Facebook ads as a straight, single woman

In case you're wondering, I'm actually a straight single man. On Facebook, I'm also 106 years old, mostly because of a desire to fabricate a fictional series of life events that just happen to coincide with major events in history (and, if you include H.P. Lovecraft, fiction). Yes, I'm weird.

One of the side effects of being a single, 106-year old male is a lot of senior dating ads. But, surprisingly, or not, there are other, non-senior ads. In fact, Facebook sees it fit to try to entice me with pictures of women who I feel are too young for me at 30, much less 106.

This got me thinking: Facebook ads as I see them are predominately political (liberal) and dating oriented. How would this look for a woman?

So I changed my Facebook gender.

The results weren't apparent, initially. But I can say, after about two weeks as a 106-year old single straight woman on Facebook, I can report the following differences:

1. I still get a lot of dating ads, but they are a bit classier.

No surprise, but the average woman is a bit classier than the average man. As a straight man, I got lots of boob shots. But as a straight woman, I get more tasteful ads. One thing I noticed is an ad that tries really hard to look like a fake inbox. Are women (specifically older women) perceived as more gullible? Or are advertisers in general trying to take greater advantage of confused misclicks?

But at least I'm not getting the "no credit card needed!" ads. (Oh, maybe that's on those other websites I visit.)

2. Some of the ads haven't updated to reflect my straight woman status.

LA Business Bootcamp advertises itself exclusively with pictures of amply endowed young women. This ad persists. Why? Well, maybe the advertiser didn't want to pay for more targeted advertising, and is simply spamming everyone with the same two images. Or maybe they *know* I'm really a straight, single, lonely man who is stupid enough to fall for a business workshop advertised by women in skin-tight T-shirts.

I (sadly) concluded long ago that whatever business I would likely be involved in will probably involve fully clothed people.

3. More phone ads.

This was a bit unexpected. Why would this be? Why didn't I notice cellphone ads as a male?

I have some possible guesses.

1. The US cellphone market is saturated, but women are (slightly) less likely to own an expensive smartphone than men.

According to this 2012 Pew research study, 93% of men and 88% of women own a cellphone. 59% of men own a smartphone, compared with 53% of women.
(There's actually a lot of interesting data. 63% of cellphone users use the phone to go online. Blacks and hispanics are more likely to own a smartphone than whites.)

These numbers don't seem all that different to me, and could be accounted for in many ways (for instance, women living longer than men, and fewer old people owning cellphones). But it might be enough of a difference for targeted advertising to pay off.

2. Women are actually the ones who pay the cellphone bills.

I wasn't able to find this data online. But given that, in families, women are often the ones who are in charge of budgeting, then it wouldn't surprise me to see numbers suggesting that women, not men, pay for cellphone plans. It would make sense for advertisers to target women more than men.

3. Random timing

Maybe I switched over at a time that providers have marked as a key time for switching contracts. Start of school year? Holiday season? Who knows? I sure don't, and I'm not going to look it up right now.

4. More weight loss ads

Sadly, this isn't a surprise. How does Facebook *know* that I need to lose about 25 pounds? It doesn't. But advertisers know that weight loss is a better sell with women than men. Boo to entrenched double standards and artificial constructions of beauty.

Seriously, I do need to lose some weight. Maybe I should click.

5. A few more clothes and furniture ads

This is also not a surprise, though somewhat less offensive than #4. I do miss those Bonobos ads that I used to get until about a year ago.

6. Fewer political ads

Does this reflect a somewhat sexist view that women are somehow less interested in politics than men? Or, does it reflect the probable reality that women are less hysterical* than men when it comes to politics, and therefore less easy to reach through FB ads?

*Yes, yes, I know.

Conclusion:

All in all, the experience has been a lot less exciting than I thought. I expected special insights into FB market segmentation, and the different world women inhabit. But I suppose if I really wanted the difference, I would go on a dating website and create a fake profile with a suitably attractive stock photo. Thankfully, I'm not that masochistic. (Goodness knows what messages I'd get if I advertised my masochism.)

In short, this was a bit of a waste of time -- doing it, thinking about it, and writing it. (Reading about it, too, no doubt.) I didn't gain any great insights. One doesn't expect to, when one limits efforts at understanding to a toe-dip into the digital pond. Looks like I'll have to actually listen and empathize with my friends who happen to be women.

Tutoring advice for parents, students, and tutors

How pretentious: I'm claiming to offer advice to all parties in the tutoring process! But if you bear with me, I hope to actually offer some helpful advice.

Some advice for parents:

It’s easy for a parent to feel guilty. “I have to provide the best educational experience possible for my child. If I don’t, I’m a bad parent and a bad person.” Combine that with a lack of clarity about what “best” is, and it’s not wonder that there’s a lot of insecurity about this. Unscrupulous tutors take advantage of that.

