The Google algorithm has been acting up lately. It has been giving me very strange recommendations. Usually it’s right on the money and sometimes predicts things that I want before I have even mentioned them out loud and I wonder how it knows. Is it reading my mind? Or does it just know me better than I know myself?
For instance, recently I was thinking about replacing my laptop. The old one was starting to malfunction and was slowing down to the point of being irritating. Surely enough, ads for laptops started appearing at the side of my browser window when I visited various websites – even though I hadn’t mentioned the problem to anyone and hadn’t even said out loud that the old laptop was bothering me.
Again and again, ads began to show up that catered to my very exact needs – getting more and more creepily specific. A hole ripped suddenly in my underwear – and an ad for underwear popped up on my Google phone. I broke a coffee mug – and ads for coffee mugs started to show up. I didn’t even have to think about stuff after a while, it popped up on my feed before I even knew I wanted it.
I tried not to give in to these temptations, but I couldn’t help myself. The ads were too perfect. It was everything I ever needed at the click of a button. It didn’t help that I had a shopping addiction once upon a time - this brought it all back.
The bills began to pile up as my online shopping became a real problem for my wife and I financially. I started seeing looks of disgust and annoyance on her face when she talked to me, and I realized I was ruining our marriage with my constant need for these perfect new things which were clearly meant so specifically just for me.
But to be honest it wasn’t just that, there were problems long before that. The buying habit was just an escape, I had begun to realize.
Still, I couldn’t let her take that from me. She wanted to cut up my credit card, and wanted to cancel it. But I told her no.
Then, very soon after that, new ads started to appear when I was browsing on the laptop. Ads for shovels. For lye. For dark clothing and flashlights. For spades, pickaxes, and grass seed.
Strange, I thought at first, since we didn’t even live in a house with a backyard. Why was it making such odd recommendations all of a sudden?
Looking at the laptop more closely, I realized why the algorithm had my desires wrong suddenly. I wasn’t synced to my Google account. The laptop was logged into my wife’s profile.
But why would she want to buy those items? Gardening tools don’t make a lot of sense when you don’t have a garden, or even a yard.
I opened up the history tab, going back and seeing what she had been looking at. Strangely, the last 24 hours were wiped blank.
She was still out at the grocery store, so I pulled up the bank statements and her credit card account, overwhelmed with a desire to find out the truth, like an itch in my mind that I couldn’t help but scratch.
When I logged into my Google account and tried to “follow the money” as they always say in movies, I couldn’t help but notice the new ads dominating the borders of my computer screen.
“Learn Self Defence NOW! Meadow Valley Karate School – currently accepting new students”
“Put on these brand new NIKE running shoes and get outside! GO!”
And then, finally…
“Bob’s gun store – You can’t put a price on safety!”
That last one was actually nearby, and so I decided to quit browsing the internet and just get out of the house. After all, the only thing I could find in our bank and credit card history was a big cash withdrawal the day prior. It hadn’t been me, only Christine could have taken the money out. But why?
Part of me wasn’t surprised when I saw her car parked outside of the gun store. She was so transfixed by her new purchase that she didn’t even notice me as I drove past, gawking at her.
She was holding a large pistol in her hand and stroking it thoughtfully. Christine had always said she hated guns. I guessed maybe that she had changed her mind.
I drove for a long time after that, more afraid than I had ever felt in my life. Terrified of the woman I had married.
A couple hours outside of the city my phone started to ring.
I pulled over onto the gravel shoulder and fished the Google Pixel phone out of my pocket with shaking hands, looking at the screen. It was a video call from Christine. She was obviously wondering where I was.
Swiping up on the screen, I saw her face appear. Seeing it made me feel like I had been wrong about everything. Like it had all been a big mistake. She could never do anything to hurt me.
“Hey, where are you? Are you driving?” I asked her, seeing the background of her video call. She looked to be on a country road somewhere.
“Yeah, of course! I was worried sick about you! I pulled up your GPS data on your phone because you didn’t come home for dinner. Where are you going?”
Of course, I had forgotten about that. She knew my passwords and could track my phone.
“Tell him to stay where he is,” a man’s voice said in the background.
“Stay where you are, I’m coming to get you, okay?”
She was coming to get me, alright.
“Christine, whose voice was that?”
The call suddenly cut out as her stunned face seemed unable to come up with a response to my question.
I’m browsing my phone now, looking for a motel where I can spend the night.
The promoted ones that keep popping up are for places in Mexico.
I think maybe I should listen to Google this time.