The other day I was reminded of something that happened to me many years ago. When I was in college, I didn’t really take any classes just for fun. It’s not that I have a problem with classes like bowling or ceramics on a college level, it’s just that I never found a class that I enjoyed enough to spend my hard-earned money on that wasn’t required for my degree. The topic that did always interest me was cultural history. But I never got around to exploring that until closer to my graduation when I took a Celtic anthropology class. I was always fascinated by the Celts and really love to learn about them. So, after completing that class I took an advanced class and completely immersed myself in Celtic culture.
Of the many cool aspects of Celtic life, I always really liked their style. Their style of clothing, weapons, hair, tattoos. All of it! One particular group of Celts was known for wearing leather rings, which was a personal favorite of mine. They would braid them and treat them to make them soft. Well, when I read about this, I wanted one so bad, but at the time they were impossible to find (you actually can find leather rings now). Making one wasn’t much of an option as I have no leatherworking skills and my artistic abilities are lacking at best. I even called a man who makes custom leather pieces to at least see what it would cost, but this did not interest him at all. It was then that I realized that a leather ring might be a dream that has to wait for a different time in my life. However, this did get me curious about what other kinds of unique rings were out there.
I started my search and was disappointed to find that the most unique rings I could see were cheap spinners. Almost everything that looked remotely cool was bringing me back to Amazon so I figured I would continue to search everything that they had in this area. Most of the rings were pretty unimpressive, but a few of them were unlike anything I had seen before, good or bad. I even found some silicone rings that, although were pretty basic in their design, were at least unique. There was one silicone ring in particular that I really liked and considered buying, but again, it was just so plain. So, I gave up my search and let the dream die.
Months later I was back on Amazon shopping for a birthday present when I noticed something kind of strange. On the Recommended for You section, they had a lot of items that were of a particular category that Amazon likes to call “Health and Personal Care”. I didn’t really know why it was recommending these to me, but they were things like: Personal vibrators, lubrications and sex toys. I ignored all of these, careful not to click on them and I moved on. Well, the next day, the same thing happened. Different items but the same category. There was even a sex swing on the list this time.
What the hell is going on?
I tried to simply clear my history to remove the culprit but back in these days this wasn’t as easy as it now… I’m not even sure that it was possible. I figured that if I didn’t get to the bottom of this I would continue to trigger this cycle and I would just get more “Health” products filling up my Recommendations. So, I opened Amazon in an incognito page and started searching for the same products that they were suggesting to me. After what seemed like a very long time, I ran across something that I had seen before, months earlier… A small, plain, silicone ring.
I remember that! I really wanted a leather Celtic ring and ended up finding this silicone ring. But why is it on here?
Clicking the ring there wasn’t anything strange about it. It didn’t have much of a description, since it didn’t seem to really need one. It was just a very basic silicone ring. I looked down at the similar items and saw another ring just like it. When I clicked on it, I was surprised to see that it had a much larger description which read “Dick Ring: For Longer Lasting Pleasure” And to my shame I realized that the ring I was looking at months before was not for the finger at all and Amazon had just assumed that I really wanted a sex swing to pair with my new interest in dick rings.
Of course, I have no problem with any of these products being used in their intended way, but I like to imagine now what it would have been like to have bought it, and worn it proudly on my finger only to one day have a stranger tell me that he has the same ring at home in his nightstand…
As Random As Random Gets 