What have I done to deserve this? The Instagram ad I am presently being served on a loop at the moment is for NUGGS, a cholesterol-free animal-substitute fried nugget… product. NUGGS’s slogan is – no, really – “KILLS YOU SLOWER”, which, because of these ads, specifically, happens to be precisely the opposite of what I want.

I kid. Slightly.

I’ve actually become rather enamoured to my particular algorithmic impact on the digi-verse, the pocket of cravings I have projected online through Google searches, Instagram likes, Twitter faves, geotags and whatever I happen to have said within earshot of my traitorous smartphone. Frankly, I depend on these ads, I need them to reflect me back to myself, not like that workout mirror thing I keep getting ads for (and which I so desperately need to work off my Covid-19 paunch), but because I’ve lost track of who I am.

Not that I have forgotten the basics, entirely – what year it is, my address and such. But because, in lockdown, without the mesh of a city, or the moderating force of other live human beings in my orbit feeding back, antennae-like, those ads know me better than anyone. This is in part because I am no longer the me I was when I knew and saw and worked alongside real people. I have changed (and not just softened with the addition of all that lockdown pasta). I don’t think the way I did back then (whenever that was), don’t want what I wanted then, don’t do what I did then. And, not to get too freshman year philosophy class on you, but what am I, really, if not my thoughts, desires and actions?

I am Jack’s doom-scrolling couch potato. I am a cook, of the same six dishes, ad nauseum, and an avid online window shopper, apparently. That’s me, saving every ornate chest of drawers on 1stDibs, watching every Nom de Guerre jacket on eBay, heart-ing antique wall coverings at estate auctions. I’m a picker and I’m a bidder. I’m a wisher and I’m a low-baller – I do my shopping all day long. And so I see ads.

These ads typically arrive every three or four tiles in my scroll. Some – take the one for Ms Anna Wintour’s MasterClass on fashion, for example – occur (and recur) with such frequency, such ubiquity, that they hop into the discourse and become a kind of Twitter sub-thread. (So much so that there were even articles about how to avoid being served Ms Wintour’s one.)

There are, of course, the very butch-y bro-y ads, such as: “Dude, let’s pop some zits and crush some beers” or whatever. These packaged up male anxiety about sexual performance, hair loss or grooming with axe-throwing style performative masculinity and Cha Cha Matcha aesthetics. There are the ludicrous appeals to purchase real estate in New York, being served to me, a digi-feudal peasant, pulling down nowhere near a Manhattan mortgage in my work in the content mines. And then there are the ones for a better night’s sleep – through meditation or mattress firmness – and I will hear no slander against them since I haven’t slept since 2016.

There are the weight-loss ads, the get-fit-in-seven-minutes ads, the political ads, and the utterly execrable men’s fashion ads. “Targeted Instagram ads from men’s microbrands are really an unflattering mirror,” Mr Nick Confessore, reporter for The New York Times, tweeted last year. To which I nodded and tapped “learn more” on the Spanx ad I was then reading.

There are the ads of the NUGGS variety, which are so far afield, so un-me, they would shake my sense of self – if they weren’t so funny. And then there are those chilling, uncanny moments in which the world seems to be messing with us.

“Earlier today,” our friend Mr Kurt Soller, features director at T: The New York Times Style Magazine, tweeted, “my boyfriend pointed at a chair at our hotel and said he liked it – without mentioning any defining features or brands or anything – and he just got served an Instagram ad for that exact chair. So insane.”

In April, Mr Dan Frommer, founder and editor-in-chief of The New Consumer, wrote, “Pulled an obscure bottle of amaro out of the fridge today for the first time in months, said its name out loud, put it back in the fridge. And just got served an Instagram ad for it. 🤔🤔🤔”

We are all Jack’s chin-pulling worrywart emoji. Instagram ads seem so specific it can be unnerving – but it can also be comforting, making us feel seen. As someone who studies consumer behaviour, the products we are sold, and the means by which they are marketed to us, Mr Frommer has a bit of a parallax view of this situation. “My relationship with Instagram advertising is a little more complicated and less innocent than usual,” he told us recently, “because in addition to seeing them as a user, I’m also constantly studying them as an analyst, and often provoking them by visiting a company’s website and seeing which similar companies then target me on Instagram. (This happened a lot when I was researching my recent piece on natural deodorant, and was a good way to discover brands or how they portrayed themselves.)

“I try not to read too far into the targeting – it’s usually pretty good, and a lot better than the TV ads I see, which are often for big beer brands, trucks or the kind of insurance you need if you drink beer and drive trucks,” he adds. But he says he’s watched the way his own behaviour has changed during lockdown.

“For me,” says Mr Frommer, “the things I’ve historically spent the most money on – travel and dining – are off the table for probably another six months to a year, at least flying overseas is. So, we’ve been investing a bit in our home, and really trying to make the quarantine comfortable and interesting. My budget for interesting spices, condiments and novelty foods is essentially unlimited right now. Chilli crisps? Ramp vinegar? FedExed box of fresh produce from a Japanese farm in Delaware? Yes, yes and yes. I’m now the guy who buys five-litre vats of olive oil.”

And, of course, that amaro, which I had to wonder about. Is Instagram (and its parent company, Facebook), using the mic, and even video, on our smartphones to eavesdrop on us the better to serve us ads?

“No,” says Ms Paige Cohen, a spokesperson for Facebook. “Facebook does not use your phone's microphone to inform ads. We only access your microphone if you have given our app permission and if you are actively using a specific feature that requires audio (ie, to record a video).”

So, how does Instagram seem to know me better than my own parents do? “To determine what ads to show people, we consider basic info and interests on Facebook and Instagram and activity on and off Facebook,” Ms Cohen says. “Examples of behaviours on Facebook that the machine learning models consider include things a person does while using Facebook apps, like clicking on an ad, following an account, or liking a post. Examples of behaviours off Facebook that the models consider include things a person does outside of Facebook that businesses share with us via our Business Tools, such as visiting a website, purchasing a product or installing an app.”

Other factors, including time of day, the content within the ad, of course, as well as our own personal relationships, biases, etcetera, can really ramp up the impact of the ads we see, says Ms Cohen. She adds that, during the height of the lockdown, the company “saw strong growth in gaming, technology and e-commerce”.

As we’ve been locked in, locked out of our lives and locked away from our friends, family and colleagues, then, it seems that we all did what good little Americans are supposed to do: we shopped (and played games). We projected our insecurities onto the abyss and the abyss answered back with more specifically tailored advertising. I don’t know if they cured my depression, helped me lose weight, or even gave me the products to compensate for those things, but these ads have been my closest and most continuous companion during the lockdown – so, what does that make me? Or, rather, what does that make them in relationship to me, my identity?

“I spend all day reading and thinking about the consumer effects of the pandemic,” says Mr Frommer. “And this recession is no joke for many millions of Americans. So, I realise there’s no normal coming any time soon. But I still do crave a time when society gets ramped up again and we can meet indoors and attend events.”

To that end, he is even dabbling in a little wishful, or aspirational, consuming. “Most of my apparel spending so far has been on immediate and practical needs,” he says. “Several pairs of [Patagonia] Baggies shorts to wear around the house. But I’ve also unexpectedly purchased two blazers since March, including a full Officine Generale suit a couple of weeks ago. It was on a very good sale, a brand I love, and it’ll last me a decade or more? But what a weird thing to actually follow through on. I have no idea when I’ll wear it.”