It's not really all that crazy to think though. We create categories for people in our own heads and predict their behavior all the time. Often times we get it right because people are at least somewhat predictable. Look no further than starter pack memes.

If you an average male into video games it's going to shill you popular video games. That's an assumption given your gender and age and probably location and most of the time it's a correct choice. It's not as advanced as you think it is.

I cannot replicate any of these claims no matter how hard I try. I ran out of contact solution this weekend and I spent a good 20 minutes repeating the words "contact solution" "contact solution delivery" "1-800-contacts" "I need contact solution " with Facebook open, directly into the microphone. All I get are vaguely relevant ads for shit I obviously would want (bike parts and bikes because, spoiler alert, I use FB almost exclusively to keep up with local mountain bike events) and absolutely nothing about contacts or contact solution.

But guess what? This still doesn't prove anything because, like your example, it's an anecdote. And a single anecdote counts for fuck all in terms of evidence. I find it exceedingly unlikely that any of the tech giants are wasting time and resources listening in on our conversations simply to target us with advertisements when they already have sufficient data based on past search history, app usage statistics, our friend groups, location data, demographic data, ...

This stupid conspiracy is just as illogical as the vaccine tracking chip conspiracy. Hello, you are voluntarily carrying a tracking device you bought with your own money and keep charged with your own power, and you willingly expose even more data to it like private messages and photos. There's absolutely no reason to invent GPS tracking nano technology to solve an already solved problem.

And I by no means am saying that these big tech companies are innocent or that they don't abuse the data they collect. There's a 100% chance they do. But you are ascribing a level of sophistication they don't really need to "read your mind" or listen in on your private conversations. You are human, and they have a few billion other examples of humans they can use to analyze behavior. We're pretty predictable, it turns out.

There is no "lemon balm incident" that even bears worth putting on the Internet after a quick google search. You're talking out your ass so can it.