Do yourself a favor: take a breath, and breathe. You are not solely responsible for everything regarding your child. You, of course, have many responsibilities. But your first and most important obligation is to raise your child in a loving, safe environment. Nowhere is it written in the contract you signed when you became a parent that you will be held accountable for how well your child does in precalculus. Remind yourself, explicitly, in writing or audible speech, that you are a good parent regardless of how well or poorly your child does in school. I’ve met parents who are terrible who have straight-A students. (The students are secretly, or not-so-secretly miserable.) And I've met outstanding parents who have C-students.

For the sake of your sanity, and for the sake of better results, ease the pressure off yourself. It spills over on the child and on the tutor, and doesn’t translate into good results.

But if your expectations are reasonable and clearly stated, hold your child and tutor to them. If the tutor understands your expectations and can’t deliver, then you need to find someone else.

Some advice to students:

You are approaching adulthood. The hallmark of an adult versus a child is not age, but the level to which a person accepts responsibility for his or her actions or inaction. It’s hard and challenging, and maybe you’ve been conditioned to believe that it’s the teacher’s responsibility to teach you. That’s bull. You have the most responsibility for that, because you are the one who will have to deal with the consequences of not learning. Your teacher will keep on churning out poorly instructed students, and get a fresh crop next year. But you will live with the results for the rest of your life. A bad class might not ruin your life, but it is a missed opportunity. If you miss too many opportunities in life, well, you miss life.

If you need something, ask for it. Your parents and tutors might say no or be unhelpful. But if you really need something, don’t give up on it. Be your own advocate. It may not always seem fair, but it will give you better results than passively accepting what you’re given. “Character may be manifest in the great moments, but it is built in the small ones.” There’s no time like the present to build, piece by piece, your character.

Some advice for tutors:

Manage those expectations! Not only is it ethical, it is good from a self-interest point of view. A parent might not always hear you when you say that you can’t promise a certain grade in a certain time frame, but it’s on you to explicitly say that. Do your best, of course. But don’t overpromise. Although you can get away in the short term with doing that, in the long run your reputation will be ruined. And it’ll be your own fault.

As you manage their expectations, manage your own. Your student has been shaped by a decade or two of outside forces. You, as a tutor and teacher, are a tiny blip on the great narrative of their life. It doesn’t mean you can’t make a difference – perhaps a life-changing one. But you can’t expect to force it. As with other relationships, problems arise when you don’t respect the personhood of the other, and that includes, at some level, respecting their desire to be idiotic, stubborn, or otherwise foolish for as long as they like. To borrow terminology from leadership theory, ou may want to be a transformative tutor, but you might have to settle for being a transactional one.

And please be organized. You’re a professional, not some student who straggled in off the street to regale the audience with your antics and hopefully sprinkle some knowledge. You’ve got a job to do. Do it. This may seem like a relatively easy job, but if you’re doing it well, it shouldn’t be. Send updates, be punctual, and be prepared going into a lesson – not only in terms of subject matter, but in terms of who your student is (in a substantive sense), and how your student learns.

The nightmare of hiring a tutor

In principle, hiring a tutor is an enterprise that is anticipatory and deliberate.

It involves anticipating what potential problems might crop up, using a student’s history and self-evaluation. Tutoring can also be in response to a desire to advance more quickly; it’s not always used to “fix” a “problem”. A parent might consult with friends, or with the student’s teacher, to obtain personal referrals. After interviewing a number of possible tutors, the parent and child, together, choose the tutor that embodies the combination of empathy, subject knowledge, teaching ability, and cost effectiveness.

If this sounds like you, congratulations. No need to read onward, to find out how the rest of us in the real world live. If this doesn’t sound like you, don’t worry; you’re not alone, and I promise this won’t be a “you should feel guilty about this” post.

Here’s how tutoring often works in practice.

A student starts struggling in a subject, but that isn’t noticed by the parents because of some combination of being busy with work and student denial/subterfuge. The first test reveals that a student is in serious trouble. There might be an exchange in which the parent chastises the student for not letting the parent know about the struggle; the student, in exchange, either blames the parent for being inattentive, or claims that it’s possible to salvage the grade.

Perhaps the parent tries to tutor the student directly. But the parent might not know the subject. Even if the parent knows the subject, the general tension that exists between all parents and children makes it such that the student resents the advice, and the parent is tempted to be overly critical. There’s just too much history and baggage, even in the best families, for it to work. (For this reason, I’m perpetually amazed at the relative success some people have with homeschooling.)

Finally, the parent decides that, even though money is never abundant, it’s time to call in an outside tutor.  But it’s too late to go through a lengthy interview process with several tutors. A parent might turn to their friends for a reference; on the other hand, they might not want it to be known that their child is not great at everything. Invariably, they turn to either a local academy or an online website, where they hire someone who is some combination of appearing to be inexpensive and appearing to be qualified.

The student, by the way, might not think he or she needs tutoring. This attitude can persist throughout the actual tutoring, with predictably bad results.

Thus is the tutoring relationship formed. It involves bringing in a stranger that may or may not be qualified, may or may not be a good instructor, and may or may not have a good rapport with the student. And, given that the arrangement is made under duress, the parent is reluctant to break it because it will take time (and stress) to find another one. Also, if we can be honest, the parent might not know whether this tutor is good or not; a bad tutor can fly under the radar for a depressingly long time.

