Buy my anticonsumerism
February 21st, 2008 | by Paul |I would like you guys to take a few seconds and look at this posting on Lifehack.org. It’s called “How to Avoid Being Enslaved by Consumerism.”
Seriously, take a look. I’ll wait here.
… hum de dum de du rai ey … (softly crooning) Oh, Eileen …
Oh! You’re back. I swear, I wasn’t picking my … never mind.
So what struck you the most about the “How to Avoid Being Enslaved by Consumerism” article? Was it the cry for “a sculpted internal world”? Was it the author’s arguments about the myth of ownership? Was it the Henry David Thoreau epigraph?
Or was it ALL THE GODDAMN ADS ON THE PAGE?
That felt good. I usually use italics for my scannable writing. This is much more satisfying.
OK, call me crazy, but maybe if you’re writing a page devoted to decrying all the wanton consumerism in the world, you might want to give sites that use Google AdSense a pass. For those who don’t know, AdSense is a service that puts random ads up on your page. If enough people click on ads from your page, Google starts to pay you per click.
I’ll look the other way for folks on Geocities, like David MacClement here, because Geocities just does puts up ads if you want to use their service. But Google AdSense is purely optional, Scott H. Young, Mr. Guy-Who-Posted-To-Lifehack. Maybe people will take you a little more seriously if you don’t post to a site covered in ads.
Anticonsumer blogger Paul Ippolito took a different tactic in writing an entry about why he had, but then got rid of AdSense:
“… I decided that it really goes against the philosophy of this blog to advertise for things I’m lambasting. Plus, nobody is going to actually click on those ads, anyway. At least, nobody who reads anticonsumerist websites.”
Interesting point. A combination of “it’s morally suspect” and “I’m not going to make any money anyway.”
I ask for very little from life. A beer with friends. A hot cup of coffee and a newspaper. Anne Hathaway.
But mostly, I ask not to be made to look like a jackass by association. I’ve already got those Adbusters nitwits to deal with (”Hey, let’s fight advertisements that create an artificial demand for a certain brand of shoe by using advertisements to create an artificial demand for our brand of shoe!”) Don’t give my issue more idiocy.
Now, because my grade goes up when I use images in my blog postings, here’s a public-domain line illustration of a boy using an apple to train a pig to jump over a rope. It’s from the 1915 children’s book, “Squinty The Comical Pig.”
(Source: public-domain.zorger.com)