It's been a long time since I've played that game but when my old phone died I lost a lot of contact numbers. One, a connection I made at the old pub, antique dealer out of Vancouver, especially, he educated me as to collectible antique bangles and I took to Facebook to try and find him. I've a few finds I'd like him to see.
And, instantly I'm besieged with a thousand friend suggestions. Family, of course, and I add the Son and Daughter - the daughter, now all her friends are suggested, and I start to add them, just because I'm a malicious SOB, and she quickly goes on the alert with her friends and warns them away from accepting my requests, and then unfriends me.
Which is a separate post, but kind of funny, a text-message horror film that begins with an overly protective parent getting technology and friending his daughter's friends on Facebook...
Anyways, what amazed me - and will probably bore you - is how many people it came up with that I knew. I mean, hundreds of randoms, but people I hadn't worked with for years, for 2 cellphones, and so it must, somehow, be accessing my location data, old location data, years old, it must know where I'm spending my days, accessing old phone numbers long since lost, and I'm rather entirely amazed. And - equally amazing - the people it doesn't suggest - people that I wouldn't friend anyways but, you'd think, would show up.
Curious.
And then there's the predictive ads...
For example, following a few big nights I start getting ads for Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't need to search for this, I know I party. But - go off the booze for a week or two and you start getting liquor ads before your videos. They're gonna get you one way or the other.
Hmmm. And there are the targeted ads for every search I've ever done, which I would expect, but - and this made me laugh, after the debacle with insurance - both in BC and Alberta, while arguing with ICBC about reasonable compensation for unreasonable delays I start getting ICBC "Insurance Fraud" ads on my YouTube feed...like they're sending them to me!
Somewhere in an invisible cloud I exist as a series of data-points, locations, shops, spending, restaurants, websites, tastes in clothing, food, pornography, my habits - and while I've no fear that anyone will care to look it up, it's me, but it's the same as everyone else, it still makes me think - maybe time to lose the cellphone, and a little less time on the internet...
Despite all this - do you think YouTube could find something I might want to watch?
Depending on how long I live - like an episode of "Black Mirror" - I will be able to recreated, the thousands of posts from my blog used to define me, my patterns, predict my reading, viewing, and my reaction to said media, and while dead in the flesh I'll belong to a sort of Digital Afterworld, a digital simulacrum which mocks my children with bad advice and shit conversation, recommendations to watch terrible movies, read difficult books, DeepFake videos allowing me to Skype my grandchildren in supervised visits...
Whatever happens you can bet it'll be interesting...