I notice that there is a new tab in my blog dashboard: "Monetize". Apparently I can now make money simply by having ads appear in my side thingy. It's nice that they ask, anyhow, because I assume at some point they are going to stop asking and just put the ads there whether I want them there or not. I know this might seem overly cynical of me, but there are a few things that have led me to be such a cynic and I will share them with you now:
Do you remember (if you are male, I don't know how it goes for women…even though, according to the gender analyzer, the likelihood that a woman writes this blog is 63%) back when ads first used to appear above the urinals in men's bathrooms? At the time a lot of people got annoyed by it because they felt like one more space that ought to offer a little time for quiet contemplation of whatever we liked was being appropriated by a corporate interest. Can't a fella even have a quick slash without someone trying to pedal him a new kind of aftershave or a beer he isn't likely to switch to?
So, at the time, lost of people, went into the toilets with pen knives or black markers and they fucked up these urinal ads in any way they possibly could. The next day, whatever person was responsible for the ads in the urinals would come back and fix up the ad and there it would be again. The people slashed them and the corps put them back. The problem is that the corps have limitless spending power and limitless patience and they can just keep replacing the ads forever and, conversely, the people who are fucking up the ads only have so much energy and are only in any given bathroom now and then and after a while people got used to the ads anyhow and also there are too many people who are scared of vandalism even if it's something they don't totally agree with…and so anyhow the end of the story is that the ads stayed and now almost never do I see one vandalized.
Actually, now that I think of it, that's not a very serviceable example of what I was trying to talk about…but it is a good example of the power of an economy of scale in action.
A big corporation, because it has so many different subsidiary businesses making money all over the place in all kinds of different markets and all kinds of different sectors of each market, can afford to run one aspect of its business at a loss for whatever reason as long as all the other parts are making money. So just in the same way that a place like Starbucks can afford to open a coffeeshop right next door to a well established local business and run at a loss against the local business is because Starbucks is making profit in so many other cities and countries already. They can undercut the competition for a year, two years, five years, whatever, and they never need worry because they know the competition has no other source of income. Eventually Starbucks will choke them out.
In the same way, the people who run ads in toilets know that eventual the resolve of the vandals will run out if the same ad just goes up again the next day and the day after that and the day after that. Eventually people will just get used to the fact that it's normal to sell advertising space on their own foreheads and no one will complain. Eventually there will be a big Pepsi symbol projected onto the moon and no one will think a thing about it. Sure, people will blow up the Pepsi projector a few times, and they will be arrested, and more people will blow up the projector, but in the end Pepsi will prevail because Pepsi has the billions and they can afford to put the projector up again and again and every time a pair of lovers looks up through an open window, their lithe bodies still drenched in post coital sweat, drying in the gentle breeze that wafts in past the softly waving curtains, every time those lovers look up, basking unclothed in the blue white and red glow of the moon they will say to each other: darling, that was amazing. Let's have a Pepsi to celebrate.
The more that blog writers "monetize" the more that the monetization will seem normal. Soon it will be a regular feature from which one can not opt out. When this happens, then an aspect of the terms of service will be that one can only write one's blog as long as one does not say disparaging things about the corporation sponsoring the blog; as long as one does not say anything about any aspect of the conglomerate of which the media corp. who hosts the blog is but one part. Perhaps my blog is hosted by Google (it is) but, some time down the road, Google is now a division of SONY or SONY is a division of Google. If I say something about a cup of Danone Yogurt that I found tasted especially shitty then I will suddenly have my blog shut down because SONY owns Danone and Google owns SONY. Word got back to the head of the Division of Truth in Omaha Nebraska that I used "Danone" and "shitty" in the same sentence. There are black helicopters hovering outside my apartment window.
You laugh, but think for a moment about the fact that NBC (the national broadcasting corporation in the USA) is owned by General Electric. General Electric, besides making light bulbs and fridges, also is in with the US military for billions of dollars in defence contracts. How likely is it, then, that NBC is going to be able to offer fair and unbiased reports on either US military activities (carried out with GE products) or on fair bidding practices or on GE's atrocious environmental record. Well, you reply, GE is regularly satirized on different NBC shows. This is true, but the satire is a kind of smoke screen. It never assumes a serious watchdog role as to the corporate or environmental practices of GE, but it satirizes just enough to make it seem like there is a degree of distance between the network and its owner. You will note that the comments on GE are limited to light comedy shows and almost never appear as aspects of the so-called serious news reportage.
The flipside, of course, is that I could really use the money because I'm almost broke and the experience of being in graduate school hasn't exactly done wonders for my financial situation. I'm going to move into a slightly cheaper apartment, though, and I'm also going to try and get rid of everything I own so that I can (as I have been considering more and more lately) just pack up most of what I actually care about in one backpack and vanish into the obscurity for a decade or two. But you know, even if I do decide to stick it out, I don't think I can bring myself to have advertising on my blog because the whole project seems so sketchy.
Consider how the financial rewards are framed:
Under a section entitled "how much will I earn", Google informs its users that they will earn by having people click on the ads from their site. The more people who click the more money that will be earned. But then the next paragraph reads like this:
"The best way to find out how much you'll earn is to sign up and start showing
ads on your webpages. There's no cost, no obligation, and getting started is
quick and easy. You can sign up now from the AdSense home page at
https://www.google.com/adsense ."
So, they don't actually ever say anywhere how much money I can make. This is annoying and suspicious. I wouldn't show up for work at a job and work a whole two weeks for my first paycheque without having some idea in advance of how much I stood to earn from my work so why should I sign up for the goddamn monetize program if I don't know how much I can earn? If it were actually worth it to do it then I assume they would tell people it was worth it. If it's not worth it then I think deception is the best way to go. This is all very circular, though, since I'm just debating myself. I believe I will write to these people and ask them for clarification. If I get any then there will be a part two to this.
