- It has been less than 24 hours since I thought about the fact that my entire skin will peel off along with my razor the next time I shave my leg. And now I see a post on my Facebook newsfeed that explains some of the darkest fears of people with a cartoon photo of just my thoughts as cover. I am freaking out.
I decided to write this post just seconds after because I think it is important that this feeling is document. It is not the first time now. I have been worrying about the fact that internet cookies are becoming stronger in predicting what we are thinking and not just what we would like to see. Is artificial intelligence becoming stronger or is it just the result of me Googling random stuff. No. I ruled out the later when a similar incident happened just couple of weeks ago.
- My browser always has a lot of cookies from travel related searches. Recently after planning a trip to Miami I realised that I will be close to broke after the trip. The thought gave me a strange feeling. I have been travelling the world for about two years now with several places in Europe and US with a brief trip to India about a year ago. I have always thought that this became a reality because I was good at carefully managing money and spending/saving them for the right things. As my expenditure exceeds savings during my stay in Boston, money efflux has been high paving no way for lavish trips. Then why did I decide to go to Miami? Because I really wanted to. Ever since I made this decision I was wondering if I maybe pushed it too hard making daily life hard by surviving is less cash. I was not confident about my decisions anymore. And then suddenly this weird post pops in my newsfeed from "TIME" fb page which is usually tailored based on my cookies (posts on travel hacks, easy cooking recipe, feminism etc).
You can read the post that explained exactly my thoughts by clicking here.
How did this happen? I did not search for anything online that is related to saving money/ reducing travel whatsoever. I felt crazy and watched after I saw it appear out of the blue. It made me wonder if me talking to people is being recorded and transcribed to make my browser understand something. Or maybe conversations in Skype are also used to suggest things? I don't know but it is scary. However we can rule out this theory because I never told anyone about this razor incident since it happened just few minutes ago. but now I have.
Thirdly (I forgot similar incidents that happened before, there is at least two more I think when I never took these stuff seriously), this is a crazy one. I can't believe that it has come to me writing about it. But I know it is proof and has to be said to support my crazy weird idea that is coming to me.
Well, I follow some "celebrities" online and we all know how they become increasingly popular based on the frequency on how they use social media. For example, in the end of 2015 articles started coming out about how Taylor Swift gained more than 32 million followers in Instagram just as she started to share a lot about her life ( I was also one among the millions who started following her closely). There are so many examples to add on to that. And then one sudden day this crazy idea popped into my mind where I thought that it will be possible for anyone to become celebrity like if they document a situation in their life through a fancy picture, regularly, and post them on social media with a well phrased line. Of course doing this will also show the world how you lead your life, you thought, views etc and eventually people will start liking you (if you are sensible about things of course) and you will have a mini celebrity like status in your social media page. As elaborate as I wrote it down now, the thought was just about a few seconds in my mind. A few days later, one random post appeared in my newsfeed that had a title similar to something like "How to gain celebrity status in your social media page". Seeing that frightened me. To an extent that I did not even want to open the link to read because that will just be another prey to my browser cookies. I was so shocked that it came up. I still don't know how and I did not talk to anyone about it, ruling out again the idea of transcript feed to your browser.
This whole feeling is creeping me out. Hence I am documenting it here. Will write more if this even happens again. As rational I am in real life I want to think of these incidences as mere coincidences. But my mind doesn't want to. Strange.
There are two solutions to this that I absolutely can't do:
1) Clear browser cookies: I have some valuable searches/ suggestions that I do not want to lose.
2) Quit using Facebook.
Pondering over and over again,
Swetha
I decided to write this post just seconds after because I think it is important that this feeling is document. It is not the first time now. I have been worrying about the fact that internet cookies are becoming stronger in predicting what we are thinking and not just what we would like to see. Is artificial intelligence becoming stronger or is it just the result of me Googling random stuff. No. I ruled out the later when a similar incident happened just couple of weeks ago.
- My browser always has a lot of cookies from travel related searches. Recently after planning a trip to Miami I realised that I will be close to broke after the trip. The thought gave me a strange feeling. I have been travelling the world for about two years now with several places in Europe and US with a brief trip to India about a year ago. I have always thought that this became a reality because I was good at carefully managing money and spending/saving them for the right things. As my expenditure exceeds savings during my stay in Boston, money efflux has been high paving no way for lavish trips. Then why did I decide to go to Miami? Because I really wanted to. Ever since I made this decision I was wondering if I maybe pushed it too hard making daily life hard by surviving is less cash. I was not confident about my decisions anymore. And then suddenly this weird post pops in my newsfeed from "TIME" fb page which is usually tailored based on my cookies (posts on travel hacks, easy cooking recipe, feminism etc).
You can read the post that explained exactly my thoughts by clicking here.
How did this happen? I did not search for anything online that is related to saving money/ reducing travel whatsoever. I felt crazy and watched after I saw it appear out of the blue. It made me wonder if me talking to people is being recorded and transcribed to make my browser understand something. Or maybe conversations in Skype are also used to suggest things? I don't know but it is scary. However we can rule out this theory because I never told anyone about this razor incident since it happened just few minutes ago. but now I have.
Thirdly (I forgot similar incidents that happened before, there is at least two more I think when I never took these stuff seriously), this is a crazy one. I can't believe that it has come to me writing about it. But I know it is proof and has to be said to support my crazy weird idea that is coming to me.
Well, I follow some "celebrities" online and we all know how they become increasingly popular based on the frequency on how they use social media. For example, in the end of 2015 articles started coming out about how Taylor Swift gained more than 32 million followers in Instagram just as she started to share a lot about her life ( I was also one among the millions who started following her closely). There are so many examples to add on to that. And then one sudden day this crazy idea popped into my mind where I thought that it will be possible for anyone to become celebrity like if they document a situation in their life through a fancy picture, regularly, and post them on social media with a well phrased line. Of course doing this will also show the world how you lead your life, you thought, views etc and eventually people will start liking you (if you are sensible about things of course) and you will have a mini celebrity like status in your social media page. As elaborate as I wrote it down now, the thought was just about a few seconds in my mind. A few days later, one random post appeared in my newsfeed that had a title similar to something like "How to gain celebrity status in your social media page". Seeing that frightened me. To an extent that I did not even want to open the link to read because that will just be another prey to my browser cookies. I was so shocked that it came up. I still don't know how and I did not talk to anyone about it, ruling out again the idea of transcript feed to your browser.
This whole feeling is creeping me out. Hence I am documenting it here. Will write more if this even happens again. As rational I am in real life I want to think of these incidences as mere coincidences. But my mind doesn't want to. Strange.
There are two solutions to this that I absolutely can't do:
1) Clear browser cookies: I have some valuable searches/ suggestions that I do not want to lose.
2) Quit using Facebook.
Pondering over and over again,
Swetha
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