Fourth Bit of Media—Welcome to the YouTube brain-gauge

Every time a website tries to improve, someone inevitably complains about it. These redesigns sometimes change a website so radically that it takes a while to adjust to its new appearance and to  how it works (think Facebook's timeline). But the experience I just had trumps all my past experiences of redesigns, and leaves me feeling angry and creeped out.

It may seem to be an insignificant change, hardly the radical shift that timeline was. But when I saw that first paragraph, I finally realized how much companies like Google know about us.

I have known for years that my data was mined, and that it was then used to sell things back to me. I knew that everything I did on the computer was recorded and stored with that of millions of other people and used to figure out how to sell me more things in a more efficient way. And in this critical thinking class I have become even more aware of the specifics of data mining and selling. I have never really grasped how scary this is.

It's so easy to think of this the way business executives do: impersonally. If they want to sell things to middle class teenage girls, they must look at the overall data surrounding this group and create better strategies of selling things that fit this data. I've never been against that. What I realized in looking at this new message is that we may be just another statistic to these companies, but we are a statistic used not just to sell things, but to read people's minds. Our minds. THEY ARE TAKING OUR DATA AND TRYING TO READ OUR MINDS!

Want to see all the latest activity from your subscriptions? No, I'd rather hide in a cave full of books and candles and other prehistoric objects that haven't been touched by the filthy hands of big corporations.

Check out My subscriptions. I think I'll smash all the computers I can get my hands on instead, thankyouverymuch.

How did I not understand this? I knew this was going on the entire time, but I didn't see how it related to me. It was an ephemeral idea that existed far away from my own reality. But, ironically, in trying to tell me how much it cared, Google showed me how creepy its care for me was. It somehow caused me to see just how much it wants to know about me, and how much it does already. And how much it wants to know or already does about you. Yes, you. You looking at the screen. Giant corporations are trying to read your mind.

  Got it?