TIMMTI: Netflix

Day 3 - 3 Jan 2020

App: YouTube
Ad: Netflix
Targeted: No

YouTube, owned by Google, is one of the more unpredictable apps when it comes to ads.  I use it every day on my laptop, which has an ad-blocker installed, so I don't see ads on there, but if I'm using my phone or my Chromecast then ads do occasionally appear between videos.  Before getting to a video though, there's always an ad at the top of my YouTube app homepage, so let's take a look at that:

The ad is paid for by "New Sofa Search" and offers to find me "the best sofas on a clearance sale".  Now, I'm not looking for a new sofa at the moment, never mind the absolute unit in the photograph, and it would be wild for me to purchase one just for the sake of an experiment like this.  However, I've never clicked on a YouTube ad before, so I had a look to see where it went.  

I ended up on a dodgy-looking site called "bestsearches.net" which offered me a list of different sofa types ("modern sleeper sofa", "white sectional leather sofas" etc) and then when clicking on one of those, I go to a Yahoo search which shows me "ads related to" the category I selected.  I find this really curious - YouTube is owned by Google, but the advert on the homepage is for some sort of search engine which then leads to a Yahoo search which in turn is powered by Bing, aka Google's arch nemesis?  Utterly bizarre.

Anyway, as I said, I have no interest in purchasing a sofa so I moved on to the first video on my feed, or in this case the first 'YouTube mix', to see whether I can find an ad attached to it.  Eagle-eyed readers will spot that the first YouTube mix starts with a New Order song; it's apparently "My Mix" but YouTube honestly puts the same few videos at the top of every mix so it doesn't really matter.  For what it's worth, I didn't have a problem clicking to listen to Age Of Consent since it's one of my favourite songs of all time. 

There was no ad before the video, but there was a little yellow marker at the end of the video progress bar which I thought meant that an advert is placed there.  Apparently I was wrong because the playlist went right on to the next song.  After the third, I did see an advert but it was literally just the YouTube logo for a few seconds before moving on.  Finally, after 6 videos, I got an advert!

The ad was for Netflix, more specifically, it was an ad for Netflix containing the trailer for The Irishman.  The Irishman is a Scorsese movie that was released on Netflix a month or two ago and I already know a couple of things about it: it has some weird CGI to de-age the actors, it's a typical Scorsese gangster movie, and it's over three hours long.  I already know that this movie is not going to spark joy in me so I'm making the decision not to waste three hours of my life on it.

However, since I already have a Netflix subscription, lets instead see what it would like me to watch today.  For those of you not familiar with Netflix, when you open the site it has a 'Spotlight' show or movie that appears as the page header - usually it's something that's newly released and, more often than not, it's a "Netflix Original" aka something released exclusively on Netflix.  If you scroll on, it offers shows and movies under categories, like 'recently added', 'acclaimed UK TV shows', 'romantic movies' and so on.

Today, the Spotlight is on a show called You, which has just released a second series.

I haven't seen You before but I've heard of it.  It's a Netflix-exclusive series that I remember seeing advertised on the Spotlight when the first series came out, and I was mildly interested in watching but was watching a few other shows at the time.  I've also seen a bit of content around it recently - Buzzfeed quizzes, that sort of thing - to coincide with the new series.  I don't know much about the plotline but from what I understand it centres on a man who has decided to pursue a girl he likes by stalking her, and there was a bit of controversy when it first came out in case people thought it was a sweet love story and not genuinely terrifying.  

Netflix implores me to "Watch Season 2 Now", but as I'm new to the show, I started with Series 1 Episode 1.  Knowing even the small amount that I did about it, I was paying attention right away and looking for warning signs that this might not be the fluffy romantic story that I often turn to on Netflix (their teen movies are a guilty pleasure of mine) and it didn't take long for the episode to lay out its premise: this guy is bad news.  I won't say anything to spoil it for those who haven't seen any of it yet, but I will say that I enjoyed it and will definitely continue watching.  

