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Looking back at the post titled \u2018Super Awesome Roommate Needed\u2019, it included more details about the extroverted and energetic roommate (me) than it did about the actual place they would be renting. I had a few takers, but no one that I was interested to live with. (Facebook Ads Prank - Sword Swallower) A few weeks later I received a rather substantial email from someone who had found my full name from the land records, googled me, and even contacted a mutual friend to investigate the match. In his email, he explained his \u201cresearch process\u201d and why he thought we would be awesome roommates and drove the point home by explaining his love for Doctor Who \u2013 an addiction we shared. Most people would think this was creepy, but I loved it \u2026 because it was exactly what I would have done. We met for coffee and hit it off immediately. I didn\u2019t know this until months later, but he was joking with his friends that \u201cBrian decided I was moving in before I had decided I was moving in.\u201d About a week later he did indeed become my new roommate. He and I became fast friends and life was rather wonderful. We were both self-employed and often worked from home together in our own little co-working space. We occasionally would hang out with friends together and one day he decided to have some fun with me. He pulled a rather elaborate prank, leading me to believe something that wasn\u2019t true, and reported the deception to our friends in real-time\u2026 for over two weeks. When I found out I smiled, bowed my head, and said \u201cvery well played \u2026 but I hope you know there will be retaliation, and it\u2019s not going to be half-assed \u2013 it\u2019s going to be just as calculated.\u201d He looked mortified \u2013 and rightfully so. You see, I don\u2019t do anything half-assed and he knew that. So about two months later I was experimenting with different ways to use Facebook\u2019s Custom Audience targeting and having quite a bit of success. I was using a list of about 10,000 people and getting some of the highest click-throughs I had seen in a long time. Being a fan of the (Mythbusters on Youtube) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx7iijLIItM) Mythbusters where they believe that anything worth doing is worth overdoing \u2013 I asked myself how I could take this to the next level. I realized that stepping things up a notch was actually stepping them down a notch in this case and I asked how targeted I could make my audience. I said to myself, \u201cWhat if I only had like five people in an audience? What if I only had one person in an audience? \u2026 I should test this \u2026 I should test this on my roommate.\u201d And thus I conceived the most elaborate and manipulative prank of my life (so far). It began innocently enough with me snagging the email address he had listed on his Facebook profile, adding it into an Excel worksheet, and exporting it as a .CSV file. I then used the Audiences tool in Power Editor to upload the file to Facebook as a Custom Audience labeled \u2018My Roommate\u2019 as you can see below. (How To Create A Custom Audience On Facebook) You can do this with anyone\u2019s email address or, if you don\u2019t have that, you can very easily find their Facebook User ID using (Find My Facebook ID) (https://randomtools.io/) FindMyFacebookID and use that. The wonderful, and devious, thing about this is that it doesn\u2019t matter if their profile is public or private \u2013 so long as it\u2019s searchable, you can get the UID. Again, just add it to an Excel worksheet, save it as a .CSV, select \u2018UID\u2019 for the Data Type and upload it as a Custom Audience. (How To Create A Custom Audience On Facebook 2) EDIT: Facebook has since changed its policies and won\u2019t allow you to market to any audience with less than 20 people. If you want to try this yourself, there\u2019s a loophole. Let\u2019s say you want to target one of your guy friends, add his email to a .CSV along with the emails of 19 female friends before uploading it to Facebook. You can then target anyone in that custom audience who is also male (thus eliminating the 19 women and effectively targeting a single person). Again using Facebook\u2019s Power Editor I created a campaign (of course labeled \u2018Payback\u2019) and started with a few blank ads. Under the \u2018Audience\u2019 tab I selected the \u2018My Roommate\u2019 Custom Audience I just created as my only targeting and Facebook said that my Potential Audience was\u00a0fewer than 1,000 people. (Facebook Custom Audiences) At this point my plan was clever, but what I did next made it just plain evil. It\u2019s been proven time and time again that (Facebook Can Predict With Scary Accuracy If Your Relationship Will Last) (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/14/facebook-relationship-study_n_4784291.html) Facebook knows more about you than you know about you .