Facebook ads: creepy, useless & offensive!

So I was Facebooking pretty much all day yesterday. That and uploading pictures from recent and not so recent adventures. At any rate, on one last scan of my profile right before I left for the day, I noticed an ad that said "Jesus hates sin" Really? What a surprise! I haven't heard that message before! However, since these ads are supposed to be targeted through data mining, my curiosity was piqued. Why would I be targeted for such an ad? Well it had a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge below the title and some intro about how some guy had a dream about an earthquake willed by God hitting San Francisco....

What. The. Fuck.

So naturally I clicked on it. This shit can only get better.

Sure enough it does. The landing page is nothing but the whole dream story, actually a "vision" because a bunch of other people had the same dream and how they will pray for the faithful to be protected if this is the beginning of the apocalypse.

Seriously. WTF?!

The story is hosted by a website that is supposed to be an advocate for widows and orphans in Romania. If they are paying for this, I would be DAMN surprised. There is no obvious way to generate revenue on the site and I'd hate to think that money that could be going to WIDOWS AND ORPHANS IN ROMANIA isn't being spent on Facebook ads. But, I think it's the guy who had the dream. I'm guessing it is worth it to him to pay to try and scare people WHO USE FACEBOOK AND LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO IN TO FINDING GOD BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE. This guy clearly isn't thinking straight as all it is going to do is be offensive to even the most laid back of people.

I don't normally complain about things like this, data mining I mean and being targeted for specific things. It's always going on and if I minded I wouldn't but in the info up there. But this is a required customer service complaint.

BTW here is their answer
Hi DMBfanatic,

We are sorry to have posted something on the site that was offensive to you. We do our very best to hold our advertising to the highest standards and in line with our Terms of Use. We will certainly keep your feedback in mind as we continue to improve the site and our advertising.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Rose
Customer Support Representative
Facebook

Very satisfying, I must say. Highest standards aside, it's their image that they are playing with and their audience they are alienating. Shit like this is not going to be blamed on the advertiser, it will be blamed on the facilitator.

But who knows? Maybe he is also targeting people who have "random play" as a relationship status or identify as liberal in their political views. Maybe the guy who is running the ad is just doing his part to spread the word of God. At any rate this ad is offensive, utterly useless when it comes to generating revenue and a clear sign that Facebook doesn't approve the ads it hosts. Hey Facebook! If you haven't checked lately, you demographic is fairly young, intelligent and doesn't give a FUCK about you or your sponsors unless they can actually offer them something useful! When the next latest and greatest social networking site comes along, everyone will go over there and be done with you! Despite being addicted to changing my status, I have many problems with Facebook (like why can't I join a UCSC alumni group without a valid UCSC email address? That's just dumb) but this tops the list.

Next post: musings on religion. This shit has put me in a mood for philosophical debate.