Moose Problem

Mamacita wrote: I have a beaver problem can someone help me with that?

BEAVER, Beaver, Beaver!

Subject: Re: Moose Problem

modsquad wrote: I seriously doubt there are any ads that Google has for moose repellents. I'm wondering if there might be ads for Penis Pumps though.

Google-plotzing: How to Make Gmail Ads Useful Again

The search giant and its Ad Words can't save you unless you want to be saved. How one man made Google work harder for him, and made the creepy machines better at their job while he was at it.

By: Tom Chiarella
The search giant and its Ad Words can't save you unless you want to be saved. How one man made Google work harder for him, and made the creepy machines better at their job while he was at it.

I have a lot of e-mail addresses, which seems to piss some people off, so recently I picked up a Gmail account to unify them. This despite the fact that Google scans every e-mail sent from or received by every Gmail account and slips in ads it thinks you might find interesting and clickable based on keywords. It's old news that Google is creepy. What do I care? I just wanted my seven gigabytes of storage space. Most of my e-mail exchanges lately have been with my business partner about an apartment we have for rent; it doesn't matter to me that Google papers the margins with ads for apartment finders in Boca. I don't really believe anyone is reading my e-mail. And if they are, I invite them to weigh in on whether we should install a new stackable washer/dryer in unit 2.

But I wanted better Gmail ads. I wanted something useful. So I started sending myself e-mails in an attempt to nudge the algorithm toward something I'd want to see. I figured I'd start positive. I sent myself a one-liner: "You are the best!" It generated an ad for a twelve-inch Pez dispenser. Banking on conflict, I replied to myself: "You're an asshole!" producing an ad for a Hello Kitty bracelet. This made me think Google might actually consider me an asshole. So I apologized to myself in the next reply, which generated an ad for a service to learn French.

I backed off and watched for a while, checking my advertisements studiously. I figured out that the ads got better if my e-mails employed concrete nouns, well-chosen verbs, and short, declarative sentences. If I misspelled, my ads changed. I dropped the u off the word you and got ads for yo-yos, yo-mama jokes, and Yo Creme hair color. Rules I learned in The Elements of Style were the difference between well-timed ads for organic free-range chicken (I clicked) and random links to signed Ringo Starr lithographs.

Finally I figured out that the problem wasn't that Google wanted to be on the trail of my needs, it was how bland and predictable Google seemed to think that trail was. So I started dropping random words at the bottom of e-mails as a sort of red herring, an act I call Google-plotzing. Takes one second.

"Steel wire." "Egg cream." "Despair." This made Gmail work harder, producing better, more unexpected ads. Suddenly I began seeing ads for air hammers, exotic fruits, dancing lessons, man lifts, nanotechnology to help prevent fingerprints. Now I wanted to click. I enjoyed the idea of Google-bots working to make sense of the presence of mangoes in a letter about a tax return. It felt both seditious and productive, my personal cloud of privacy.

More than that, it puts Gmail to work for me. Yesterday I e-mailed my son about what to have for dinner. I Google-plotzed "Rhode Island" in a P.S. When he replied, Gmail generated an ad for mail-order pierogies. By this time, as Google had probably figured, I was starving, and a little comfort food was just the thing. The algorithm was cranking. I clicked. A few days later, the pierogies arrived. They were delicious.