I have recently mentioned how much difficulty I am having with accepting the extent to which the digital world attempts to figure out who I am. Well, now I’m really finding it disturbing. I guess I should explain a little:

A few days ago, I received a jury summons. Apparently, this will take up an entire quarter. I was rather shocked. I have a lot of travel planned in the next few months, including chairing a national conference out of state and some international travel for work. So, of course, I googled “Killing in the Name of” to get a little Rage on. The right margin of any YouTube video shows related videos. As often happens, I followed those videos down the rabbit hole. Within a few videos of Rage Against the Machine, I found a Marilyn Manson version of Tainted Love. That brought to mind the Soft Cell version (one of the biggest hits from my high school years). As well when you play YouTube videos, there is often an advertisement on the bottom. I pulled up the video of Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love.” In this case, the ad asked, “Looking for gay men?” along with the gayest list of 80s tunes imaginable running the length of the right margin. Wow. I found that I actually like most of those songs.

So based on my traffic, teh Google must think I am a gay right-wing white supremacist with an unhealthy obsession over the American Civil War.

Update: As I continued down this path, the ads came to say such things as “Online Geek Dating.” Weird.