Today in targeted advertising:

Aw yeah-I love it when you
reinforce my worldview...so hot.

Well this is depressing, I was-huh? No, it's actually not about the pandemic. Not directly, but we'll get to that. Anyway, I was whiling the hours of isolation by watching nerd stuff on Youtube. Specifically I was about to watch some film editor explain why Rise of Skywalker was terrible. I, as I'm sure you know, already think it's terrible, but what's the internet for if not to confirm the opinions we already have and to offer a forum for fans to explain how they would have made a movie differently? Anyway I-wha? Yes, fine, and it's a global porn delivery system. Wow, everything with you is about porn...

Where was I? Right, the echo chamber. So the ad before the screed was-you know, just a side note, I hate being advertised at. Like, there is no better way to turn my option against you, your product or your brand, than to come between me and whatever it is I'm trying to watch on the internet. Anyway, the ad was for a concealed gun holster that lets you draw your gun uh...faster than other concealed gun holsters? I guess?

Finally, you don't even have to think before opening fire!

Pictured: re-open protestors in Kentucky
seen here brandishing assault rifles, and
probably diseases, in the State House.

Which, I'm not the least bit interested in guns. In fact, I have open contempt for them and the people who-ok, not for the people who own them responsibly. But definitely for the people who carry them around when they go to Starbucks or when they gather at the Statehouse to complain about how oppressed they are by reasonable precautions that are keeping a pandemic from getting even worse, and how are they not being treated as terrorists? Is it because they're white? It is, isn't-wow, look at me, spiraling out about the pandemic again. Back to the cheery topic of guns.

What I want to know is how in the name of ninth century Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi did the targeted advertisement algorithm arrive at the conclusion that I would be interested in a holster?

Pictured: Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, inventor of the algorithm

and my official lazy wikipedia research name drop of the day.

Even while seated! Which is about
 the most American thing ever.

The ad isn't just for any holster mind you, but for the Urban Carry G3. It's apparently the Cadillac of stuffing automatic pistols down your pants while retaining quick and easy access. It's sort of a leather pouch that tucks your gun below your belt line and then when you need to summarily end someone's life, you just reach into your pants, grab the leather tab and pull. The weapon is then catapulted into your hand in one smooth move that will totally never go wrong and end in disaster.

See? Video games have taught me something.

According to the video's solemn, steady narrator whose reassuring voice inspires confidence in these uncertain times:

"Rational gun owners carry not because it's a weapon but because it's a shield."

-Urban Carry G3's spokesvoice on 

how rational people totally carry

 firearms on them at all times 

You know, I'm not an expert on firearms, but I'm pretty sure they're weapons. A shield is a shield.

But if in fact you feel, as the people do in the video evidently do, that you might at any moment find yourself in a situation where the only reasonable course of action is to draw your concealed weapon and open fire, maybe re-evaluate your life decisions?

How many attempted truck-jackings at knife point happen to you
in say, a week? Is it more than zero? It should not be more than zero.

"Has this ever happened to you?"

Or don't. Look, I'm not here to tell you how to not get murdered, so let's press on, shall we? So next the narrator, in true informercial tradition, explains how "inconvenient, uncomfortable and difficult to conceal" carrying a gun around with you all the time is. This over footage of gun-toters struggling to drive their pick-ups with an automatic shoved in their waist belt which, I'm sorry, isn't that kind of the height of recklessness? A gun? In your pants? 

Pictured: a well-regulated militia, which is also
not something you should carry in your pants.

The rest of the ad is basically the voice gushing over the thing's features and how made in America of leather it is and I'm just...I don't know, look, there's a ton of gun violence in America and it's not getting better and far too many of us fly off the handle at the suggestion that we do something about it. Yes, we get it, an insane Supreme Court decision in the 1970's interpreted the second amendment to mean you can have a gun, but it doesn't mean you have to own ten guns. And carry them around with you. Again, in your pants. 

So I guess what I'm getting at is that the solution to gun violence is never going to be the easier concealment and quicker draw times of guns. That's the opposite of helping. It's like America's an alcoholic, and these people are trying to sell us a flask. Or we've got a gambling problem and they're taking us to Vegas. Oh! Or there's a pandemic and they want to throw a goddamn barbecue and then go to a movie. Lookit that: full circle.

"Ta-da!"

-everyone in this clip