\u00a0While advertisers are able to use that data in their targeting, it\u2019s often poorly executed (which is why I, a Jew-ish guy, often see ads for Christian dating sites), but as a Facebook user you\u2019re never able to see WHY you\u2019re being targeted. This was exactly what I planned to use to exact my revenge. I was going to target him with highly personalized messages that were focused on things Facebook truly shouldn\u2019t know about his personal life \u2013 things that weren\u2019t even online, let alone on Facebook. The goal, to make him unbelievably paranoid. Since I didn\u2019t want him to know that I was placing the ads I opted to use sidebar ads and direct him to sites that somewhat related to the message \u2013 although most of the links associated were pretty random. This enabled me to target him with ads anonymously whereas if I had done newsfeed ads I would have needed to create and populate a fake Facebook page to maintain the illusion (let\u2019s be honest, I may not do things half-assed, but I still do them efficiently). It should be mentioned at this point that my roommate is a professional sword swallower. Seriously though, he\u2019s a professional sword swallower and quite an amazing performer. He\u2019s also extremely talented at utilizing applied psychology to read body language and people as a part of his shows. I don\u2019t know much about that stuff, but I know enough about getting in someone\u2019s head to be slightly evil \u2013 only when warranted of course. Seeing as I had lived with the guy for a few months now, I knew enough about his personal life that I was able to create some rather terrifying ad placements. While my roommate is a professional sword swallower who can down a 26\u201d sword to the hilt, he gags every time he tries to swallow a pill \u2013 oh the irony. While he didn\u2019t broadcast it publicly, it was the source of great amusement to those close to him that knew it \u2013 especially me who saw him attempt to take vitamins every morning. For this placement the idea was to sell a fake product that helped people take pills without gagging \u2026 and have it speak only to sword swallowers. (Targeting Sword Swallower With Facebook Ads) Once the ad had been uploaded it became a waiting game, but thankfully \u2013 I didn\u2019t have to wait long. Two days later I was at home quietly working on my computer while he was away on a trip when he messaged me\u2026 (Facebook Advertising Prank) At this point I was LITERALLY rolling on the floor laughing. (Facebook Ads Pranking) I\u2019m pretty sure I peed a little picturing him vigorously refreshing his Facebook page. (Targeting Advertising Prank on Facebook) At this point, I was\u00a0laughing so hard that I literally couldn\u2019t breathe. (Sword Swallower Facebook Prank) This was only the beginning, so I of course played into it to further his paranoia.\u00a0I had also paused that ad variant (leaving several others active in the campaign) so he would constantly be on the lookout, but never see, that specific message in his sidebar again. The goal of pausing the ads once he had seen them was to (without any proof to show to his friends) leave him thinking he was just a little bit crazy and thus amplify his paranoia. At this point, I had him concerned with the unnerving accuracy that Facebook had predicted his personal life and of course wanted to step up my game. I decided to build on that and (somewhat) subtly illustrate to my roommate that Facebook knew something about him that he didn\u2019t know about himself. The actual image used in the ad is blurred out below as I\u2019m sure you would agree that your imagination for what was being suggested is sufficient. (Pranking With Facebook Ads) It was truly luck that he never discovered any of these ads while he and I were in the same room\u00a0because my\u00a0maniacal laughter would have been a dead giveaway. Over the next two weeks I continued to create and target ads that had a progressively more accurate and disturbing understanding of his personal life. Long ago I had discovered that\u00a0\u201ccold marketing\u201d campaigns (when you\u2019re marketing to an audience that doesn\u2019t already know you) are most effective when your targeting is specific and your creative is general. With this knowledge,\u00a0I was never direct and always \u2018fired shots across the bow\u2019 so that he wouldn\u2019t feel targeted \u2013 even though he was being targeted (this is by far the best way to market to a small audience). I wanted it to appear that he was finding the ads and not that the ads were finding him. This gag went along without a hitch for just over two weeks until I got a bit carried away and made a mistake. I targeted him with an ad that referenced an inside joke and didn\u2019t realize how inside of a joke it actually was. (Enstilling Paranoia With Facebook Ads) He ended up posting this same snapshot on his Facebook\u00a0page with the comment,\u00a0\u201cI think Brian is behind this\u2026\u201d and a fair number of his friends chimed in to help solve the mystery. At this point I was on the defensive, I needed to refute my involvement in this dastardly plan so that I could continue torturing him. I posted,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m flattered to know that you think I\u2019m capable of\u00a0something like that, but it\u2019s not me! That\u2019s too crazy!