Feelings of Vulnerability Skyrocket After Targeted Ads Suggest Both Laxatives and Velveeta

You turn on your favorite trash TV show—the perfect episode that will allow you to scroll on social media for the entirety of it. I mean, who needs to actually entertain oneself when you can compare your life to everyone else’s instead? Buckle up, because it’s time to feel jealous, inferior, but potentially even a little cocky (but only if you’re looking at your friend’s Mom’s lame posts of random trinkets in her house).

It’s quarantine, and your routine, your exercise and eating habits, and your general day to day sense of stability has all gone out the window, and you’ve found yourself in a deep internet rabbit hole of comfort food recipes and searching whether that random weird health symptom you’re having is actually cancer.

So, you’re innocently scrolling through the ‘gram, when you see that ad, that fateful ad: Velveeta Mac n Cheese. Oh god, would you kill for some right now. You know it’s pretty much disgusting—that gooey fake cheese sauce having to be squeezed slimily out of that packet; but you can’t help it, you’re hooked. But alas, you’re too lazy to get off your ass and walk to the grocery store.

Minutes later, another ad pops up—Dulcolax pills—a laxative.

What have I been searching on the internet for this to pop up? Does my phone know I’m looking up recipes that will consequently make me constipated…or even give me diarrhea? Does it think I need…more diarrhea than I’m already having? Does it think I like it or something? What a sick, twisted world I live in. What the actual eff.

You toss your phone across the couch. You feel seen; way too seen. You’re aware these targeted ads know something about you…but this much? No way, not today, Satan! Maybe it’s time for a little break from Insta, even though you know you’ll mindlessly scroll again in approximately 3…2…1…

Images: Target

Anna Snapp
Author: Anna Snapp
Anna is a Brooklyn-based actor and writer, trying to figure which is more important to her: taking down the men on dating apps who refer to themselves as "humble", or watching enough terrible reality TV to officially lessen her value. Anna believes in progressive politics, Dua Lipa, and mediocre boxes of Sauvignon Blanc.