will you help me sell you things?

Facebook is an anomaly. I remember when I first was introduced to it. Looking at it confused the crap out of me. I was used to myspace (which I only used to promote my music, I swear), which by this point was quickly becoming the porn and date-rape empire that it is today, and Facebook was completely different. I was only joining it because I had to for a political group I was joining on campus and wasn't even really sure what it was. In addition to having 1,400% fewer glitches than myspace, facebook was also laid out completely different, and used different terminology. At the time, it looked like a big mass of squares and buttons, none of which seeming to correspond to anything. I felt like it was some sort of giant inside joke of which I was on the outside.
And then there were the ads. Not only were the ads almost non-existent at this point, but they also were decidedly non-pornographic. It was a novel concept. I mean, "porn" was just one of the words in the definition of "social networking site" as far as I knew. I took it as a pleasant surprise and assumed it was a fluke and tried not to get too attached to it. It's good that I didn't, because American Apparel has made it their mission to turn facebook, via their ads, into an equally pornographic but much more efficient version of myspace.
Enter facebook's new voting system. With the re-vamping of facebook's layout (which made it almost as confusing as it was getting used to facebook for the first time) they've given you a pandora.com-style "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" system to give your feedback on the ads. You are given the opportunity to volunteer information to facebook about what types of ads you like and dislike.
It's as if facebook walks up and stands next to you and clears it's throat, hoping you'll make eye contact, and when you finally do, it says, "Ahem, ah, yes, um, can you help me sell you things?" But I don't want to be sold things, facebook. "Er, yeah. I mean, it's not really for me, it's for a friend, or, um, rather, a friend of a friend. You know how it is." Not really, facebook, but while I'm talking to you, can you please stop putting pictures all over my profile of girls in skanky hipster dresses with their non-existent cleavage showing? "Oh, do you not like those kind of ads? Would you prefer other types?" Yes, I- No! Wait! I don't want any ads! "Do you like this ad?" Aaaargh! Go away! "Would you like an ad about a shirt that says 'Aaargh! Go away!' on it?" *shoots self in face*
So, in addition to letting you say that you dislike or like (don't know why I'd use the latter) an ad, you can say why you do so. So, like pandora.com, they use your feedback to streamline the content of the ads they put on your page. But unlike pandora, they don't have access to your personal social network, contact information, age, sex, favorite books & movies, etc. Luckily for all of us facebookers, however, they're quite far from having it figured out. Most of the kinds of ads they give me make no sense based on any information they've gotten out of me. The ads themselves are also pretty consistently bizarre, and are often strangely or confusingly worded. Take this one for example:

They don't claim that Mr. Paul himself is cool, just wearing one of his shirts. They don't even try to mask the "all the cool kids are doing it" approach here. And, looking at that model, I can tell you she's probably voting for Obama, because she looks like she's the kind of person who would buy into the media's use of that exact same tactic.
How about this one?
I thought that "metrosexual" had become one of those words like "liberal" and "emo," in that it was originally used by those it describes to describe themselves, but after their ridiculous actions had come back to haunt them, was eventually put aside by the same people because it had become so pejorative. I guess they're expecting that people have to check facebook when they're all by themselves sometimes.
And then there's this:

I remain perplexed by this one. "You know, Bobby's having a bad day. Let's send him a duck... oh, and a duck nest. That's essential." You know you live in a country where the standard of living is almost too high when the luxuries people choose to indulge in include duck-o-grams. Wow.

I'm exhausted from even thinking about all this oddity. I'm going to go eat some snacks and take a nap. But first, I'm going to go put on my Ron Paul shirt, because wearing a Ron Paul shirt is a pretty cool thing.