If this sounds like you, don’t feel badly. This is common, more common than anyone wants to admit. And it’s no one’s fault.

Teachers and schools, for a host of reasons, often don’t have the time or resources to develop a framework to support those who are struggling.

Parents, especially parents who are working, don’t have the time or, quite frankly, emotional energy, to help their kids with some of these subjects.

Students might struggle with incompetent or inattentive teachers (who, as mentioned above, just might not have the resources needed to deliver customized help). Given that looking stupid is about the worst possible sin, in school and in life, the student might do his or her best to conceal poor performance, or mentally code the subject as “something that doesn’t matter, anyway”.

Tutors can be tempted to exploit this insecurity to bill more hours. We may, explicitly or implicitly, overpromise, and temper the anger at underdelivery with vague promises of improvement just around the corner.

Sometimes, the tutor doesn’t actually say anything; the parent and student project expectations, and don’t listen to efforts to manage it. Or, maybe a realistic assessment means not getting the job, forcing the tutor to choose between professional integrity and paying bills.

Everyone’s just too busy. Everyone’s anxious. And it’s really hard to measure educational quality – hence the perennial arguments about education in America and elsewhere.

In the next post, I offer some free advice to parents, students, and tutors. Remember as you read: just like in tutoring, you get what you pay for.

A letter from dad

Son,

I'm dying for real this time. Slowly, but definitively.There are things I need to tell you, things you need to hear.

I'm sorry I was a lousy father. I loved you, and still do. I loved you as much as I could. But I was also a raging maniac other times. I'm sorry for the times I said you were a terrible son. I'm sorry for melting down in front of you, with no one to help you. I'm sorry I made physically threatening movements to you and your mother; I didn't intend to follow through on them, but you, as a child, didn't know that. I'm sorry I asked you for money, and never paid it back. I'm sorry I put myself in the hospital for using meth.

I'm sorry for the smaller, but still hurtful, things too. I'm sorry I broke so many promises to quit smoking, and exposed you to tons of secondhand smoke. I'm sorry I needed you to pay for everything. I'm sorry I paraded you around the halfway houses and institutions, not only because I was proud of you, but because I was using you and your success to legitimize my existence.

I'm sorry I didn't teach you how to be a man.

I'm sorry I use "couldn't" when I should say "wouldn't". Maybe if I had tried harder, some of these things would have happened.

I will go to my end to accept what judgment may come. But I hope, now, I can teach you a few things.

Please learn from my mistakes. I was 63 when my father died. Part of me never felt free from him. I let him, or what I thought of him, hold me back for most of my life. You will be younger when your father dies, but it's still been too damn long to wait. When I'm gone, life won't get better. I'm not saying it will get worse. But you will retain your ambivalence toward me, and by extension, your own identity, even after I'm gone, if you don't work to challenge those beliefs today.

Please find something to do with your life that both gives you pride and makes you a better person every day. My job as an engineer gave me the former, but it didn't always do the latter. I could've made it about patriotism, about the pursuit of excellence, but I ended up making it about myself, and how I was "the best engineer that ever walked through those doors". I clung to those words from my boss, and never questioned whether I really earned them, or if they actually should be meaningful for me.

Please, please, don't wait for someone to fix your life for you. I waited for decades, entertaining dreams of going back to school, going back to work. But to be honest, I was scared. I didn't want to face the reality that maybe I was unhireable, maybe I didn't have my mental illnesses under control. I chose to not try rather than fail, or accept a job with less prestige and pay.

And finally, please, try to love life. I've stayed alive despite everything because I enjoy myself. Too much sometimes, I know. But you're a goddamn party pooper. Go get laid. Try not to take yourself so seriously; you've read enough biographies to know that a good sense of humor and a willingness sometimes to leap before you look are qualities of some of the great men in history. Pull the stick out of your ass and go fight the world with said stinky stick.

Sorry, I tried to inject some humor into a pretty serious letter. Don't think it worked. Know that I love you, but didn't show it well. Decide what you needed from me, and didn't get, and go find it elsewhere. I say this not dismissively, but humbly, knowing that I failed in many ways.

Remember the good times, too. Our lives can and should be judged not by specific moments of pain, but by the sum total of experiences. It's how we learn to forgive ourselves and others. In time, I hope you can forgive me.

Love,

Dad

Great people, including presidents, read in the bathroom

I searched the train for him and finally discovered him in one of the white enameleed lavatories with its door half open.... He was busily engaged in reading, while he braced himself in the angle fo the two walls against the swaying motion of the train, oblivious to time and surroundings. The book in which he was absorbed was Lecky's History of Rationalism in Europe. He had chosen this peculiar reading room both because the white enamel reflected a brilliant light and he was pretty sure of uninterrupted quiet.

-- Lawrence F. Abbott, traveling companion and secretary for Theodore Roosevelt during his European tour, from Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris