| A long time ago, my friend bought a Hyundai Getz. We used to play the Getz game - nothing complex, but whenever you saw a Getz you'd yell "Getz" and get a point. After playing for a few days, we were seeing easily 20-30 per day. I'm sure I'd seen them many times before (they were one of the most popular cars in Australia for a few years before that), but I'd never really noticed them. I've played the game with a few other car models with friends since, and it always results in a comment like "Wow, there are so many X on the road". I understand why your story feels chilling to you and how it would convince you, however it's more likely that: a) in the 100+ ads you see per day[0] you've seen panty liners before but it was never relevant to you (like a Getz) or b) you've seen ads for panty liners recently but not conciously taken it in, resulting in the inverse of what you thought happened - your MadLibs suggestion was due to an ad. I'm very confident many companies would be happy to spy on you via microphone if practical, but outside of malware I'm yet to see anyone proving this actually happening. We have billions of smartphones in the world and millions of tech people, many who would have to be keeping the secret all these years and many others who somehow couldn't find evidence of this. Occum's razor just doesn't add up here. [0] https://www.thedrum.com/news/2023/05/03/how-many-ads-do-we-r... |