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Why Gay Men Are Worth So Much To Facebook
Barence writes "PC Pro has a feature on how social networks sold your privacy, which includes some interesting comparisons on the value of different demographics to Facebook. For example, an advert that targets everyone within a 10-mile radius of a medium-sized British town (Dorking) is valued at 28p per click by Facebook's advertising tool. However, targeting single gay men in the area with a preference for nightclubbing raises the price to 71p per click — 2.5x the price of targeting the general public. Such precise targeting also raises other issues. Whittling down ads to target such precise demographics can result in ads targeting as few as 20 people, making it theoretically possible to identify those targeted. 'I think the worst scenario might be where someone who hates gays uses Facebook's targeting to identify gay users and later attack them,' says Paul Francis, scientific director of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems."
Why would anyone be against shemales? They know best how to give head while at least superficially looking like females ;-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Paul Francis, uh, "scientific" director of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, has figured out that if I choose to declare that I'm gay on my public Failbook profile, then people can use that information to determine my sexuality?
Whoa, that's some cutting edge research there. Thanks for looking out for me, Paul.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Page 3 before gay men are even mentioned and that's the headline? I'm not even going to bother making an on topic post.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The gay's tend not to have kids. That means that they have more discretionary income. More discretionary income equates to more readily purchasing more expensive toys more often than the guy that supports a family. It's why you see shiny things like the latest Itoy so often in the hands of gay people, they can afford them. It's just math and the logic is sound.
The second part though, the idea that someone would go to all the trouble to use something like this to track down a bunch of gays is absurd. Why bother doing that when if your a nutter you just go to your local gay bar instead? You know the one that advertises to attract all of those gays?
Don't want to be targeted? Don't use Facebook.
You'll have to excuse Slashdot, you have to understand that to many of us a shemale is uncomfortably close to a transporter accident, so it's bothering us at a primal geek level.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While Homosexuality gets a lot of discrimination and hate... For the most part they are living an above average standard of life, so they have money, so advertising targeted towards them is valuable.
It comes down to a group that doesn't quite fit in well with the general public and Adds saying We will welcome you to come to our location where you won't feel like an outcast. So Advertising targeted to that group is far more effective... Thus costs more.
Many Other Minorities don't work as well.
Minority Races - for the most part the have a lower then average salary. That means most of the people will be less likely to spend money.
Non-Christians - For the religious non-Christians they have their places of worship where they feel like they belong. For Atheists for most places they go they are able to pass as a normal citizen. And if their religion doesn't have much of a dress requirement they are normally able to pass off anyways. For some of the real minorities the numbers are too small to advertise for.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
For example, an advert that targets everyone within a 10-mile radius of a medium-sized British town (Dorking) is valued at 28p per click by Facebook's advertising tool. However, targeting single gay men in the area with a preference for nightclubbing raises the price to 71p per click
That typically means young and single, which has always been a very attractive market with a lot of disposable time and money. Can we get a comparison to straight people with a preference to nightclubbing? Of course a blanket ad trying to sell to everyone is worth far far less...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I knew something was odd about that add for a Gay Male who finished school in '95 in the small town of Skibbereen working as a barista in Starbucks in Blackrock, with horn rim glasses and wearing a hoodie currently typing on ... aaaarrrrgggggggggg
While I'm not sure what part of the world you're in, I know that a large portion of the slashdot readership resides in the USA. And here (possibly other places, but I can only reliably talk about here), male-to-female transsexuals are generally offended by the term "shemale". They seem to prefer either "trans-women", "MtF" or just "women". That may explain your -1 troll.
That said, it seems humorous to complain about how trans-erasure has kept people from acknowledging male-to-female transsexuals while also ignoring female-to-male transsexuals. At least trans-women are noticed because they are sexualized - trans-men seem almost wholly ignored in the populace.
But to answer your question more directly, the reason nobody talked about them in *this* article is because they are not a lucrative target market for advertisements. The homosexual male community is not targeted for advertisement because they are so numerous, but because the retail and marketing world believes that gay males spend a lot of money and, more importantly, influence the fashions and tastes of the heterosexual people surrounding them. Clothing stores see gay men as trend setters, so they believe that getting gay men to adopt their clothes will lead the heterosexual people to follow. Because of rampant discrimination and erasure, trans people are not perceived as having the same trend-setting appeal.
The only thing making ladyboys "way more cuter" than actual females is your fetish for them.
No amount of surgery makes them look like actual females without extensive makeup and photo angles taken to compliment a feature or to exaggerate one.
I say this as someone who is not against gays or transgender people. In fact, I have many LGBT friends and even some in the family... so it's not a bias, just stating what I see. I guess much the same way you are, but your fetish is clouding your eyesight.
I can personally say that this is not true. Not based on some images on the internet, but real life experience. Granted, I do live in Thailand and the ladyboys here are generally more feminine and look more like women than in western countries, but the point stands. Of course, there are also many that don't really pass that, but then there are those true gems too. Just last week I met one ladyboy who I sure as hell wouldn't had recognized as such if it weren't for the established I was at.
It has nothing to do with general fetish towards ladyboys. For the most part they don't interest me that much. Which of course is true for many "real" women too. However, she had spent the time and effort to make herself look beautiful and she really was. Sat down, had a few drinks, kissed some, went back to apartment and had some fun. Her "special" parts didn't matter, and why would they. I know geeks like to put everything into binary code and either 0 or 1, but in real life it's not that simple. And no, I'm not gay - I just don't discriminate ladyboys just for the fact that they have at one time been men. It's stupid to limit yourself like that if you otherwise like someone or think she looks nice.
Actually, in general, the trans community (US) wants nothing to do with such people, they are pretty ostracized and many trans peeps consider their very mention (not by just term, but their existence) to be offensive.. so they are generally not welcome under the 'transgendered' umbrella.
Well, well. It looks like gay people are only human after all. They have the same kind of prejudices and hypocrisy as the rest of us. I hear that gay people also attack men who identify themselves as bi-sexual too.
As an outsider looking in, I find the entire thing to be quite amusing. Perhaps the gay people should get their own house in order before they start attacking society in general demanding special rights and treatment.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Actually, most of the trans people I know don't have a problem with drag/ladyboys.... "shemales" is a different story... that's offensive because it's specifically tied to sexual fetishism, but drag and ladyboys are performance. Transsexualism isn't performance, it's real, and outside of people who are just beginning their "real life experience" period, I don't know any trans people who have a problem with the idea of drag. They don't like to be identified as it (because they aren't), but they can accept it as a different concept.
That being said, there's a whole lot more to "transgendered" than transsexualism. Genderqueer, people who simply refuse to associate with either specific gender, androgynous culture, etc., all fit within the umbrella term.
And yes, I do know several transgendered individuals, some of whom are also transsexual. It comes from my volunteer work with the local queer community center.
Also worth noting... historically treatment for transgender issues was restricted by a (now debunked) theory that very narrowly defined what could be accepted as "trans". That created an inaccurate skew in terms of the sexuality... in Canada, for example, until the last couple of years it was impossible for somebody who identified as homosexual to get gender reassignment therapy. If you were a transwoman, you, by definition, had to like men exclusively, sexually. That has changed, and a very large number of "gay" trans people have come out of the woodwork and are now seeking therapy. I would expect that when the dust settles it'll be somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of trans people who are homosexual.
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