If I seem a little obsessive about it, it's because I am! It changes frequently; fb is run by people who are making some, shall we say, interesting choices about what should and shouldn't be done in social media.

But it affects me quite a lot, for the reasons that Sox mentions above. Hope in Transit has 1300 "fans" but the average post is seen by about 120 people. People that said, hey, keep me updated on Hope in Transit! If I pay for marketing, tens of thousands will see it.

Interesting.

So I end up doing a lot of click-baity shit. Like I just posted an old photograph I found (during decluttering, thanks, megan!) because it shows the SO sitting on a roundtable discussion panel with the musician I mentioned who's about to get in the GMA hall of fame. It's only tangentially related to the ministry. But it has a total reach of 500 in only two hours. And off-prime hours at that.

And now I am grateful I don't work in a Social Media Marketing. That sounds exhausting.

It really, really does. And it also makes me realize I have no idea what I'm doing with my author page (which I've neglected for a year anyway, but still).

I need to scan some more pictures. I keep missing Throwback Thursday.

So no one else was redirected from Liese's link to somewhere unsavory? Uh oh.

I was directed to a perfectly respectable site with code that did what it said it would.

I am my favorite Facebook person, btw. No surprises there.

Targeted marketing is the main reason I don't answer any questions, including any schools I attended, where I live, what my shopping preferences are. Not that I think any of those things aren't *known*, but it takes another step, which may inconvenience the software enough not to take it routinely, to hook me into more advertising. I have so far resisted linking any of my sites to each other, I never access one *from* another, and have taken steps to *prevent* my account from one site accessing my account on another site. I don't put any info in "the cloud." All the data I store *myself* is on hard drives, auxilliary drives. I am totally aware there is plenty of info on me online, but I have gone to several info-collecting sites and wiped any facts about me that were searchable that I could.

I'm more than willing to give up the marginal "convenience" of having everything available on every device from the cloud, of skipping merrily from Twitter to FB to Instagram to Tumblr. I take the steps, and I clear my history wherever I can, and I vacuum up whatever breadcrumbs I'm aware of, and stay alert for info-seeking sites and software. Tin-hat conspiracist? You damn betcha.

I'm not really bothered by the idea of targeted marketing, nor by the reality. I would be more disturbed at the distorting of of the online community at Facebook if I used it more, but I don't so it's hard to get too worked up about it. It's kind of depressing how much it reminds me of how I perceive the current realities of campaign finance distorting our political landscape. And ties into why I had to stop watching House of Lies.

Unrelatedly (or is it?), do you think I can count raspberry jell-o as my fruit for today?

If you do, -t, I can totally count Reece's peanut butter cups as my protein.