The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Front-Ranger:
Tonight I was reading aloud to EDelMar about how the house in the Hitchcock movie Psycho echoes Edward Hopper's painting "House by the Railroad". He googled the painting on his phone and agreed with me that they had similarities. Later, when I scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed the photo almost at the top was of "House by the Railroad"! :o
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on June 10, 2020, 10:45:27 pm ---Tonight I was reading aloud to EDelMar about how the house in the Hitchcock movie Psycho echoes Edward Hopper's painting "House by the Railroad". He googled the painting on his phone and agreed with me that they had similarities. Later, when I scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed the photo almost at the top was of "House by the Railroad"! :o
--- End quote ---
Facebook knows all. That's why some people are concerned.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on June 10, 2020, 10:45:27 pm ---Tonight I was reading aloud to EDelMar about how the house in the Hitchcock movie Psycho echoes Edward Hopper's painting "House by the Railroad". He googled the painting on his phone and agreed with me that they had similarities. Later, when I scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed the photo almost at the top was of "House by the Railroad"! :o
--- End quote ---
You mean it was in your FB newsfeed as an ad? (As opposed to EDelMar or someone else posting it?)
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on June 11, 2020, 08:44:35 am ---Facebook knows all. That's why some people are concerned.
--- End quote ---
Lots of people are concerned. Hasn't Zuckerberg testified before Congress about that? Or is that about Russian interference and fake news in FB posts?
I've seen ads pop up on FB after I mention the item in a post. Or when I do something online elsewhere -- buy a pair of shoes, make a hotel reservation -- and up comes an ad for those exact shoes or that exact hotel. Which strikes me as less than perfectly targeted; if you just bought those shoes, why would you want to buy them again? But I guess they figure it's more effective to remind you of the store or hotel than to randomly guess some other similar thing and hope for the best.
But rarest of all is what must have happened between you and EDelMar, where your phone "hears" a conversation and then FB posts an ad. A friend said she had that experience when she and her son were discussing a particular brand of breakfast cereal while the phone was sitting in the room, and right after that it was in an ad on FB.
To me, the scariest one is the fake news, though. It seems pretty undeniable that, collusion or not, those foreign-made fake news items -- Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a NYC pizza shop!! -- influenced the election.
Front-Ranger:
Yes, it was an ad for a gallery and the first painting shown was of "House by the Railroad".
But, get this. Adam and I were having a conversation and I was reading out loud to him from the NY article. He googled the painting on his phone, and he is not on Facebook. My computer was closed and my phone was in another room. I don't have Alexa. I can only conclude that a lot of people I'm Facebook friends with also googled that painting.
The whole part about the connections between Hitchcock and Hopper was fascinating. We have plans to see "North by Northwest" which I've never seen. It seems like they captured the Zeitgeist of that era.
Front-Ranger:
Wait! I just realized how this strange coincidence might have happened. A couple of days ago, under a photo of downtown Shoshoni, Wyoming, I wrote "this is my Hopper painting." So, cue the Hopper paintings! But that particular one? It's not one of his most famous. But, maybe because of the NY article, it might be gaining traction.
Now I've been looking all over for a hi-res version of this photo. I know I've got one somewhere on a hard disk or a phone, but I can't put my hands on it!
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