I’m going to spill some beans – which is probably going to get me in trouble.

Ok, here it is:

Many of the articles you’re reading online are actually ads.

It is oilier than Bill Clinton soaked down in WD-40 parsing what “is” is.

These ads-in-disguise are pitched to the owner/editor of a web site as a “guest post” (never say “ad”). They come with a byline and everything. There is no overt sales pitch. The “guest post” reads like a blandly written piece of what we in the print news business used to call boilerplate. Basically, this was a piece of no great importance or timeliness but perhaps mildly interesting that was accepted for publication whenever a slot on one of the back pages opened up. It wasn’t Pulitzer Prize stuff, but it wasn’t an ad.

These “guest posts” are.

A dead giveaway is that the byline above the “guest post” is that of some random person whose name you don’t recognize who has no obvious business writing about the subject. The hack is paid coolie wages to confect a shoddy 500 word sales pitch, subtly salted with “SEO friendly” keywords and links that take you – you guessed it – to the manufacturer of whatever the product is that’s being hawked.

For instance, this:

Manufacture of stairlifts on the rise as boomers age

It is supposed to fool you – and profit me (Calvin offered me $50 for each “guest post” I publish; he wants me to publish four such per month. That would be $200 in my pocket.)

But it is ruining everything.

First, it is ruining journalism.

There was, once upon a time, a definite line in the sand between editorial and advertising. You did not mix the two. Ever. Ads were clearly ads. They were boxed off, separate.

Honest.

There is nothing wrong with ads when presented that way.

But when you masquerade an ad, it is very wrong indeed. Because you’ve just delegitimized the entire editorial side of the publication. How do you, the reader, tell the difference between a “guest post” (ad) and a (supposedly) honest article?

You don’t – or aren’t supposed to be able to.

Which is of course exactly what they – the purveyors of the “guest posts” – want.

But, having spread your legs this way, you have let it be known (even if it’s not) that you are for hire. That nothing you say or write can ever trusted or taken at face value. You’ve sold out.

You’re a whore.

As the brilliant comic Bill Hicks put it, you are just another “corporate fucking shill in the capitalist gang bang.”

Having allowed yourself to be used in this way, you’ve become useless as a journalist. Turn in your card.

Shame.

You have betrayed yourself by betraying your readers. They cannot trust you any longer. Whatever you write, it’s as suspect now as the “guest posts” you got paid to publish.

Was that $50 you got worth it?

But the pressure to whore out is very real – and while I condemn it, I do understand it.

One, the actual ads – clearly marked – don’t pay. If they are Google ads, they only pay if someone “clicks” on them – and then not very much. Unless your site has millions of readers, the pennies, nickels and (occasionally) dimes per click you get will not add up to much. Plus, Google will not even give you the pennies and nickels (much less the dimes)  if your site offends Google’s opaque editorial policies – that is, its internal roster of political no-no’s. Which includes writing honestly about any topic having to do with the actions of the government, perforation of politically correct nostrums about certain topics that must never be mentioned in a critical manner (questions about the weird free-fall of WT7, Israel’s overweening influence on American foreign policy…. oops!) and so on.    

But the omnipresence of Google ads has put pressure on advertisers to not buy ad space directly – from the publisher of a web site, without the Google middle man. Why should they, when Google can get them the space for freeeeeeeeeeeeeee!! (or the next closest thing)?

But free has its costs.

One of them being the obnoxious ubiquity of ads. Ads everywhere, including in your face. “Popping up,” assaulting you with a metrosexual sales pitch or some chirpy bimbo urging you to “learn more” (hey, its not a sales pitch, it’s educational!)

Enter Ad Blocker software.

Enter “guest posts” – which are the advertisers’ clever attempt to end-run the Ad Blocker software by turning everything online into a got-damned sales pitch. 

Brawndo – the thirst mutilator. It’s what plants crave.

That was taken from the prescient film, Idiocracy – which presented a fictional world of the future in which everything had been enstupified and commercialized, branded and sold. It was, of course, only a movie.

The stuff I’ve been telling you about is, unfortunately, entirely real.

Others may spread their legs. I won’t. It’s not that I’m necessarily an upstanding guy. But I respect words – and despise those who abuse them. Like Khan in Star Trek II, I spit Shakepeare in their direction, for hate’s sake. For what they are doing to what was, if not necessarily an honorable line of work, at least an honest one … once upon a time.

God damn them all.

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