About Those Cookies

Mmmmm, peanut butter chocolate chunk, fresh from the oven! Those are the good kind of cookies. Computer cookies? Often a stupid idea.

Take shopping, the apparent reason for most cookies. If I buy, say, a new battery for a camera, or for that matter virtually any product, after doing a little research or comparison on availability or price, I'm suddenly flooded on any site I go to with ads for the same thing I just bought or bigger. A small part for my car seems to mean I am secretly looking to buy a whole new car, because since I spent $15 bucks I'm going to spend $35 grand. Right?

Guys, wise up here. I. Just. Bought. It. Why would I need another one, if I haven't bought it already? When one is available, many more are too. Your ads are just a little late to the party, doncha know.

Or is it just that I'm weird? Don't other people look for something when they're ready to buy, and buy it? Or do all the rest of you dither endlessly about something that catches your eye before making a decision and wait for the resulting plethora of ads surrounding your screen to make up your minds for you? Do you all have such budgets that when you like something you buy seven more?

I'm not saying here that all cookies are a bad idea. (Well, maybe those bakery fresh baked peanut butter chocolate chunk ones are, because they're seriously addicting. Girl Scout Thin Mints too.) The computer kind of cookies can be useful when regularly visited sites recognize me and know it's me logging in on this computer. PayPal is especially good at that, for example. Then it's appropriate and well timed. It's the ads that just are a poorly timed way of somebody getting somebody else to think the money they just spent to bring in customers is actually worth a shit spent this way.