Lonely Lion

Last week(ish) The Washington Post published and article on micro-targeting political advertisements, essentially using data mining techniques to send super-targeted ads to households. It was a good article, and really surprising to me, essentially because I’d always assumed that political campaigns would use the same sorts of techniques that marketers were using. I didn’t know they’d be behind the curve to the point of seeing data mining practices as some sort of new thing. So, that’s naive-example number 1.

Then, the next day, I saw the author of the article had posted a blog entry about the article. I thought, “oh, that’s nice, I shall post a comment.” Fine. Done. I went back to check and see how the comments went, and it turns out the comments on WaPo blogs are rife with in-fighting bullshit. Well, duh. I should have known. Again, it turns out I’m totally naive. The open internet sure does attract some jerks.