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by auganov 1591 days ago
It's trivial to create a lookalike audience based off your site's traffic, even if there's no pre programmed category. You just put up some content that you know for a fact will attract a given group, promote it to a wide audience, and then create a lookalike audience based on people who clicked the link (or some more specific conversion metric).

That said, the examples of ads you've posted seem more like attempts to get some attention by acting strange. Perhaps you're being shown low-bidders and that simply exposes you to total randoms rather than the usual polished ads. I experimented a bit with rock bottom bids and the engagement would often be from bizarre looking accounts. I'm guessing it may go both ways.

Even if advertisers are targeting you on this, they still need to outbid others. You don't need to completely change the data they have on you. You only need one new signal that attracts higher bids from some other category of advertisers. Merely changing your IP address or mobile device might be enough.

Also if you really saw your name or username in these ads then why worry about being targeted for a history of mental illness related stuff. If that's true then you've got a much bigger problem.