I might have cheated a little bit by not watching what social media advertised to me, but this is my experiment and therefore my rules.  I don't know whether YouTube's advertising is particularly targeted.  On the one hand, the sofa search ad was pretty abstract and bizarre, and doesn't match up with anything I watch there, but I do use YouTube to watch movie trailers so it's possible that the Netflix ad was at least somewhat aimed at me.  I do occasionally watch Netflix on my computer through a browser that's linked to my Google account, so if it collects data on me then it knows I have a Netflix account and haven't watched The Irishman.  When it comes to Netflix, it wants me to think that its recommendations are targeted at me.  When I clicked on You it told me the series was a "99% match" for me, but honestly every time I see that 'match' bar it's usually set at 99% so I don't know whether I trust it.  I think the Spotlight is the same for every user so it might be coincidental that today it's offering me a show I actually wanted to watch, but if I get any more Netflix ads when I'm browsing my socials, maybe I'll get to test that theory.  

TIMMTI: Stormzy

Day 2 - 2 Jan 2020

App: iTunes Store
Ad: Stormzy - Heavy Is The Head
Targeted to me?: No

The iTunes Store isn't a social media app, but the Apple media store for books, films and TV shows.  It's installed as a default app on iPhones so I thought it would be interesting to see what it tried to sell to me and whether there was any personalisation to it. 
The banner ad at the top of the iTunes Store is for Apple Music, but I've decided that I'm not going to sign up to subscription services as part of this experiment unless they sound really intriguing - otherwise I'll forget to cancel things and end up with payments coming out of my bank all the time!  As I use Spotify I don't feel like signing up to Apple Music makes sense for me, so I skipped this and looked at the 'Hot Albums' section immediately underneath.  The first album on that list is Heavy Is The Head by Stormzy, which came out last month.

I don't think the iTunes Store targets its shop-front to individuals because this album doesn't really fit in with my past iTunes purchases.  For a start, it's very rare that I'll buy a whole album on there - I have to have a physical copy - and while I have bought a couple of rap songs over the many years that I've had an iTunes account, my last five purchases were:

1.  People by The 1975
2. break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored by Ariana Grande
3. Narcissist by No Rome ft The 1975
4. Brass In Pocket by Suede
5. Stay Together (Long Version) by Suede

I don't think Stormzy fits in particularly well with that playlist!  I'm familiar with Stormzy - in fact, I saw him live at a festival back in 2017 - but he's not an artist I usually choose to listen to, as I'm more of a Britpop person than a grime fan.  He is undeniably a huge star at the moment, having headlined Glastonbury, picked up a host of awards and reached number one in the UK with his debut album, Gang Signs & Prayer - the first grime album to hit the top spot.  He's in the news this week because his single Own It (featuring Ed Sheeran and Burna Boy) hit number one this week and also because he's involved in a Twitter beef with Wiley  (arguably the first grime star to have mainstream success in the 2000s) who is critical of the link-up with Sheeran.

Heavy Is The Head is Stormzy's second album and is currently retailing at £4.99 on iTunes.  Unlike the old days when you had to buy a record to hear it all the way through (or curl up at a listening post), in 2020 I don't have to drop £4.99 to try this out, so I hopped over to Spotify to see how it sounds.  I don't listen to rap/hip-hop/grime albums very often as I find that the music gets a bit samey after a while but this one didn't become background music midway through like these sorts of records often do for me.  That said, I find it hard to pick out individual tracks that stood out to me; I liked the tropical-inspired beats of Own It and Superheroes (which features Stormzy singing the theme song to Tracy Beaker at its outro) but the whole thing sounded pretty good.  Like everyone else I've seen and heard enough of Ed Sheeran (did anyone else see Yesterday last summer and wonder what he was doing there?!) but he doesn't overpower Own It so I'll be happy to hear it on the radio now that it's a number one hit.
I think Stormzy has risen to the top of the grime pack because his music has become a lot softer and more commercial as he's become more popular, compared to other rappers in the genre like Giggs and Skepta, whose songs feel charged with violence.  Stormzy's lyrics reference his home and the culture he grew up in but somehow it feels more universal; less claustrophobic and less trapped in a specific section of London than his contemporaries. 
Overall, I'm not going to buy the album but I'm okay about having listened to it.  Since I didn't use the iTunes Store to listen or purchase I don't expect to see more grime on my front page, but I do wonder what it's going to do to my Spotify algorithm...

Introducing 'The Internet Made Me Try It'

Happy New Year everyone!  It's that time of year when we all reflect on where we've been, what caught our interest and where we want to go over the next 365 days.

