10 Foods You Thought Were Heathy but Aren’t!

10 Ways to Lose Belly Fat.

10 Dangers Lurking in Your Home!

We see these sorts of headlines every day. They seem to be the staple of the popular press and the internet. But how much good do they do us?

I would argue that the only thing these sorts of lists do is make us feel vaguely uneasy or guilty. Will knowing that diet yoghurt is bad for us really change the way we eat? Will we actually do anything about our waistlines just because we’ve read that list? Do we really want to know about the monster germs and potential accidents lurking in our homes?

This is negative writing disguised as something positive and I would argue that it should be avoided at all costs. On the internet, it is just clickbait, designed to lure us in so our eyes will fall on the adverts cunningly placed between number two on the list and number three, number five and number six and, yes, number nine and number ten. There are adverts everywhere.

And it’s scary how appropriate the adverts seem to be. I bought some walking socks in a shop on Wednesday, along with new walking boots. I had not been looking at walking boots or socks online, but for the past five days, the adverts on my Facebook feed and wherever I go on the internet have featured walking socks. It’s scary how much Meta knows about me. I am trying to work out how it knows I bought walking socks in a shop.

What is so stupid about these adverts however is that, now I have walking socks, I am unlikely to buy more, so the adverts are completely irrelevant to me. If the algorithms were really intelligent, they would be advertising waterproof jackets and trousers, walking poles and rucksacks. Those are items I might be in the market for; I don’t want any more walking socks, thank you.

I’m finding the internet rather an uncomfortable place to be – even if I actively avoid the news headlines featuring war, murder and government failures.

So how do we make our peace with the internet?

Some people use a VPN – a Virtual Private Network which protects your connection and privacy online. Nobody can see that you’re looking at walking socks, for instance. Some people try never to buy anything online. My mother goes the extra mile by not having the internet at all – which does make things like banking more difficult, I must say.

I think it’s just better to resign ourselves to the fact that Meta knows everything and that we can have no secrets online – and then just ignore the articles on 10 ways to feel miserable and the adverts therein.

Mary

A Moodscope member