In 2019 I achieved one of my New Years Resolutions and learned to play bass, albeit using the bottom strings of an electric guitar I stole from my brother, so now I can play along to all of Elastica's debut album (the album I listened to most in 2019!). For 2020 I was unsure which new skill I wanted to learn but then I discovered 'thrift flipping' videos on YouTube, where people buy old clothes and re-work them into something modern and more their style, which I think I want to try out.
2019 was also the first year for a while where I didn't complete a 'reading challenge' and as a result I ended up reading more books than usual - sometimes I get stuck on the same book for months and then have to grab some short reads in December to finish the categories, or start counting audiobooks that I've listened to via radio or podcasts. Over the last month or so I decided I should go back to a reading challenge for 2020, but now that the new year is here I've changed my mind and elected to just get through as many of my books as I can without worrying about fitting them into a category. I've also decided that if the blurb and first chapter don't excite me, I'm not going to force myself to finish them.
I've also flirted with the idea of trying out a few experiments based on advertising, 'self care' and social media. I wanted to try out that classic feminist-scholar experiment of buying a women's magazine and following all the tips and buying all of the advertised products, to see whether they had any effect on improving my life. However, when I went into WH Smith I was very uninspired by the selection they had to offer - a lot of the glossy celebrity weeklies have gone online (aside from things like OK! and Hello! which don't really fit my criteria) and none of the monthlies caught my eye aside from US Vogue, which wouldn't be of much use to me since a lot of the products won't be available to me and also it costs an eye-watering £8.50 as an imported title! So I abandoned that idea. I also thought about trying out some of those 30 day productivity/self-care/wellness challenges that keep appearing in my Pinterest feed but I quickly got bored of that idea.
Inspiration struck me once again when I was watching YouTube. At some point in 2019, my recommendations threw up a video called something like "Trying on wedding dresses from Wish". As someone who once (and never again) made the mistake of buying clothes on Wish, and who has always been curious about what the wedding dresses they advertise really look like, it caught my attention. Since then, I've spent many, many hours glued to the YouTube videos created by Safiya Nygaard, who is a fashion and beauty vlogger known for experiments like mixing every lipstick from a make-up store together to see what colour they made, creating outfits inspired by different decades, and a series called 'The Internet Made Me Buy It', where Safiya scrolls through her social media feeds and buys whatever is advertised to her. This last one is what has inspired my experiment for 2020. I have about a dozen apps on my phone which I'd categorise as being social media or shopping apps, and they advertise to me all the time. Sometimes the 'sponsored content' is clearer than other times, which means that sometimes I don't even notice that I'm looking at a paid advertisement. Part of Safiya's aim, and one of the things that I found interesting about the series, was to work out to what extent ads are targeted specifically to her. She found that some apps (Facebook, Instagram) seemed to have a really good idea of what she was interested in - for instance, a lot of her purchases wound up being clothes or makeup - whereas others (YouTube, Snapchat) were more generalised. However, I'd argue that it's hard to tell how specific they're being when only one person is taking part in the experiment - you could argue that Instagram is geared towards aesthetics and maybe everyone sees a lot of clothing advertised on there, and that it's a coincidence that Safiya's interests match with that.
So, this year, I'm going to complete my own version of her 'the internet made me buy it' series to see what sort of things I get advertised to me on the apps I use every day. It feels like the modern equivalent of looking at magazine ads, especially if the content is personalised to my specific interests and not "female 18-45" or whatever the magazines perceive their target demographic to be. Unlike looking for a challenge that someone else has written, I can do this while I mindlessly scroll through the internet every day.
I've set some limits: I'm not going to throw money at designer/expensive brands just because they're advertised to me - I don't get YouTube revenue like Safiya for my experiments! - and I'll be ignoring things that are in opposition to my lifestyle, like adverts by drinks companies or services that are unattainable to a person living in a relatively rural area.