\u201d The conversation continued and my denial resulted in a bit of a miscommunication that worked to my advantage. He thought I was pissed that he had accused me, ended up deleting the post, and dropped the conversation. I knew that if he saw more ads the jig would be up so I paused the campaign and figured I would wait a bit for suspicions to cool down before resuming the torture. I was pretty busy at the time and ended up forgetting\u00a0about it entirely. I\u00a0unknowingly experienced one of happiest coincidences of my life. As I said before, my roommate is extremely smart \u2013 so smart in fact that when he was unable to afford a computer at the age of fifteen he taught himself computer programming on paper. It was nothing but a blissfully happy coincidence that this prank intersected with the (already horrifying) Edward Snowden controversy. Having the Snowden controversy in the news every twenty minutes only amplified my roommate\u2019s paranoia that someone, somewhere, was watching his every move. It was about a week later when I called him to ask something rather innocent to which he replied, \u201clet\u2019s talk when I get home, not over the phone.\u201d The request seemed a bit off considering his normal behavior and was certainly cause for raising an eyebrow. About fifteen minutes later, when he arrived home, I turned around in my chair to greet him. His shoulders were hunched forward as he went to hang his keys on the hook and when I said \u201chey there\u201d he nearly jumped out of his shoes. It was at that exact moment that I realized I had never told him who was responsible for the ads he had seen. There\u2019s something to be said about the power of uncertainty and how it attaches itself to our deepest fears. Every day he was left without an answer was another day his paranoia amplified. It was like I had cast him in a horror movie where killer never reveals himself and the suspenseful music just keeps endlessly looping. I was afraid that if I didn\u2019t end the torture he might need psychiatric treatment. It had been three weeks since this prank began and the goal of torturing him had most certainly been achieved. I was ready to reveal the \u2018man behind the curtain\u2019 but needed to do it as dramatically as the prank itself \u2026 so I created another ad. This time the headline of the ad read \u201cHey (His Name)!\u201d, used his profile photo as the image, and asked a rather provocative question. (Revealing Facebook Ads Prank) In revealing this to him, part of me was absolutely horrified. I knew that if there was retaliation it was likely to be catastrophic. Like I said before, while I\u2019m pretty clever \u2013 he\u2019s rather brilliant. There was a fair chance I was going to regret this for the rest of my life. About two days later I got a notification that he had tagged me in a Facebook post. (Caught In The Act Facebook Ads) The next morning I woke up to a note on the whiteboard in our kitchen that read,\u00a0\u201cVERY VERY VERY WELL PLAYED.\u201d It would appear, for now, that he has surrendered to my deviousness and isn\u2019t planning to retaliate \u2013 but then again he could just do nothing and have me looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. Regardless, I\u2019m sure I have more points on the board. I had effectively driven my roommate to a state of paranoia with Facebook ads and the entire three week\u00a0long marketing campaign cost me exactly $1.70 . It was worth every\u2026\u00a0single\u2026 penny. EDIT: Originally shared in (/r/marketing) (https://web.archive.org/web/20140921110335/https://www.