Lately I have been extremely disturbed mentally. Family being the main reason behind the mental stress. Over the weekend, I just took a drive out and had a break down of sorts. Shouted out, cried out loudly my grief for well over 15-20 minutes, all alone in the car. Literally nobody else knows what I am going through. Interesting part starts next. Surprisingly, ever since that day, like even before I even reached home, I'm suddenly getting therapy related ads all over the internet, Spotify, YouTube mainly, then on chrome and other websites. Hulu also started showing those ads later in the evening. Most surprising was even my employer's benefits team sent out a generic email about tie ups with organizations that provide therapy. Now, the employer email might be a coincidence, but the ads everywhere, are they also a coincidence?? I find it hard to believe so. Is this yet another proof that these big companies know what we're going through and are listening to us all the time? Not that I really care even if they are listening, but this seems a little too much to call it a simple coincidence. what do you think? TC:192k #mentalhealth #depression
May is mental health awareness month, so likely those companies are increasing ad spend
Oh this makes more sense
@90oilnk hope you feel better. It could be coincidence right now or most likely they already tagged you already through search patterns in the past and it's just that you are noticing those ads now? Tbh we shouldn't trust government or any other private entity for that matter. They could be eavesdropping
Sorry to hear that. Don’t loose hope buddy, things will get better. Had to go through similar experience last year it was disheartening, this year its lot better. Just hold on to your ground and stay strong.
Dealing with a family full of narcissists so I feel your pain. Had to cut most of them out of my life. Hope things improve for you.
Same here man. I literally googled signs of narcissism and the lady satisfies 8/9 qualities of a narcissist. Same goes for her kids.
That's a tough one. From my research on the topic, narcissists almost never improve. For me, it's my parents and an older sister. When forced to socialize with them, I just keep it shallow and compliment them a lot. I NEVER tell them anything important about my life -- they will weaponize information to humiliate or gain something. They don't even know I changed jobs!
Rather than focusing on whether companies are hearing it all, worry about ur mental health. Seek care! Coming out of covid and that it’s May - i’d be surprised if anyone hasn’t seen mental health related ads. But please stop worrying about this and focus on what u should do about it.
They're probably listening all the time. I verbally talked about pistachios one time and started getting ads for pistachios on FB.
Companies have products that can categorize your state of mind by snippets of recordings from your phone, the searches you did, or even the fact that you drove to a secluded place by yourself during a particular time of day. All of this data is anonymized and used to create a generic profile of you that ads can be served for.
Umm, so clarifying few things. 1) I have never searched anything that would remotely indicate I'm depressed. 2) I went to my office for some work there and drove back. Did not stop anywhere. Infact, this is literally the first time I have even indicated online that I'm mentally down.
Anyway, I get your point though and it could very well be possible that the companies are doing as you mentioned above.
Machine learning algorithms, don't worry 😀
I duno, but hope things get better for you OP. Been there and I come back to rough times like these occasionally so I know what it’s like. Exercise, hobbies and not taking anyones bullshit helps.