Nobody's damn business what I look at plus I resent being continually viewed only as a source of revenue 24/7/365 by anyone and everyone.
If you paid money for a subscription of the Encyclopedia Britannica and when it showed up at your doorstep it came with a person who demanded to be let into your home to track and log everything you read out of it in order to take that information and sell it to marketers so they could route a bunch of junk mail to you based on your supposed preferences wouldn't you be annoyed / offended / bothered by that?
I would. I pay good money for Internet service and I get sick and tired of so much of the net trying to profile me simply so some scheister can hawk snake oil to me that I likely neither need nor want. I quite deliberately do everything possible to avoid and thwart profiling efforts. It's kind of fun to do and one can make a game of sorts out of it. I don't patronize stores that push dual pricing for "rewards programs" or "club" members (why should I be be forced to pay more just because I won't whore myself out for 50 cents off of a pack of razor blades or whatever?), I'm starting to use cash for purchases more and more (and I personally can't stand cash - filthy, inconvenient, etc.), I don't give real phone numbers, names or addresses when asked, I don't watch television (plus the content is junk in most cases anyway), I don't wear clothing with corporate logos on it (take a look sometime to see how many wear sports teams, car manufacturers, beverage companies, etc. - I'm not paying for the privilege of being someone else's billboard), etc.
I'll even go so far as to NOT buy a particular brand of product that pushes / promotes itself via marketing and advertising beyond what I'd consider a reasonable level. In general I think advertising has gotten way, way out of hand. I remember reading recently that by he time a baby turns two, he or she has already been exposed to something like 20,000 advertisements. This junk populates our landscape - billboards, junk mail flyers, endless commercials, you-name-it. All it does is reinforce the notion that a person is only as good as his or her ability to endlessly and mindlessly consume, consume, consume. No wonder we're a nation of fat, greedy, narcissistic and selfish rubes.
I have no problem with people making a product or service and seeking to promote it or sell it - it's just gotten way, way, way out of hand and far too ingrained in the so-called "culture" of our society. There's a time and a place to avail onesself of goods and services and that's called a marketplace. I don't need that marketplace trying to worm its way into every single aspect of my life just to extract money out of me. I resent it and I'm for one sick of it. My home is that - my home. I try to make it a place where I can spend time with family and friends and be away from the constant onslaught of advertising and the reinforcement of the message that a person is only as good as his much money he or she has available to be extracted from them.
The best and most important things in life are (still) free. It's a shame so many people seem to forget that. I certainly don't want to enable Big Data's efforts to convince people otherwise and reduce them to numbers that represent possible revenue streams for someone. We consume far too much crap as it is - I don't want people telling me I need to consume more - constantly - as part of a "service" (internet) that I pay for already.
Ahh, today's rant is now done. Now I've got the rest of the day to just enjoy.
