I knew using ad blockers is good for your mental health but this is plain creepy and unfair. Especially when advertisers know more and more about you as more and more everyday items are spying on you and serve you ads without any additional core functionality. Appliances don't get better, they are getting creepier to increase the return of investment for the manufacturers. The schizophrenics are just more sensitive to this enshittification of everyday items because they are quick to assume deliberate agency in chaotic events where there is none. But this is changing, for everybody.

The problem is today you can't really tell anymore whether this "Carol" the ad was addressing is the advertiser knowing that it's your name or just a random "clever" reference to a character in the TV show, I mean even after getting the resolution that it's the latter, nobody can be sure if this excludes the former, like the algorithm decided to send Carol an ad about a show with a Carol in it. It's not good to have to make up your mind about it even when you are not suffering from schizophrenia.

It's annoying, it's intrusive, it wastes your time and ruins your day. And it makes you hate your new tech, makes you hate tech in general, because it's a big "fuck you we can do what we want with you now" towards the customers. No wonder Luddites are making a come back, that's just self-defense.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they are not after you.