DH is very naive when it comes to social media and advertising and very easily influenced.
I've found this frustrating in the past when he's believed any old shite he's seen on Facebook/YouTube and sometimes it results in him buying crap and on others it influences his views about things that are happening in the world. He refuses to accept he's being manipulated by algorithms and believes he knows his own mind and gets stroppy if I suggest otherwise.
A friend at work randomly mentioned a start up clothing brand a relative of theirs is involved with, other side of the country to where we live but has a catchy name that I know will be like catnip for him. The brand has about 4k followers on Facebook/insta at the moment and has been around since Feb 2026, so not insignificant but also no way it would have come to his attention if it wasn't by my chance conversation.
I've searched it on the family ipad which is mostly signed in to his facebook and also watched a few youtubes by the brand from the last few days. I'm not going to mention it to him myself at all, I want to see if it now comes up organically for him on Facebook.
I've written a bet out with today's date on and popped it in the never used teapot next to his fancy coffee, which says that by the end of October he will have bought an item from that brand purely because of Facebook targeted advertising, I've also predicted which events he will buy it to wear at.
On past experience I'm expecting he will have brand mentionitis within the next 10 days... and an item will have been bought by the end of September.
To answer the questions, Yes I'm being a knob, yes he has enough money to spend on tat as he wishes and no I'm not controlling/monitoring his facebook use, he's too lazy to log out and only uses it for mindless scrolling of facebook shite anyway.