Not to go total conspiracy theorist on you - but I'm pretty sure my phone is sentient and listening not only to my every word but also my every thought. Now, my phone has never bothered to humiliate itself by advertising diet foods to me - but since January I’ve been eating healthy and bleating about macros to anyone who’ll listen - and, correspondingly, fighting adverts all over my newsfeed for some synthetic ice cream thing at ten calories a pop. Okay, so while it’s a bit coincidental I guess Facebook may not be listening to my in-front-of-the-fridge “Daaaad, is this light Philadelphia or lightest Philadelphia YES THERE’S A DIFFERENCE” dithering and is instead aware that I’ve started using a fitness app (but if they scrapped the few scruples they have and actually had a peek into my food diary they’d see that I am still a very unlikely candidate for low-calorie low-flavour misery pudding.)
But it gets weirder. About a fortnight ago I’d been telling Mum I was running low on foundation and almost AS I WAS SPEAKING an advert popped up on Instagram for my precise brand of foundation - never ordered it or even browsed the range online, haven’t liked the page on Facebook, cannot remember a time when I’d have been recommending foundations in the group chat rather than exchanging GIFs. Although I guess if you put together what information I have committed to the internet - age, Neal’s Yard cosmetics involvement, tiny bit of a slave to fashion, YouTube history full of makeup tutorials - you might figure I’m a good bet for foundation adverts. But now it gets REALLY weird. The other day I was browsing T.M Lewin for a birthday present on my mum’s iPad, chatting to her about it all the while. A few hours later I checked Instagram on my phone and almost lobbed it promptly out of the window when the first advert on my newsfeed was for a special sale at T.M Lewin. Never mind that I’d missed all news of this offer and paid full price - HOW did my Instagram know? I’m decently confident I’ve never seen the advert before, nor had I browsed or talked about shirts and ties on any “associated apps” that most privacy policies reluctantly admit to swiping data from. A very informal study - my dad speaking very loudly into his phone about Phnom Penh for ten minutes then checking his adverts and Twitter recommendations for Visit Cambodia offers - revealed nothing, and I’m in two minds about whether Apple spies could and would listen in to our conversations. There’s a case to be made for Apple being entirely ethical and the world just being a lot more coincidental than we think. Example: I was in Scotland over the last few days, and we spent a night in Greenock - I’d never heard of it before, didn’t know how to spell it until we got there, and what with it containing little else besides a Laser Mania, a convent, and our hotel, I wasn’t surprised to never have heard of it. The next day, back at home, and what’s the third headline from the top on my BBC news homescreen? The boys on the ice, an article about stowaways from Greenock. Estée Lauder might be paying Apple to spy on my conversations and roll out adverts at convenient times but even in Tin Foil Hat Mode I can’t believe that BBC lackeys are taking the time to write custom news articles for me, and certainly not about Greenock. If you look out for coincidences you’ll see them everywhere - try it; you’ll drive yourself mad within an hour. And I like to believe there’s a limit to how far companies would go to make money but let’s face it - an awful lot of stuff can be hidden in the small print, and the flood of GDPR emails in our inboxes has only served to bore people so much they’ll never look at a privacy policy again. And if they’re unethical enough to listen to us, would they even put it in the small print? Hmm? God only knows what kind of information they’re getting through our cameras.
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The official website of Yorkshire-made, Oxford-based writer Isabel Parkinson. Want fewer words and more pics? Follow me on Instagram!
(Header Photo: Radcliffe Camera, Oxford - Isabel Parkinson 2016)
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