I’ve been tooling around and thinking today while I work, and random snippets of the web that I’ve encountered over the last few years have moved themselves in a slide show behind my eyes and I’ve come to a weird conclusion. I don’t like free blogs. Free from advertising, I mean. I just don’t like them.

I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but I’ve never been fond of blogs where the webmaster will dictate to the readers what they should think and how they should live their lives. I’m all for differing opinions, and your blog is yours — don’t ever let anyone tell you any different. I just don’t have to go to your blog.

So if your blog tends to be the head up the ass type I’m referring to, then that’s your business. But your business, especially the last few years, seems to be to tell other bloggers and even your readers what to do, and let’s be honest, all that does is form a line behind you of people who agree with you so that you won’t target them, and a line in the sand in front of you for everyone who doesn’t agree with you to stand behind so that you can exclude them from your world. Much as that sounds like an episode of a bad teen soap opera, it also doesn’t sound like good eats.

When I go to blogs I go to hear their opinions on religion, politics, art, etc. - things that matter. Personal stories rarely interest me, but that’s not to say they don’t fall into the ‘things that matter’ category. I’m also quite fond of book and film reviews, recipes ( love recipes! ), anything bento - you know, happy fun making stuff. I find, though, that I find most of this happy fun making stuff on blogs that post paid ‘ads’, and I find the shit stuff (this is how you should blog, blah blah blah) on blogs that are vocally opposed to paid ads.

In fact, most of the best, most interesting and fun people I’ve met online in recent years post paid ads. I enjoy their blogs, I find them to be very honest, very hard working and very entertaining and I wouldn’t change them at all. But I also find that if I go to a blog these days that is *not* sporting ads for SocialSpark, PayPerPost, etc. I leave - almost immediately.

And it’s something I don’t do consciously, in fact I only recently noticed that I’ve been X-ing out every non sponsored blog that I got to and I have no idea when it started. I’m guilty of something I hate, and that’s not even giving the blog a chance because I’m afraid that it *might* be one of those blogs that I can’t stand, and I may get halfway through the first post on the page and realize the person is a huge internet bigot with a stick up their ass, and if I read on it’ll only make me mad and I’ll end up blacklisting the site in my mind and there’ll be a fiasco, lol.

I don’t see this changing anytime soon. I like going to fun blogs, I like reading about fun people, I like the carefree and laid back, intelligent and ethical people I’ve met as a result of sticking with paid blogs. I also like the ads, I’ve found out about a lot of things from those ads, including freebies and film reviews, some great products ( seriously, dudes, try FreezeIt, lol ).

There’s no point in the bigotry, and I don’t care to be part of that world, but I can’t help feeling a twinge of guilt because I’ve shut out people I used to like and closed myself off to new people just because they’re doing something I don’t like - and that’s exactly what they did that turned me off to them in the first place. I suppose I’m only human, so let’s call this a happy mistake.

Filed under: Money, Ads, Blogging, Ethics