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/2glgdd/i_pranked_my_roommate_with_eerily_targeted?utm_source=ghostinfluence.com) /r/marketing , this article (the first to be published on this website) attracted more than (brian swichkow observer) (http://observer.com/2015/05/exclusive-behind-the-facebook-prank-that-gamed-reddit-and-reached-1m-pageviews?utm_source=ghostinfluence.com) 450K readers in 72 hours and 5M media impressions in 30 days. It catalyzed notoriety as a (brian swichkow adweek) (http://www.adweek.com/digital/marketing-reddit-scary-these-success-stories-show-big-potential-168278?utm_source=ghostinfluence.com) \u201creddit marketing expert\u201d and Forbes credited me with creating the (https://www.forbes.com/sites/julesschroeder/2016/03/10/the-magic-formula-behind-going-viral-on-reddit/#6ffb49e77be2?utm_source=ghostinfluence.com) \u201cmagic formula for going viral\u201d . Finding the time to follow my passions for experimentation and storytelling had became the fulcrum to my career; teaching others to do the same (faster than the decade it took me) has become my new passion. Posted In: (https://ghostinfluence.com/category/editorial/) Editorial Tagged: (https://ghostinfluence.com/tag/advertising/) Advertising , (https://ghostinfluence.com/tag/custom-audiences/) Custom Audiences , (https://ghostinfluence.com/tag/experiments/) Experiments , (https://ghostinfluence.com/tag/facebook/) Facebook (https://ghostinfluence.com/the-bombshell-at-the-bar-my-first-6-figure-client-how-to-land-big-fish-with-no-boat/) The Bombshell At The Bar & My First 6-Figure Client: How To Land Big Fish With No Boat Comments(260) (Disqus) (Disqus) Primary Sidebar Recent Editorials (https://ghostinfluence.com/4-hours-profane-coding-attracted-310454-unique-users-24-hours/) (what programming language should I use) How 4 Hours Of Profane Coding Attracted 310,454 Unique Users In 24 Hours (https://ghostinfluence.com/how-twenty-minutes-on-reddit-increased-traffic-by-493-percent-the-stupid-simple-formula/) () How 20 Minutes On Reddit Increased Traffic By 493%: The Stupid Simple Formula (https://ghostinfluence.com/72-hours-and-25-million-impressions-the-drunken-suggestion-that-started-a-meme/) () 72 Hours And 25 Million Impressions: The Drunken Suggestion That Started A Meme (https://ghostinfluence.com/privacy-policy-2/) Privacy Policy (https://ghostinfluence.com/contact/) Contact Us () " ], "output": "htmltotext.txt", "pwd": "/data/archive/1731901300.663174", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2024-11-18T03:43:20.552695+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "media": [ { "cmd": [ "/usr/local/bin/yt-dlp", "--restrict-filenames", "--trim-filenames", "128", "--write-description", "--write-info-json", "--write-annotations", "--write-thumbnail", "--no-call-home", "--write-sub", "--write-auto-subs", "--convert-subs=srt", "--yes-playlist", "--continue", "--no-abort-on-error", "--ignore-errors", "--geo-bypass", "--add-metadata", "--format=(bv*+ba/b)[filesize<=750m][filesize_approx<=?750m]/(bv*+ba/b)", "--skip-download", "--cache-dir=/data/yt-dlp-cache/", "--cookies=/data/yt-dlp-cache/cookies.txt", "--proxy=socks5://tor-socks-proxy:9150", "--no-playlist", "https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/#2024-11-18T03:41:33+00:00" ], "cmd_version": "2024.10.7", "end_ts": "2024-11-18T03:43:32.198382+00:00", "index_texts": [], "output": "media/", "pwd": "/data/archive/1731901300.663174", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2024-11-18T03:43:20.846128+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/home/archivebox/.npm/bin/postlight-parser", "https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/#2024-11-18T03:41:33+00:00" ], "cmd_version": "999.999.999", "end_ts": "2024-11-18T03:43:20.521845+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury/", "pwd": "/data/archive/1731901300.663174", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2024-11-18T03:43:10.707075+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/home/archivebox/.npm/bin/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmp6khmwlm3", "https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/#2024-11-18T03:41:33+00:00" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2024-11-18T03:42:30.989405+00:00", "index_texts": [ "Recently I found myself in need of a roommate and, like many others, reached out to the Craigslist universe. Looking back at the post titled \u2018Super Awesome Roommate Needed\u2019, it included more details about the extroverted and energetic roommate (me) than it did about the actual place they would be renting. I had a few takers, but no one that I was interested to live with.\n\nA few weeks later I received a rather substantial email from someone who had found my full name from the land records, googled me, and even contacted a mutual friend to investigate the match. In his email, he explained his \u201cresearch process\u201d and why he thought we would be awesome roommates and drove the point home by explaining his love for Doctor Who \u2013 an addiction we shared. Most people would think this was creepy, but I loved it \u2026 because it was exactly what I would have done. We met for coffee and hit it off immediately. I didn\u2019t know this until months later, but he was joking with his friends that \u201cBrian decided I was moving in before I had decided I was moving in.