In this exchange on Gmail with someone about work and using the words employment, the Highly Intelligent Google Email Scanners figured we might just be interested in a rhinoplasty or picking locks.
So the logic goes: If you're looking for a job, you might need some plastic surgery so you look better. And, if you're not making any money unemployed, you might want to know how to pick locks and steal money.
Let's play "Stump The Gmail Scanner!" With very little to go on, and mainly the corporate disclaimer from a friend about some writing I sent him, the scanners grasp. Okay, a few about writing and agents, how to make money (but why $77,000,000?) but my favorite is "You: an electricity fool?" Moi?
From our contextual friends at Gmail again. I've circled the only words in this email that might have triggered these ads. Use of the words "weekend" and "throw" seemed to make the scanners think, "Hey! Knife Throwing! Bachelorettes! Sounds like a wild weekend!"
The email was supposed to be pictures of a space we might rent for a party. Some kind of metadata triggered the Gmail to serve up links to liposuction and menstruation pictures.
Here an email with a friend sharing the passing of the late, great George Carlin and news about her daughter attending college in Cambridge, Mass. Check.
That still doesn't explain the ad on the bottom about Mindful Dog Yoga.
Gmail "reads" your email. Then Gmail serves up ads you want to see because they know what your email's about. In this case, Gmail Madness Exhibit #1, the email is about the passing of my sister-in-law's old beau named "Hugh." The relevance