Pickles by Brian Crane for December 28, 2021

Opal you’re definitely not kidding Roscoe that’s for sure.

I saw a ton of car ads after I bought my car.

Artificial intelligence knows us better than we know ourselves. We can delude ourselves, it sees what we do. You are what you do.

Wonderful, ain’t it?

Wouldn’t mind if it was stuff in which I had the vaguest interest. But there are items that surely belong in the Universal Museum of Kitsch and Glitz but which have not the tiniest use in our lives. And the names of some vendors are complicated enough to sprain your tongue.

Amazon did start out as a (mostly) book store (yes, they did… and maybe because of that they use a very VERY simple heuristic to suggest things you might want: Things like what you just bought. When it’s a tune or a book: Obviously not a bad option. When it’s a one-time purchase, it just seems silly.

There is a better way to search Amazon. A little better. Google “using site: in google” and then do it. Make use of the way Google deals with double quotes and leading dash to get a better refined list of options that are actually helpful. Sort of.

I buy things my wife requests for herself along with stuff I want. The things do not correlate well. But on the bright side, I get to do her reviews. So much fun!

The Amazon is a river in South America; I do good in geography!

reminds me of my mother in law, who blew through the entire life insurance policy after my father in law passed away in less than a year! If she likes a pair of shoes, a sweater, purse… she gets 1 in every color! A couple of months ago she bought like 12 watches! The woman is driving my poor husband insane and we now have to pay her property taxes because she doesn’t have the money to cover it!

Most of the times the stuff that they suggest is not similar at all.

And they ask you if you would buy it again. And I think “Is it going to break?”

My first online purchase was a Perry Como CD for a relative who had no computer. Within a week, I was getting recommendations from Amazon telling me what I might like because of my purchase history. Man, that Perry Como sure recorded a lot of stuff.

Happens all the time, Opal, and not only from Amazon!

This is a great cartoon today because the lovable Roscoe is in three of the panels . Top marks to Brian . My favorite one is the first one he is sleeping : )

Opal don’t let Earl know !

Love when Roscoe acts as the straight man (dog) for these bits of comedy!

Gawd, they even keep track of how much I read and send me “prizes”. . .big whoop!

What I hate is they show other options AFTER you order. Sometimes I find something a lot better than what I ordered!! Hate that.

You don’t even need to order something, just looking at it can trigger the ads. What I do find a bit annoying is that they will email a coupon for money off on my next purchase, when I buy something, and the coupon expires in a couple of weeks. I really don’t need the product that often.

Shoes I can understand, but “You just bought a patio heater, here’s similar patio heaters.” As an ex-IT person, this is sloppy design. What really annoys me is when you try to narrow a search and you get ever more unrelated results.

Once you open that bag of chips…

Love the dog’s eyes in that last panel……

I hate it when I buy something, I get ads/emails for the very same thing I just ordered. “Here’s another product we picked just for you” (but it’s what I just ordered!) “We think you’ll like this” (same item, different brand or different seller).

I think youtube analyzes the content of our videos to decide what ads to show. I’m always barefoot in my videos, so youtube shows me ads for shoes! Better than GoComics that always shows me Macy’s ads for lingerie.

Ha! Click bate…too tempting.

I’ve never understood the appeal of shoes & more shoes – maybe that’s because no one makes “cute shoes” for women like me with our square feet (size 9WW). When I was much younger I used to get upset over not being able to find cute shoes & having to wear clunky ones; now my only criterion is comfort (which is still a relative term), & I even kick off the “comfortable” ones as soon as I get in the house. My “broad understanding” (as my square-footed great aunt used to call it) needs breathing room!

Amazon’s system of suggesting we buy similar items to ones purchased recently breaks down when it’s an item not bought frequently. For example, I bought a mattress and was hounded with ads to buy another mattress for weeks. I’m not going to need another mattress for a decade or more.

I stop buying when I run out of $$$, which does not take long, thus I have to save up and put off immediate gratification. Such a novel idea.

I just ordered a bunch of stuff from Amazon I have 3 gift cards I love free stuff

Opal you shopper, just examples to chose from. My sister wanted hot air fryer for taco shells, my son bought the last one now out of stock, his aunt extremely happy got her Christmas gift.

Amazon Kindle eBooks and Kindle Unlimited are my bookstore and free library. I use both with great frequency – Kindle Unlimited almost weekly. I usually ignore their recommendations based on my recent reading but sometimes their algorithms for book selections can be extremely annoying.

My wife is very religious and I am definitely not! Recently, I purchased a religious eBook for her that she wanted to use in her studies group. Now I am being inundated by suggestions from Amazon about purchasing similar tomes by that author or similar scribes, and all their ads are trying to steer me to the religious book selection category.

The clicking startled Roscoe!

Looks like Roscoe is saying “huh”?

What’s worse is getting suggestions because you’ve looked at something, but not bought it … or even worse, when you’ve looked things for a friend that you would never buy in a million years.

They seem to work on some otherworldly program. I repeatedly have comic books I’ve written or audio books of my stuff come up as ‘something you might like’. Uh, I’ll pass, please.

I prefer buying and selling on eBay.I used to sell items on Amazon.I decided to close my account.there were too many rules.it’s easy to get free stuff.one time I got a refund right away before returning an item.they are on the buyer’s side.

Amazon told me I had to remove a listing.it was an adult only magazine.the others were allowed to stay.it didn’t make sense.

On Amazon,I sold a playboy magazine to a guy named reverend angel.

Amazon…we wouldn’t have a credit card bill, if my wife didn’t know it existed.