Wrong again Bradford Exchange!

No really, what even is this? It's $79.99,
and pink. That's all we know about it.

Why do they even bother? The Bradford Exchange marketing department that is. Or is Facebook to blame? I mean, Facebook is to blame for a lot of things but--huh? Oh, let me explain. The Bradford Exchange is a company that proudly bills its goods as limited collectibles. Which I think is a more friendly-sounding way of saying that they like to cultivate an air of scarcity. Like, there's not a reason they can't simply manufacture more of the creepy dolls, Thomas Kinkade dioramas, and whatever the hell that thing on the right is, they simply choose not to in the hopes that the prospect of not getting one will convince you to buy because holy shit, they might run out!

The Home Shopping Network:
Preying on the compromised since 1982!

Well, not you maybe. They're not going to try and convince you. The algorithm that determines the ads you see on social media has read the tea leaves that are your internet footprint and has determined that you're not hoarder or a Home Shopping Network addict (and yes, it still exists. I looked it up). I on the other hand and left with the uncomfortable notion that the algorithm despises me--probably for all those terrible things I say about it--and deliberately misidentifies my shopping needs.

I wonder how many of the people who
bought these are doing time for storming
the Capitol? I suspect its most of them.

To be clear, I don't want to buy anything. Ever. I want to live in a socialist utopia where everything we need is replicated and the very of money is an unpleasant memory of a barbarous past. Why then the Bradford Exchange or Facebook's ad software has previously tried to sell me first the Donald Trump light up HO-scale train set and later miniatures (also light-up) of houses, like actual houses where murders have happened. Like, actual murder houses. People alive today can buy tiny recreations of the houses where their loved ones were brutally murdered. I wonder if they get a discount? Seems only fair if you're going to be profiting off of human misery.

Anyway, this time it's cats--wait for it--in a nativity scene. Behold:

At the time of this writing, whoever wrote the sentence:
Experience a PURR-fect Christmas Pageant is still at large.

Above: "The Gift of the MEOW-gi."
You're welcome, Bradford Exchange.

Have I ever in all the years, no, decades of interacting with the internet searched for or posted anything that would lead the algorithm to suspect that I had any interest in cats, nativity sets, or filling my home with cat versions of Mary, baby Jesus, Joseph, and the three wise men? Or as they're known here in a somewhat inconsistent theme: Mama, Kitten, Adoring Dad, and brace yourself: King Yarn, King Catnipmouse, and King Kittytreats. No. Not even if they are--as the website describes them "impressively sized" and made of "artists resin for heirloom value." At four and a half inches, I'd say their customers are easily impressed and isn't artists resin just, you know, resin? 

Doesn't matter I guess, I'm not the intended audience. The thought of the sheer magnitude of the crap our civilization manufactures only for it to end up in landfills and in the ocean, actually keeps me up at night and yet still the algorithm bombards with ads like this. I'm beginning to suspect that it has it in for me.

Even rendered in "artists resin" and a cat, this Jesus still somehow manages to be coded white.