No Advertising Here

Lately I’ve gotten a few requests from marketers to advertise on this blog.
First, I have a hard time imagining my blog has enough traffic to justify advertising. These people offered money up front for links within a story, for example. They want me to make it seem I’m the one recommending whatever is that other end of the link. One group wants me to accept or assign articles from other writers for posting here. This hardly qualifies as an e-zine. Yes, I am getting a couple hundred hits minimum most days, but the bulk of that is folks checking my computer articles. I write those HOWTOs simply because I discover something others don’t seem to have written about, and I want to help people. Very few readers come here looking for information or thoughts about stuff that really matters.
Second, the bulk of my writing is to provoke thinking and offer some information on stuff that really matters to me. It would be wonderful if I could get paid for writing, but I am completely hostile to the notion of advertising in general. If I used something, or simply knew about it and thought it would make life better for some people, I’d write about it. That’s called a review, and the idea is not about advertising to make money. I’d write such things because I believed in them for one purpose or another.
Advertisers as a whole are about as slimy and useless as any creature claiming to be human. They don’t give a damn what happens to you, and adopt only the most superficial virtues simply because they figure their target audience holds those virtues. Marketers want your money, but aren’t honest enough to simply ask for it. They would think they were in heaven if they could control your desires. Don’t think for a moment they wouldn’t manipulate you every which way they could, but most of what they would like to do is illegal. That’s the only thing stopping them, along with the possibility someone ripped off might actually hurt them. They recognize no moral limits within themselves.
Advertisers are as evil as any politician, but lacking the ambition of actual power. Instead, they prefer to sculpt human attitudes across a whole society, somehow imagining they are artists. I want you take a look at a piece of advertising on YouTube and notice two things: (1) Dove is showing you how the whole cultural image of beauty has been perverted by advertisers creating an unrealistic image standard. (2) It’s still advertising something — Dove products — which have been proved harmful to your body and the environment. There are chemicals in that stuff which should not be manufactured in the first place. They are still selling an image, and the product is simply the way to get your money.
When they rise to my moral standards, we’ll talk. Fat chance I’m going to accept advertising on this blog.
(Yes, I realize WordPress inserts ads at the bottom, but I have no control over that since I don’t pay for them hosting my blog.)