On Sunday, I attended an event and heard the main speaker call dedicated activist groups “small but mighty.”
I recognized the reference thanks to a diminutive villager and singer at King Richard’s Faire who often wore the shirt at cast-call before she climbed into Renaissance garb.
Made without mention of Shakespeare, “small but mighty” came near the end of the event, and so while rising to leave, I turned to two nearby friends, a married couple, and let them know. But I couldn’t name the play and guessed, Much Ado About Nothing or As You Like it. “Has to be one of the comedies.”
On Monday, my newsfeed included an ad for literary t-shirts. First and foremost was:
Has my brain been tapped? Unnerving though it was, I laughed at the ask-and-you-shall-receive immediacy–and the exact re-wording–of what I hope is pure coincidence and passed it on to the couple. I’ve heard of opening Pandora’s Box, but I opened a Litmus Test: She worried that “someone is listening in.” His reply could not have been more cheerful: “The web heard you wondering which play it was from, and kindly gave you the answer!”
Yes, the line is from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a comedy that may qualify as the Bard’s weirdest play, spoken by Helena in act 3, scene 2, referring to her friend Hermia. When I added that, the reply was this: “Our daughter named her cat Hermia, and she was little but fierce.”
Before and after that exchange, I was drafting a column for Martin Luther King Day for the local paper. Yes, six weeks early, but I had an idea prompted by a question posed to the speaker on Sunday. Already drafting it in my head on the drive home, but up against a deadline for another project that night, I had to draft it next day.
In it, I describe and quote a sermon King delivered in Lima, Ohio. When I had a complete draft, I went clicking for emails and messages which included a friend request from a friend of a friend as often happens on social media. As always, I checked a profile before approving, and there it was: “From Lima, Ohio.”
Is it possible that the name of a place in my unpublished and unseen-by-anyone-but-me Word file was caught by an algorithm and connected via social media to a woman from that place, prompting her to send a friend request?
Nor could my remark while leaving a church be anywhere near the internet. And yet…
And yet it feels so much like other “coincidences” that should be suspected. I’m an avid, lifelong cribbage player, so it was only a matter of time before I mentioned the game in an email not long ago with my most frequent opponent. Next day I was looking at this:
No fan of gimmicks, she was appalled, as was I. She even sounded a bit miffed that I dared send it. But I inflict it on you to make a point: As soon as I mention it, it’s known to cyber-advertisers. Unlike this week’s surprises, I had put it in an email, so I hardly noticed or cared. First noticed this 15 years ago when I reviewed a Jethro Tull concert opened by Procol Harum. I was already a member of a Tull fan group and seeing ads for their merch, but the next day I began seeing ads for Procol Harum.
I can only wonder if it was due to my enthusiasm for them, the only opening act to gain a call for an encore in the 30-plus Tull concerts I’ve attended since 1971. Interesting to note that, in the column, I made made bare mention of The Rolling Stones and The Who but received no ads for them.
And now I’m bombarded with ads for nativity scenes. When drafting my Christmas column last week about displays of refugees seeking shelter on the lawns and in the homes that fly the flag of a candidate promising mass deportations of refugees seeking shelter, I wanted to know where the figurines are manufactured.
Do the Marys and Josephs have green cards? If not, may they be rounded up and deported to Guatemala or Pakistan or wherever they may have been mass produced?
For that, I get ads offering them at bargain rates. Call it comic relief. The algorithms have no sense of satire. They’d try selling guns to a nun if the nun wrote “gun” more than once in an email.
What’s new–and what’s worrying–is that I’m now receiving ads and possibly friend requests that appear too specific to be coincidental. We’ll see what this account you are now reading might draw. If I start seeing ads for services providing encrypted text or web secrecy, I’ll ask the algorithms to let you know.
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Mouth of the River 