\u201d About a week later he did indeed become my new roommate.\nHe and I became fast friends and life was rather wonderful. We were both self-employed and often worked from home together in our own little co-working space. We occasionally would hang out with friends together and one day he decided to have some fun with me. He pulled a rather elaborate prank, leading me to believe something that wasn\u2019t true, and reported the deception to our friends in real-time\u2026 for over two weeks. When I found out I smiled, bowed my head, and said \u201cvery well played \u2026 but I hope you know there will be retaliation, and it\u2019s not going to be half-assed \u2013 it\u2019s going to be just as calculated.\u201d\nHe looked mortified \u2013 and rightfully so.\nYou see, I don\u2019t do anything half-assed and he knew that. So about two months later I was experimenting with different ways to use Facebook\u2019s Custom Audience targeting and having quite a bit of success. I was using a list of about 10,000 people and getting some of the highest click-throughs I had seen in a long time. Being a fan of the Mythbusters\u00a0where they believe that anything worth doing is worth overdoing \u2013 I asked myself how I could take this to the next level. I realized that stepping things up a notch was actually stepping them down a notch in this case and I asked how targeted I could make my audience. I said to myself, \u201cWhat if I only had like five people in an audience? What if I only had one person in an audience? \u2026 I should test this \u2026 I should test this on my roommate.\u201d\nAnd thus I conceived the most elaborate and manipulative prank of my life (so far).\nIt began innocently enough with me snagging the email address he had listed on his Facebook profile, adding it into an Excel worksheet, and exporting it as a .CSV file. I then used the Audiences tool in Power Editor to upload the file to Facebook as a Custom Audience labeled \u2018My Roommate\u2019 as you can see below.\n\nYou can do this with anyone\u2019s email address or, if you don\u2019t have that, you can very easily find their Facebook User ID using\u00a0FindMyFacebookID\u00a0and use that. The wonderful, and devious, thing about this is that it doesn\u2019t matter if their profile is public or private \u2013 so long as it\u2019s searchable, you can get the UID. Again, just add it to an Excel worksheet, save it as a .CSV, select \u2018UID\u2019 for the Data Type and upload it as a Custom Audience.\n\nEDIT: Facebook has since changed its policies and won\u2019t allow you to market to any audience with less than 20 people. If you want to try this yourself, there\u2019s a loophole. Let\u2019s say you want to target one of your guy friends, add his email to a .CSV along with the emails of 19 female friends before uploading it to Facebook. You can then target anyone in that custom audience who is also male (thus eliminating the 19 women and effectively targeting a single person).\nAgain using Facebook\u2019s Power Editor I created a campaign (of course labeled \u2018Payback\u2019) and started with a few blank ads. Under the \u2018Audience\u2019 tab I selected the \u2018My Roommate\u2019 Custom Audience I just created as my only targeting and Facebook said that my Potential Audience was\u00a0fewer than 1,000 people.\n\nAt this point my plan was clever, but what I did next made it just plain evil.\nIt\u2019s been proven time and time again that\u00a0Facebook knows more about you than you know about you.\u00a0While advertisers are able to use that data in their targeting, it\u2019s often poorly executed (which is why I, a Jew-ish guy, often see ads for Christian dating sites), but as a Facebook user you\u2019re never able to see WHY you\u2019re being targeted. This was exactly what I planned to use to exact my revenge. I was going to target him with highly personalized messages that were focused on things Facebook truly shouldn\u2019t know about his personal life \u2013 things that weren\u2019t even online, let alone on Facebook. The goal, to make him unbelievably paranoid.\nSince I didn\u2019t want him to know that I was placing the ads I opted to use sidebar ads and direct him to sites that somewhat related to the message \u2013 although most of the links associated were pretty random. This enabled me to target him with ads anonymously whereas if I had done newsfeed ads I would have needed to create and populate a fake Facebook page to maintain the illusion (let\u2019s be honest, I may not do things half-assed, but I still do them efficiently).\nIt should be mentioned at this point that my roommate is a professional sword swallower.