I just ran across a screenshot I took a while back of an email I received from the GF. I had sent her some pictures from a trip we had taken and she, obviously so blinded by my rugged good looks had made me her desktop photo. Sure, that’s not terribly unusual, nor it is particularly blog-worthy as topics go. What I found amusing was the ads that Google decided were a good match for the subject we were discussing – two in particular:
Apparently, Google isn’t quite sure whether I’m an “Overweight People” or one of the “World’s Most Gorgeous Hunks”.
Oddly enough this isn’t the only weird photo involving overweight people that I’ve noticed today. There was a banner ad that I saw last night that caught my eye. By now we’re all used to the banner ads promoting various cosmetic anti-aging and weight-loss creams, pills, and ointments. Almost without exception, these ads use pictures of 20-year old women and photoshop them to add wrinkles, rolls of fat, pus-filled sores, or whatever plague the ad is promoting a solution for. They then use those altered pictures as the “before” and go back to the original picture as the “after”. Well as you can see by the photo on the right, these charlatans have now decided “Hey, why bother using pictures of real people at all when we can just make the whole model on computer?”.
In the long run this probably won’t work as well as they think though. Obviously, the only people who can benefit from those snake-oils are computer-generated people, of which few are on the internet and even fewer use credit cards or have steady jobs and an income. But, I suppose it’s only a matter of time before Second Life develops more realistic simulations of weight gain and proportions and everyone on it suddenly finds that their avatars are porking out and plumping up, despite all the exercise they get from pretend-shopping for pretend-products and having anonymous cyber-sex with strangers. So perhaps I’m wrong, maybe this company is just seeing the future better than I can.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t mock them until that happen. I just can't contact them directly without violating their "Serious Inquiries Only" policy.
Apparently, Google isn’t quite sure whether I’m an “Overweight People” or one of the “World’s Most Gorgeous Hunks”.
Oddly enough this isn’t the only weird photo involving overweight people that I’ve noticed today. There was a banner ad that I saw last night that caught my eye. By now we’re all used to the banner ads promoting various cosmetic anti-aging and weight-loss creams, pills, and ointments. Almost without exception, these ads use pictures of 20-year old women and photoshop them to add wrinkles, rolls of fat, pus-filled sores, or whatever plague the ad is promoting a solution for. They then use those altered pictures as the “before” and go back to the original picture as the “after”. Well as you can see by the photo on the right, these charlatans have now decided “Hey, why bother using pictures of real people at all when we can just make the whole model on computer?”. In the long run this probably won’t work as well as they think though. Obviously, the only people who can benefit from those snake-oils are computer-generated people, of which few are on the internet and even fewer use credit cards or have steady jobs and an income. But, I suppose it’s only a matter of time before Second Life develops more realistic simulations of weight gain and proportions and everyone on it suddenly finds that their avatars are porking out and plumping up, despite all the exercise they get from pretend-shopping for pretend-products and having anonymous cyber-sex with strangers. So perhaps I’m wrong, maybe this company is just seeing the future better than I can.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t mock them until that happen. I just can't contact them directly without violating their "Serious Inquiries Only" policy.
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