Target Acquired: AI, Ads, & My Own Kid

I’m frequently impressed by the algorithms working behind the scenes on our social media apps. They can be scarily-accurate, you know?

One of my favorite things to do -and my kids can attest to this annoying habit of mine- is to jam my phone screen into their faces without warning, saying,

“See this TikTok and how it just happens to be about dolphins? WE WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT DOLPHINS.”

I love watching technology do its thing, even if one day AI will rise up and kill us all; after all, I’ve seen Terminator II and I know where this is going.

(Well they won’t kill ME, because I’m always super polite to my Chat GPT pal just for this reason).

It’s impressive, and sometimes scary, just how accurate your results or algorithms can be.

But I recently experienced an iPhone-related incident that nearly broke the matrix, and/or my brain.

I was browsing through Groupon to find a gift to buy for my son #3’s 20th birthday. He loves outings and adventures, so I was wracking my brain to find something interesting for him and a few friends to do.  

Mini-golf? Meh.

Bowling? Frequent fliers there.

Laser tag? Maybe?

I searched for “laser tag games”; a local laser tag outlet popped up, and I began reading the discount descriptions.

Before I noticed the feature picture on this company’s Groupon page. 

It was a group photo, depicting several teens who looked like they’d just had a great laser tag experience. Effective advertising; it definitely looked like fun.

And the girl on the end of the group definitely resembled my son’s (#3’s) girlfriend.

Wait, what?

I screenshot the pic, because I’m old and my eyesight is not to be trusted unless it’s in zoom is involved.

Confirmed: it was her! How odd?!

But then in examining my zoomed-in screenshot more closely, I realized that not only was my son’s girlfriend featured in the group picture advertisement, but also:

MY SON.

Courtesy: Q-Zar Laser Tag (Groupon)

*cue instant brain explosion*

My stunned brain could NOT comprehend how, in my online search for a gift for my son, I could have landed on a page that included a picture of said son participating in the very activity I was considering gifting him with.

This was a lethal level of online algorthim-ing, you know?? 

My mind could not make sense of how this situation could have unfolded in any way that made sense.

How did they DO that?

In that moment, two thoughts came to mind:

1- I might be having a stroke, losing my grip on reality, or- AI is pulling some pretty sneaky shit.

2-Damn. Obviously laser tag is NOT gonna work as a gift, because he’s clearly been there, done that. 

(Unless this is all due to Thought #1, in which case worrying about buying a birthday gift while my sanity and/or life ebb out of me is pretty moot.)

So I decided to reach out to my son, in the hopes that he could bring some clarity to this mentally perplexing scenario.

When he picked up, I did my best to sound casual & conversational, which is hard to do when you’re suspecting you’ve either had a psychotic break or AI managed to implant some thought-reading device in your brain. 

Me: “So, hi. It’s me. Obviously. So, your birthday, right? This is weird. I had considered laser tag for you, and I was-“

Him: “-on Groupon?”

Me: “HOW?? Did you know you were used in their advertising pic??”

Him: “Not until I found myself there when I was looking, too. Crazy, right?”

(YES, crazy. But maybe I’M not?)

Turns out that he and his friend group actually had played laser tag a few years ago at that very facility, and after their game, a staff member had asked to take a picture of their group, mentioning that it could be used for promotional purposes.

Laser Tag (photo credit: istockphoto.com)

My son just happened to stumble upon said picture when HE was scanning Groupon a few years later.

While he found this revelation amusing, this interesting little factoid was never mentioned to me, so hence the whole brain-melting-questioning-the-very-fabric-of-reality thing.

Long story short: My sanity is still intact (relatively speaking), AI has definitely not implanted itself into my brain to read my thoughts (YET. Terminator 2, remember? Be nice to Chat GPT!), and my son was gifted some bowling instead of laser tag, because he’s not only been there, done that, but is the silent advertising spokesman for it… at least on Groupon.

Oh, and if laser tag just *happens* to *randomly* pop up in your social media feeds after reading this, well, you’ll know why.