kicking puppies is bad

Google AdSense is kind of cool. I generally dislike ads on websites, but google ads are generally not intrusive. They generally don’t have pop-ups, bad MIDIs or insane blinkiness. And I have known some people who have worked on AdSense at google. They were smart, cool people (which doesn’t make their product any better, but it makes me more tolerant of it). And the ads from AdSense tend to be relevent. According to google,

AdSense for content automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers ads that are relevant to your audience and your site content—ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful.

I think google might be stretching when they say that “users will find them useful”. But generally, as a user, I don’t find their ads obnoxious. And I occasionally actually click on one. So maybe they actually are useful.

The google ads on Gmail go one step futher. They often relate to the content of my personal emails. This is a bit creepy, but Gmail is free. They have to make money somehow. So, I generally am OK with the mildly creepy invasion of privacy. Or, at least I *was* OK with it until recently. Until recently, google seemed to think that I deserved marginally intelligent ads. The ads were for things I was generally interested in (like ballroom shoes, and external hard drives – things I *actually* use). Recently my Gmail ads have been deteriorating. I got an ad for ESPN fantasy football. Then I got an ad for a Zwinky (which, oddly enough, has also been appearing as an ad on OkCupid). Being unsure what a “Zwinky” was, I clicked the link (Bad me. I shouldn’t support this AdSense craziness). Anyways, after following the Zwinky ad link, I was still unsure exactly what a “Zwinky” was. I tried UrbanDictionary.com. They were unhelpful, telling me that, “it was this weird thing there was an ad for on the side of the page”. I already knew that. The other option in UrbanDictionary was, “is when you get male sex fluids caught in your body hair…”. I’m pretty sure that the “Zwinky” site wasn’t trying to sell me anything dealing with “male sex fluids”. So I tried Wikipedia. Wiki was more helpful. Wiki informed me that,

Zwinkies are customizable social avatars that are part of the MyWeb Searchbar on computers running Windows. A user creates a character (a Zwinky) to represent himself or herself in any networking site or blog that supports Zwinkies. When users change the appearance of said Zwinkies, all sites in which that avatar is currently displayed will update accordingly.

Why does AdSense think I need a Zwinky? What did I do to deserve *repeated* Zwinky ads? Did I unknowingly use some keyword in one of my messages that would cause AdSense to think I needed a “Zwinky”? Is there any way to make the “Zwinky” ads go away? Do my emails make me sound like a mildly retarded 12-year-old?