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
• Facebook
• Instagram
• iTunes Store
• Mail
• Pinterest
• Podcasts
• Snapchat
• Spotify
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• 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

Septeaster

I promise this blog isn't dead and I am working on something to bring it back to life next year but in the meantime here are the nails I just did and haven't tidied up yet - don't they look like little Easter eggs?

(Colours: Rimmel matte in You're Mine (peach) and Cheeky Chap (blue), Primark matte in Blush (pink), Ciate Purple Sherbet, Barry M Mint Green)

November / December update

The last movie I watched...
The Princess Switch (Netflix)

As much as I love my parents, one of my favourite times of the season is when they disappear off on holiday for a few days and leave me home alone to indulge in one of my guilty pleasures: cheesy Netflix teen rom-coms.  The Princess Switch actually ticks my brother's guilty pleasure box too, in that it doubles as a made-for-TV cheesy Christmas movie; hopefully he won't be disappointed that I watched it without him.  If you haven't seen the trailer for The Princess Switch, the premise is basically The Parent Trap, except instead of separated twin sisters, the protagonists (both played by Vanessa Hudgens, star of wholesome teen Disney movie High School Musical and less-than-wholesome teen exploitation movie Spring Breakers) are mere doppelgangers - one is a baker from Chicago, the other a Duchess days away from marrying a prince.  The set-up for the switch is quick and clumsy - baker Stacy's whole back-story is dropped on us in the first scene, nobody in the kingdom knows what the Duchess looks like because she's "camera-shy" - but the film still has its charm, containing all the sweetness of an old-fashioned Disney princess movie.  A lot of the story was predictable, but it took me a while to work out just how the romantic pairings were going to fall and how the fairytale ending would play out. 

On my record player...
The 1975 - Give Yourself A Try/Love It If We Made It (2018, Dirty Hit)

The 1975's third album, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, came out this week.  I haven't yet been able to decide whether I like it or not, although I suspect it'll grow on me, as my copies haven't arrived yet, but the special edition of their Q Magazine cover with a 7" of the first two songs they released from the album has arrived so that's currently on my timetable.  If you haven't heard them yet (where have you been?!), Give Yourself A Try is a noisy, fun powerpop song about Matty Healy's inner turmoil, and Love It If We Made It is a shouty protest song about the global turmoil surrounding him.  Basically, he's managed to cover every subject in the modern world on 2 sides of vinyl, which is pretty impressive.


My November 2018 playlist:

1. thank u, next - Ariana Grande
2. Corrine - Black Honey
3. World In My Eyes - Depeche Mode
4. Only Shallow - My Bloody Valentine
5. Here And Now - Ride
6. Palisade - Mineral
7. Your Silent Face - New Order
8. Herjazz - Huggy Bear
9. The Drowners - Suede
10. Brass In Pocket - Suede
11. Da Da Da - Elastica
12. Sincerity Is Scary - The 1975
13. Having A Blast - Green Day
14. The Ghost In You - The Psychedelic Furs
15. A Change Of Heart - The 1975
16. The Man Who Married A Robot / Love Theme - The 1975

This week in my journal:

My theme this week is sort of a 'teenagers gone wild' thing - there's some freakishly-dressed young people appearing on a 90s talk show, Yolandi Visser from Die Antwoord getting high outside in her pyjamas, and the goth girl skating in platform shoes (which I'm very envious of). 


I usually mention the last book I read on here too, but I've now spent about 4 months wading through The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh and still have 100 pages to go, so I'm not ready to talk about that yet.  However, instead I can offer...

The last book I listened to...
The Letters Of Sylvia Plath (BBC Radio 4 Book Of The Week, 2018)

I'm a huge fan of Sylvia Plath's letters, so I was delighted when Radio 4 did a second instalment of her words as Book Of The Week last week, this time focusing on the later period of her life when she had finished studying and met Ted Hughes (her student years and first breakdown were covered earlier in the year).  Her letters during this period are mostly upbeat and loving: she has a supportive husband, her poems are being accepted for publication and she becomes a mother.  Towards the end of the week, however, things take a dark turn when she uncovers Ted's adultery - the anguish in the letter that opens Friday's episode is gut-wrenching.  She simultaneously is lost and feels that she can't go on, and has days when she realises she must pick herself up and start a new life without him.  The last letter is from right before her suicide aged 30 and is heartbreaking.  I know I've blogged about this before, but I wish she'd carried on and was able to see how much of a hero she is to the women who followed her.