When you see them, you’ll be baffled that someone had the bright idea to design and sell such a product. But apparently, there’s a lucrative market for these kind of targeted t-shirts. 

To understand how the market got started, I spoke to the aptly-named Facebook page Shirts Marketed To Extremely Specific Demographics (@ExtremelySpecificShirts). Their page has a following of 54K people who also love these cringe-worthy t-shirts. @ExtremelySpecificShirts gave Bored Panda their views on the topic and a quick run-down on how it happened.

“The weird specificity of these shirts is a product of how adverts on Facebook work,” @ExtremelySpecificShirts told Bored Panda. They go on to explain that: “In Facebook, you can target your ads to people based on things such as the pages they ‘Like’, their hobbies, jobs, birth months, etc. You can also target ads towards any combination of these variables.”

@ExtremelySpecificShirts believes that: “people found there was money to be made in creating bots to automatically generate designs based on these variables.” So, auto-generated marketing is what really drove this business to grow on Facebook, and even become profitable.

I contacted Andrea Vahl for more insights into Facebook Ads. She is a social media speaker and consultant, who is passionate about helping businesses understand and leverage the power of social media to grow their business. She is the co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies and her latest book is Facebook Ads Made Simple. 

“For many types of businesses, Facebook is the most lucrative place to advertise,” Andrea told Bored Panda. “Google is great when someone is specifically searching for a product, but Facebook works really well in the top of the marketing funnel to get in front of your perfect audience,” she explained. 

And these t-shirts are definitely trying to target the perfect person.

The numbers on the subreddit and Facebook page show that there’s an interest for the t-shirts. I asked @ExtremelySpecificShirts what they thought of the cult-following behind the targeted t-shirts. Do people really love these t-shirts so much? Or is it all just a running-joke on the internet?

”There's a combination of both,” the curator of the page said. ”I think older people are more likely to genuinely like these shirts and don't really see the humor in how specific they are.”

However, this is contrasted by the niche of users that find the t-shirts ridiculous, but in a good way. @ExtremelySpecificShirts said, “I've also seen some of my followers tag me in pictures of themselves wearing targeted shirts. In their case, it's definitely ironic.“

It looks like auto-generated marketing is here to stay. And we are seeing more and more content being produced with the aid of Artificial Intelligence. This can be anything from artworks produced by machines or using deepfake technology to regenerate older actors to their prime (heads up: spoilers for ‘The Mandalorian’).

I asked @ExtremelySpecificShirts what they think in regards to today's technology and what it holds for the future. They think: “it's funny, and maybe a bit dystopian, that we thought we'd have flying cars in the future but instead, we got extremely specific t-shirts.”

There you have it, folks—we’re living in the future right now, a future of AI produced t-shirts. Maybe this market will continue to grow. With companies collecting data on you from different online locations, a decent impression of your tastes and interests can be made of you. So, there could be all kinds of clothing tailor-made exactly for you.

I got more information from Andrea Vahl about advertising and targeting on Facebook. If you're interested in starting your own business through Facebook, take notes!

"Anyone with a Business Page and an Ad Account (both are easily created) can advertise on Facebook," Andrea told Bored Panda. "Facebook makes it easy to 'Boost' posts on your Facebook page and that's an ok place to start, but you'll get better results using the Ads Manager," she explained. Andrea goes on to say: "When you use the Ads Manager, you can optimize around your true goal such as Lead Generation or Conversions, as well as create better target audiences."

And that's how we reached the creation of these t-shirts too.