htmlbaron:
“It may not think you like them, but it knows you’re thinking about them,” they beamed, misplaced pride stemming from something that felt so underground, or at least derived a few minutes of amusement and feeling like this major was a Nobel rank, and less of an excuse to get slightly cocky. “If they have a screen API, they can detect when anyone saves an ad and it counts as engagement, so it worms it’s way into your algorithm for the rest of your life, pretty much. Even if you stop now, the damage has been done.” Casting a tight-lined lip of empathy, Yael was suddenly quite curious to the game plaguing Goldi, their face changing into piqued curiosity before a hushed voice pressed on, “is it one of those Royalty Forbidden Romance games? The “I married to preserve my family’s social class and my wife is secretly poor and we’re not actually in love but our parents forced us to do this shit, but now the housekeeper is pregnant and I don’t know how to explain why the baby looks so much like me” kind? Because I said that too but what’s the point in even playing without those damn diamonds? I spent so much on Elizabethan collars one Summer… the theatre kids were doing some Shakespearian sonnet showcase one night and all had on those collars and I had to go cold turkey after I tried to click a grade nine.
Goldi let out a hearty laugh at Yael’s plight. “How do you even click someone? Do you just-” she reached over the table, giving Yael’s nose a soft, tentative boop, before plopping back down at her seat. “Less of those story based games... more like... this poorly animated avatar needs to pick up every single ball... or maybe match all of these things together. Or just... tap the screen a bunch of times. I would say the outrageous ones are the ones where you need to stop a flood, or else the avatar’s wife will cheat on her husband with the plumber...”
