The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

A buddy of mine told me he was throwing out his beat up old fleece vest after a decade of usage and so, in a hasty buying decision, decided to go to REI for a new and improved version. He drove to the sporting goods outlet and tried on a few before sticker shock made him flee for the front door, back home and into the trash can where he’d tossed his tried and true, broken zippered vest. He googled up zipper repair, found a site that advised greasing the skids with olive oil and lo and behold, his old vest was functional once again, ready for another decade or two of daily wear.

But … this wasn’t the story he wanted to convey, as inspirational to us South End flea marketeers and thrift store addicts as it was. No, what he wanted to tell us was the part where he was googling up zipper you-tube repair strategies and noticed ads from REI for fleece vests EXACTLY LIKE THE ONES HE HAD BEEN TRYING ON earlier that day. Holy Capitalism, Batman, how the hell did they know he’d been in the store?? And what he tried on? And who he was???

I half expected malevolent, creepy, ominous music to exude out from under the couch in the room next to us when he told this story. Did you use your credit card to buy something? I asked, but he said no, he tried on a couple of vests and immediately left the store. Did they take down his license plate number? Have these outlets got surveillance cameras with facial recognition? Sporting goods detectives watching for hesitant buyers. Are we all in jeopardy from Big Brother, Inc.???

Or … could we just settle down a paranoid minute and accept welcome-armed the modern notion of advertising’s future? If you search for a product, a place, a person or whatever on the internet, you already get ads marginally related to that search appearing on your sidebar. Look up Hawaii, say, and check out the volcano. A nano second later you’ll have hotels in Hilo with prices and sales. Save you the trouble of searching, right? Airline fares to Honolulu, excursions to Maui, whale watching trips, yup, right there at your fingertips.

Maybe REI can read credit cards from that new chip they’ve installed for security concerns. Privacy, okay, not the priority in these social mediated times. And if they can get that, maybe they need to know your credit rating and minimum balance, no need to contact you if you’re too far in debt, right? Okay, let’s be honest, that’s exactly who they want to contact. Not their problem if you go broke. We all have Free Will. We don’t have to buy the damn vest. They’re just making sure you didn’t make a mistake when you left the store, maybe had to go to the restroom and got disoriented and left accidentally out a side exit. Come on back, we got a sale on!!

I haven’t seen my buddy since yesterday. I’m hoping REI hasn’t found his place of residence yet, but I’m betting next time he drops by he’ll sport a nice fleece vest and want me to go up for the sale he’s been asked to promote. If so, I can tell you this: resistance is futile.

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