October 19. 2024: Untargeted -

Local ice creamery Salt & Straw has set up shop in New York City, and the food critic of the New York Post is not a fan. He takes particular issue with their Pastrami on Rye flavor, which has a butterscotch base, and too much mustard.

I don’t blame him! Salt & Straw flavors are almost universally Not For Me. I’ve liked two, ever. I only go into S&S when some visiting friend insists. Also, the aroma of baking cones blankets an entire block of Division, which is intrusive.

I do love the tiny gelateria just up the street, run by two Italian brothers passionate about their nocciolo – so passionate* that in their first year, they shut down and went home to Italy during the hazelnut harvest.  Hazelnuts may be the Oregon State Nut, but Oregon hazelnuts are not noccioli.

Having just received my voters’ pamphlet, I have several other nominees for Oregon State Nut, but that’s another story.

Anyway, speaking of things that are intrusive and not to my taste, I had a bad experience recently, when I woke up to a Facebook feed flooded with three different flavors of ads that were Not For Me.

It was creepy back when very targeted ads would appear: This bra was designed by a 70-year-old granny! Get your gutters cleaned now, half off! Miracle dog-hair removal tape! But this was the opposite. I received more than 50 ads with underdressed young women who wanted me to watch a video ALONE, plus scores of ads for romance novels and Solitaire apps. (I thought the Solitaire paired nicely with the ALONE theme of the videos, in a way.)

I hadn’t been researching porn, genre fiction, or solitaire. The ads just appeared, and the invasion went on for days. (I tried hiding them. No joy.  Eventually, a young friend took my phone from me, said WOW, and reported a crop for Adult Content and Sexual Exploitation, which began to stem the flood.)

I noticed some odd patterns. The young women were all baby-doll bashful, and all Asian. No diversity! Also, it hurt my feelings that The Algorithm took me for a racist and maybe a pedophile. The few women who were not offering video invites hawked a strange variety of wares, eg, mortages, financial advice, grout. One held a handful of items in a fan shape insufficient to hide her charms. I never clicked through, but I did squint. Were those … INDEX cards?? Had she been studying?

The romance novels were a different story, in that all of the humans depicted on their covers were white. Again, no diversity, unless you count the one cover sporting a pouty alien.  

The first romance novel was blurbed as “A fake-marriage small town tale with all the feels.” (As a Salt & Straw ice cream flavor, would this be Saccharine Molasses Maple? Do “all the feels” include some that are sweet and sentimental? Or am I minimizing the distasteful “fake marriage” aspect? Maybe it’s set in the Midwest, and the flavor is Corn Dog and Cotton Candy.)

After that one spoilt-Hallmark blurb, though, it was an onslaught of Smoldering (white) Men with control issues: moody ex-bosses, brooding doctors, bad-tempered best-friends’ brothers.  One blurb read, “This book is beautifully written, but what’s with all the spanking?” I was punching the three dots and choosing “Hide – Irrelevant” or “Hide-Knows Too Much” or “Hide-Sensitive Topic” or “Hide-Repetitive.”  I even tried “Hide-Already Purchased.”  It didn’t move the needle.

I wondered if I could distract The Algorithm by suggesting I had pressing needs for other ads. I shouted, within my phone’s “hearing,” that I sure could use some ads for gutters, or floor coverings! Nope.

The novels – and many of the young women, to be honest - felt very AI-generated, fakey, paint-by-numbers, concocted from a menu. Lollipop, teddy-bear, tiny nurse’s cap, check!

I know that mysteries come in a lot of flavors, that a reader could have a fondness for hard-boiled noir, or sassy process servers, or little old ladies with cats, or sleuthing chefs (who write their recipes – ON INDEX CARDS!)  But I was unacquainted with the tropes on offer here:  An Alpha Male Mafia Obsession Romance! A Classic Reverse-Harem Romance! (The Reverse Harem guys looked like a boy band – the Smolderer, the Intellectual, the Artist, and - shirtless, front and center - the smiling, blond Sporty Guy. He was the ONLY smiling guy on any cover, though his shirtlessness was unexceptional).

So far, the winning blurb reads:

A Forced Proximity Secret Baby Billionaire Werewolf Shifter Romance.

(Tell me you don't smell AI. Also, one of my young friends points out that “Shifter” is superfluous, since werewolves ARE shifters. Good catch!)

I did not ask for this. It reminds me of when Salt & Straw offered Lavender and Uni. NO.

“No,” I protest, “this has to stop.” I watch my two smoldering, passionate* and shirtless Italian bosses, who have stripped down after a long, hot evening of serving our panting, insatiable customers. Doffing my hairnet and my fetching little apron, I turn the sign in the window to CLOSED, lower the blinds, and douse the overhead lights.

The brothers are packing the last of the gelato into cartons, doing that thing gelato-servers do, scooping and stroking, scooping and stroking, working the gelato until it submits into perfect pliability. In the faint light of the cold cases, I admire their musculed, mesmerizing, frozen-confection stirring arms.

“Boys,” I say, “all this smoldering just won’t do. The product is melting. Surely, if we three put our heads together....”