\nSeriously though, he\u2019s a professional sword swallower and quite an amazing performer. He\u2019s also extremely talented at utilizing applied psychology to read body language and people as a part of his shows. I don\u2019t know much about that stuff, but I know enough about getting in someone\u2019s head to be slightly evil \u2013 only when warranted of course. Seeing as I had lived with the guy for a few months now, I knew enough about his personal life that I was able to create some rather terrifying ad placements.\nWhile my roommate is a professional sword swallower who can down a 26\u201d sword to the hilt, he gags every time he tries to swallow a pill \u2013 oh the irony. While he didn\u2019t broadcast it publicly, it was the source of great amusement to those close to him that knew it \u2013 especially me who saw him attempt to take vitamins every morning. For this placement the idea was to sell a fake product that helped people take pills without gagging \u2026 and have it speak only to sword swallowers.\n\nOnce the ad had been uploaded it became a waiting game, but thankfully \u2013 I didn\u2019t have to wait long. Two days later I was at home quietly working on my computer while he was away on a trip when he messaged me\u2026\n\nAt this point I was LITERALLY rolling on the floor laughing.\n\nI\u2019m pretty sure I peed a little picturing him vigorously refreshing his Facebook page.\n\nAt this point, I was\u00a0laughing so hard that I literally couldn\u2019t breathe.\n\nThis was only the beginning, so I of course played into it to further his paranoia.\u00a0I had also paused that ad variant (leaving several others active in the campaign) so he would constantly be on the lookout, but never see, that specific message in his sidebar again. The goal of pausing the ads once he had seen them was to (without any proof to show to his friends) leave him thinking he was just a little bit crazy and thus amplify his paranoia.\nAt this point, I had him concerned with the unnerving accuracy that Facebook had predicted his personal life and of course wanted to step up my game. I decided to build on that and (somewhat) subtly illustrate to my roommate that Facebook knew something about him that he didn\u2019t know about himself. The actual image used in the ad is blurred out below as I\u2019m sure you would agree that your imagination for what was being suggested is sufficient.\n\nIt was truly luck that he never discovered any of these ads while he and I were in the same room\u00a0because my\u00a0maniacal laughter would have been a dead giveaway. Over the next two weeks I continued to create and target ads that had a progressively more accurate and disturbing understanding of his personal life. Long ago I had discovered that\u00a0\u201ccold marketing\u201d campaigns (when you\u2019re marketing to an audience that doesn\u2019t already know you) are most effective when your targeting is specific and your creative is general. With this knowledge,\u00a0I was never direct and always \u2018fired shots across the bow\u2019 so that he wouldn\u2019t feel targeted \u2013 even though he was being targeted (this is by far the best way to market to a small audience). I wanted it to appear that he was finding the ads and not that the ads were finding him.\nThis gag went along without a hitch for just over two weeks until I got a bit carried away and made a mistake. I targeted him with an ad that referenced an inside joke and didn\u2019t realize how inside of a joke it actually was.\n\nHe ended up posting this same snapshot on his Facebook\u00a0page with the comment,\u00a0\u201cI think Brian is behind this\u2026\u201d and a fair number of his friends chimed in to help solve the mystery. At this point I was on the defensive, I needed to refute my involvement in this dastardly plan so that I could continue torturing him. I posted,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m flattered to know that you think I\u2019m capable of\u00a0something like that, but it\u2019s not me! That\u2019s too crazy!\u201d The conversation continued and my denial resulted in a bit of a miscommunication that worked to my advantage. He thought I was pissed that he had accused me, ended up deleting the post, and dropped the conversation.\nI knew that if he saw more ads the jig would be up so I paused the campaign and figured I would wait a bit for suspicions to cool down before resuming the torture. I was pretty busy at the time and ended up forgetting\u00a0about it entirely.\nI\u00a0unknowingly experienced one of happiest coincidences of my life.\nAs I said before, my roommate is extremely smart \u2013 so smart in fact that when he was unable to afford a computer at the age of fifteen he taught himself computer programming on paper. It was nothing but a blissfully happy coincidence that this prank intersected with the (already horrifying) Edward Snowden controversy. Having the Snowden controversy in the news every twenty minutes only amplified my roommate\u2019s paranoia that someone, somewhere, was watching his every move.