Kubrenetes was the point I knew they were for sure sniping keywords from convos (or de-anonymizing me/my friends through proximity).

One of the guys I've worked with for years had been researching some container management stuff and found this... Company? Software? Method? And we talked about it briefly at lunch. I never searched it or anything related to it, not on my work PC nor any of my devices but sure enough not one week later wouldn't ya know it? Ads for kubrenetes courses and software started popping up for the next two months solid.

I watched a chick on YouTube explain the drama around some absolutely bonkers writers that make wolf erotica (it was a really good rant about people being insane) and even without either of us talking about it, because it was ON near my wifes phone she ended up getting months and months of "spicy wolf erotica" ads.

I guess there could be some weird extremely coincidence-riddled explanation besides mic use but, the simplest explanation usually is correct.