This popped up in my Facebook feed the other day:
Admittedly, I watch “The Walking Dead”. I used to enjoy it more than I do now, but that’s a different post for a different time. But the real question is, how does Facebook know I like/watch “The Walking Dead”?
There is an interesting and quick breakdown of how Facebook ads work, and a bit of how and why they show up in your timeline at Social Ads Tool. And, yes, in the past, I have Liked things related to “The Walking Dead”.
But “The Walking Dead” in German? That perplexes me a bit.
Perhaps Facebook has only so many “The Walking Dead” pages for me to Like, therefore it’s presenting all of them. Perhaps Facebook somehow knows that I follow NeinQuarterly on Twitter, and that I have retweeted and favorited several of NeinQuarterly’s tweets. (Side note: NeinQuarterly is a twitter account posting things that have a specifc German humor to them, which I find hilarious and to which my wife went “Oh, that explains so many things” when I told her about it.)
Or perhaps, and the scariest thought of all, Facebook knows of my secret German past, in which I took German in college, four semesters of it, four straight Ds. Yet I was determined to learn it so that I could understand what the hell Hans Gruber, et al, were saying in “Die Hard”. Oh yeah, that’s not a joke. That’s the reason I took German.
No matter the reason, it vaguely creeps me out that I’m being stalking by a German “The Walking Dead” Facebook page.
Scott C Lyerly 