Here are the apps I'm going to be focusing on, which have all been living on my iPhone for a few years and which I use almost every day (aside from the Apple stores but I think they could be interesting!):
- App Store
- Buzzfeed
- iTunes Store
- Podcasts
- Snapchat
- Spotify
- Tumblr
- YouTube
Day 1 - January 1st 2020
App used: Facebook
Advert: Penguin Reading Challenge
Do I think this was targeted to me: Yes
Day one, and I chose Facebook to start me off. I've had my Facebook account for over 10 years, so if they're targeting adverts to me, they ought to know me pretty well, no? I open it every day to scroll but rarely interact - my profile picture is from 2016, I update my status every few months (usually with a music video or a picture from a concert I've been to) and I rarely get tagged in any memes. My main uses for Facebook are to keep up with news about my office and the band Suede, whose Insatiable Ones fanclub has a very active Facebook group.
I interact far more with Messenger, Instagram and Whatsapp,which aren't 'Facebook' but are owned by the Facebook company. As Safiya Nygaard points out in her series, these apps and sites state that they use your data from across sites and other sites and apps you use that don't belong to Facebook in order to select ads for you. In that context, this ad makes sense.
When I was shown the ad for the Penguin Reading Challenge, I was still almost convinced I was going to try one of the reading challenges I'd seen on Pinterest - I'd searched "2020 reading challenge" on there a few times in the last few days to help pick a list of categories. New Years Day is the perfect day to hit me with this ad; it's probably the one day of the year where most reading challenges are set.
After clicking on the ad, I was taken to Penguin's website. For anyone reading this who prefers blogs to books, Penguin is one of the UK's (maybe the world's) biggest and most beloved book publishers, specialising in 'Penguin Classics' as well as contemporary works. I expected them to present me with a survey which would personalise some recommendations for me from their vast catalogue, but instead I was met with four choices:
(Image from Penguin website)
I was a bit disappointed that their challenge is actually far more general that what I'd expected to find - I hoped they'd offer me some books I hadn't heard of that were a perfect fit for me, but instead I can pick a resolution from "Expand my mind", "Keep up with the big hits", "Read the books I've always meant to" and "Discover the best contemporary writing". I get most of my books from charity shops and have a stack of 'classics' that I've collected and not yet read, so "Read the books I've always meant to" sounded like the most attainable and that's the one I signed up for.
I received an email immediately telling me I'm "on my way to an exciting reading life" followed by a list of 10 books with a short description. Of the list, I own two: Persuasion by Jane Austen, and A Room Of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. Persuasion was given pride of place at the top of the email, along with Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - these two have full descriptions while the other 8 books come with a tagline only (such as "essential feminist literature" for Virginia Woolf), so it seems like that's what they want me to read, if I haven't already. I've actually never read a Jane Austen novel, which comes as a surprise to some; I started Emma once but University got in the way and I didn't get very far into the story.
After reading this email I swiftly put it into my Trash folder and decided not to bother with the challenge, but writing this blog entry has changed my mind, and persuaded me to give Persuasion a go. Clicking the book cover in the email took me to the Penguin site which recommended online book stores where I could purchase a copy, but since I already have one in my book drawer, that won't be necessary. Sadly, mine isn't a Penguin but a charming 1964 US edition from the New American Library.
I can't offer a review just yet as I won't start reading until bedtime, but check back at the end of the month and we'll see whether I've made it to the end! I'm looking forward to seeing what the next Penguin Challenge newsletter is like for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I want to know whether it will let me weigh in on last month's choices and offer them a review of Persuasion to base future recommendations on. Secondly, I'm interested to see when it arrives, as the email says 'monthly' but the website says 'bi-monthly' which could either be twice a month or every second month.
If you're interested in signing up for the Penguin Reading Challenge you can find it at: https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/the-penguin-reading-challenge.html
Let me know if you join in, or if you've ever completed a reading challenge, or if you've decided to embark on one in 2020!
R x
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