Séamas O'Reilly: A line of code knows my daughter’s bowel movements better than I do
A short line of code knows the rhythm of my daughter’s bowel movements better than I do. Picture: iStock
Soon, however, Amazon worked out the exact intervals between these panicked purchases, and now it just tells us to buy another three-pack of wheels entirely unprompted.
Each time they do, I will inevitably walk into the baby’s room and discover that we are indeed days, perhaps minutes, away from running out.
In other words, somewhere in the dark, bleeping heart at the centre of Amazon’s algorithm, right next to Vladimir Putin’s Prime password, and Michael D Higgins’ skincare regimen, is a short line of code that knows the rhythm of my daughter’s bowel movements better than I do.
This is quietly alarming, but I can’t pretend it isn’t convenient. And, to some extent, that’s the problem.
So much of the boring dystopia in which we now find ourselves could be called “quietly alarming convenience”, no matter how much we’d prefer to call it “creeping surveillance” or “technological overreach”.
When I find myself complaining about data-tracking, privacy, or targeted ads, I try to remember that the system has largely tricked me into loving the imprint of its jackboot on my face, and I am gleefully addicted to its repeated stompings.
As targeted ads go, the above doesn’t quite fall under the same banner as some of the more nefarious examples, like when you’re tell a friend you want to quit your job and join the circus, and then find every website you visit is filled with ads for anti-depressants and stilts.
Tech experts, and the data companies themselves, routinely assure us that this is not happening, at least not in the way that we think; they tell us that our devices listen, not for ads, but language recognition, and coincidental promotional pop-ups are almost always generated via more traditional prompts like Google searches and past online behaviour.
I’ll admit there is a certain degree of narcissism in believing you’re being targeted, a pleasing paranoia to the idea that you — little old you! — are being tracked by a great big ‘eye in the sky’; a scheming online super-brain that wants to dull your senses, quell your rebellious spirit, and recommend you Columbo box sets.
But, as the old saying goes, “just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you”.
It’s a conspiracy theory I refuse to dislodge, for two reasons.
Firstly, I reckon if I had the ability to listen to every single conversation on Earth, and my multi-trillion dollar global business was based on predicting things people wanted to buy, I’d connect those two things soon enough.
Secondly, I think most of us would listen in on people’s conversations, whether it enriched us or not, because I’ve met human beings and it’s simply what we’re like.
The strange thing about all of these tactics is that the most central myth relating to these ads is whether most of them even work.
For every laser-focused ad we see each day, we see a hundred that are so bewilderingly bad, you wonder how they could possibly garner results.
Facebook assaults me with T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like “It’s An O’Reilly Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand” or — decidedly less relevant to my identity, but an infinitely more likely purchase — “Fork Lift Certified And Proud”.
I guess someone must be buying that stuff, but enough to justify the tens of thousands of permutations necessary to advertise them at scale?
When companies take your details, and bombard you with messaging, it’s hard to know what they’re getting out of the deal, especially since the people selling these services to advertisers, have a vested interest in boosting their effectiveness. I feel like the usual canard that “they wouldn’t do it if it didn’t get results” evinces a little too much optimism about the competence of most businesses, and the people who run them.
Take the removals company I used when I moved house in February. Having booked their service, I obviously ticked the wrong box and got signed up for their promotional emails. These emails could be a coursework study in the inanity of modern advertising.
“Moving House?” they blare, twice a week, “We’ll Get You On The Road!”.
Now, I can imagine a world in which a removals company could drive repeat business from a recent customer; perhaps a referral system, that offered me money if I recommended them to a friend, or maybe offering related-but-separate services like skip hire, picture framing, or deep cleaning.
The rental market being what it is, they could even set an automated email ready to go six months or a year after I last used their services, to see if I might be on the move again.
Alas, such tactics have escaped them and, instead, three days after I went through the bafflingly stressful process of moving house, they checked in to see if I felt like moving house again, and have continued to do so every three days since. For the past nine months.
The bet on which they are hinging their marketing strategy, and indeed the good name of their entire business, is that I am motivated to move house, not by necessity, but recreationally, as often as I can, fuelled by a deep, abiding fetish for putting all of my belongings in boxes and, worse, going several days without the internet.
I mean, I couldn’t be having that. How would I know when to restock my nappy bin?
