.
After the 5th ad made its way into my feed within two hours, I forwarded it to my Malaysian-American friend here in Guatemala and asked her, “Are you responsible for this? What the hell?”
She laughed, sent me a bunch of crying/laughing emojis, and replied, “No, but dammmmnnn she’s buff.”
I blocked those ads and decided to write about how our phones are live recording machines that listen to everything we say, type, and breathe, so the algorithms can fill our feeds with targeted and relevant advertising.
Then, as I sat down to type, I looked for an image of the ad only to find out that it’s AI-generated and the buff…
