Mine are scarily accurate

I've never seen a targeted ad. It's very rare that I see any ads at all. Ublock Origin does a very good job of getting rid of them.

Agreed.
I'm really surprised to see so many people talking about ads. The only ones I see are the non-digital ones in the metro.
A coworker was showing me something in his phone and I was amazed, how clutered it was with all these ads. I don't know how people can cope with today's internet without an adblocker

The more irrelevant the advertising I see, the happier I am about my digital footprint.

Plus, it's funny to me when "the algorithm" tries to sell a moist, pasty red-head lotion and hair relaxer because I matched into that demographic somewhere along the line.

Why are people normalizing targeted ads, let alone being impartial to ads at all?

I'm seeing this the other way around. It's possible the normalization is incidental: the comic exists because it's a common interaction these days.
At the same time, the comic is from the New Yorker. Magazines have a different attitude about advertising in general, so (IMO) this is as anti-ad as a magazine comic can get away with.
There can be good targeted ads eg. For locus businesses. But usually they are not that.
- When I did have Instagram I did really like that it told me about local events, the downside that I had to scroll reels to get them. All those events listing websites don't have the type of events I want to see. So there's no places I know about them unless it's from Instagram.
- It's the targeting itself that is bad. Very, very bad. It's a blueprint for mind control and singling out opposition. In the current political climate, this spells bloody trouble.
- If I am looking to buy a product or service that serves a specific need, then I would rather be able to use a search engine to find it.

I haven't seen an ad in ages.

I was gonna say: I have no idea what this is like.
I'm simultaneously living my best life, (mostly) ad free, and at once unaware of how the rest of the world navigates an ad-encrusted digital space.

I got advertised bras the other day when I was forced to see ads for the first time in years

Considering I don't use bras, that's probably a good sign

Maybe it predicted your future man boobs.

You guys are seeing ads? I barely use my phone and on my PC I use Firefox with ublock origin. It's simple really.

fennec with ublock origin works wonders on the phone too.
- Or just the default Firefox app, which supports extensions.

I live an ad-free life since about 2010. But I do wonder what it's like to see targeted ads.

I don't see ads

UBlock Origin and NoScript are both very useful

I don't get ads. I am nothing.

I love VPNs for this .... I get to see advertising from around the world ... Japanese noodles, Nordic furniture, some weird German food, Turkish real estate, Australian drinks ... and all of it delivered in languages I don't understand.

I do sometimes wonder what the ads say but like you I can't be bothered to learn Australian.
- It's not hard .... you just turn the monitor upside down and you can translate everything.
You don’t even have to do that to get served foreign ads. If you search on country specific search sites long enough, it’ll eventually bleed over to your native feed.

I like to imagine the life of the person ads think I am. I get ads in Spanish, I get medication ads for illnesses I do not have, and sometimes literally cannot have,I get ads for high end lab equipment. By far my favorite was an ad for deep sea oil rig sand traps, why would that ad even be made, and why send it to a 50 year old man in a landlocked state who is watching minecraft lets plays and pink pony club covers.

"Deep sea oil rig sand trap" sounds like an underground rock band song title.
- Yeah the ad made me research it,apparently the oil has a bunch of solids/sand in it that is caught by the trap before further processing. So I did learn a thing, but I'm not buying an oil rig.
lol why the hell even is an oil rig sand trap?

Not me, opted out of everything I can that would target me and with the VPN I use it just randomly picks locations and servers

I absolutely love getting ads in random languages I don't even speak

I can't even read the ads so It's like an extra layer of protection from their marketing due to my own ignorance

i've been having to translate the TV ads for my wife since they show up in a language i know but she doesn't. it's kinda fun since she used to be a certified interpreter (well, i guess the cert hasn't expired so still is?)

Use ad blocking DNS.

Use VPN.

Never accept all cookies, just the bare minimum.

Use browser extensions to block trackers.

Use security and privacy focused browsers.

I can't remember the last time I saw ads, let alone targeted.

Never accept all cookies, just the bare minimum.
"Necessary" cookies should have to be able to be rejected
Temporary Containers extension fixes this (I use its continuation fork, Temporary Containers Plus, since the original has not been updated in 5 years because the author is dead), all new tabs with no container are changed to a temporary container that is deleted after a configurable time without any tabs in it

I see you purchased a washing machine. May I assume you are collecting washing machines? Of course I may. Let me offer you these excellent deals for washing machines!

I am avoiding nearly all ads.

I'm pretty sure Google figured out I'm a woman in my 40s living in Finland so my YouTube ads reflect that. Get feminine product ads and toy ads before Christmas.

And sometimes weird B2B adverts like business software and logistics services and industrial equipment.

One time it was straight up "hey, gurl, wanna buy a tractor???" ...probably because I have watched Farming Simulator let's plays. Years ago.

So did you buy the tractor?
- Come on, every woman living her 40s in Finland has a tractor already.
Over a decade ago I did some volunteer work with disabled children for a few months. Basically assist them, organize a summer camp for people with and without disabilities, teaching other volunteers how to approach and effectively help them, etc.
I also did some workshops showing non-disabled people what certain disabilities are like, how they affect you in ways they wouldn’t even expect, how to improve things to make them more accessible and so on.
Even today, I get constantly shown ads for clinics, medical treatments, wheel chairs, prosthetics,… ugh
- Install ublock origin
Install ublock origin
- I have uBlock origin on my browser. The ads are only a problem in YouTube for TV and Android, which is sadly where I watch most of YouTube. But I do my part of backing out whenever the damn counter says 50 seconds remaining, and whenever YouTube pops up a quiz about the quality of advertising, I say it's shit. Someone has to be in the trenches to observe that the thing is shit.

Is the woman on the right Daria all grown up? I didn't realize how bad I want that until now.

I love it when, rarely as it may be since I block ads as much as possible, I get a completely unrelated-to-me ad… it just means they have no clue who I am

Every once in a while, it glitches out on me and starts showing me adds for born-again Jesus seminars.
Or it's trying to tell me something. One of those two.

I'm pretty sure mine are based on my physical location and not me. Walking sticks, supplements, glucose monitors.

I hate when someone asks me about some random thing, I quickly Google it for some quick info about something I don't care about at all, and then I have to deal with pop up ads on that product for weeks afterwards.

Use duckduckgo for these random searches
- Valid.

I don't even know her

Looks like the right one is leaning on a big pile of poo

It's a handbag.
... stuffed with poo.
Also like Daria Morgendorffer

I really liked the person the targeted ads thought I was, back when I saw ads.

They were often targeting an idealized version of myself.

They were offering to let you become that idealized version. The offer was a lie of course, but that's advertising.

Cmon! I don't need or want an abussive vampire boyfriend!

I've only seen ads on Youtube on PS4. You can click to see why it was shown to you. I get Russian women suggested to me because of "time, general area, gender"

Stop looking at as much werewolf porn. Everything in moderation.

She's seeing a consumer whore version of herself, I guess? I haven't seen a targeted ad in years.

According to the first 4 ads on reddit, I have a lot of problems:

Epilepsy medicine
Xolair - food allergy medicine
Diabetes medicine
Zepbound - weight loss

Like these ads aren't even that helpful, they just get in the way. All the ads are kind of why I don't browse reddit that much anymore.