\nIt was about a week later when I called him to ask something rather innocent to which he replied, \u201clet\u2019s talk when I get home, not over the phone.\u201d The request seemed a bit off considering his normal behavior and was certainly cause for raising an eyebrow. About fifteen minutes later, when he arrived home, I turned around in my chair to greet him. His shoulders were hunched forward as he went to hang his keys on the hook and when I said \u201chey there\u201d he nearly jumped out of his shoes.\nIt was at that exact moment that I realized I had never told him who was responsible for the ads he had seen. There\u2019s something to be said about the power of uncertainty and how it attaches itself to our deepest fears. Every day he was left without an answer was another day his paranoia amplified. It was like I had cast him in a horror movie where killer never reveals himself and the suspenseful music just keeps endlessly looping.\nI was afraid that if I didn\u2019t end the torture he might need psychiatric treatment.\nIt had been three weeks since this prank began and the goal of torturing him had most certainly been achieved. I was ready to reveal the \u2018man behind the curtain\u2019 but needed to do it as dramatically as the prank itself \u2026 so I created another ad. This time the headline of the ad read \u201cHey (His Name)!\u201d, used his profile photo as the image, and asked a rather provocative question.\n\nIn revealing this to him, part of me was absolutely horrified. I knew that if there was retaliation it was likely to be catastrophic. Like I said before, while I\u2019m pretty clever \u2013 he\u2019s rather brilliant. There was a fair chance I was going to regret this for the rest of my life. About two days later I got a notification that he had tagged me in a Facebook post.\n\nThe next morning I woke up to a note on the whiteboard in our kitchen that read,\u00a0\u201cVERY VERY VERY WELL PLAYED.\u201d It would appear, for now, that he has surrendered to my deviousness and isn\u2019t planning to retaliate \u2013 but then again he could just do nothing and have me looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. Regardless, I\u2019m sure I have more points on the board.\nI had effectively driven my roommate to a state of paranoia with Facebook ads and the entire three week\u00a0long marketing campaign cost me exactly $1.70. It was worth every\u2026\u00a0single\u2026 penny.\n\nEDIT: Originally shared in /r/marketing, this article (the first to be published on this website) attracted more than 450K readers in 72 hours and 5M media impressions in 30 days. It catalyzed notoriety as a \u201creddit marketing expert\u201d and Forbes credited me with creating the \u201cmagic formula for going viral\u201d. Finding the time to follow my passions for experimentation and storytelling had became the fulcrum to my career; teaching others to do the same (faster than the decade it took me) has become my new passion." ], "output": "readability/", "pwd": "/data/archive/1731901300.663174", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2024-11-18T03:42:22.364617+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "/usr/bin/curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "60", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/{VERSION} (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/)", "https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/#2024-11-18T03:41:33+00:00" ], "cmd_version": "8.10.1", "end_ts": "2024-11-18T03:42:22.042606+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Pranking My Roommate With Eerily Targeted Facebook Ads", "pwd": "/data/archive/1731901300.663174", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2024-11-18T03:42:21.922312+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": "https://web.archive.org/web/20241118034344/https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/", "dom": "output.html", "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": "media/", "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "Pranking My Roommate With Eerily Targeted Facebook Ads", "warc": null, "wget": null }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1731901300.663174", "newest_archive_date": "2024-11-18T03:43:32.244008+00:00", "num_failures": 0, "num_outputs": 9, "oldest_archive_date": "2024-11-18T03:41:48.103587+00:00", "path": "/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_abid": "snp_01JCYNS7Z6C23C1CC1011RHG4F", "snapshot_id": "7c5500e1-1744-4e41-b4dc-5928c388c08f", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1731901297-import.txt" ], "tags": null, "tags_str": "", "timestamp": "1731901300.663174", "title": "Pranking My Roommate With Eerily Targeted Facebook Ads", "url": "https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/#2024-11-18T03:41:33+00:00" }