With the Holidays less than six weeks away, it's hard not to be aware of how we live in a world where there is always something for sale and sometimes it seems like everything is for sale.

Reflective mood...

As regulars to this blog might recall, I work on an "elderly" computer; vintage circa 2012 or so.

One of the ways I am constantly reminded that it is elderly is by the fact that it grinds to a complete halt because there are dozens of "live feed video" ads trying to run on a web page, all concurrently.

Yes, I'm sure there's lots of good advice about ad blockers and computer resource management, but that's not the point I am trying to make here!

The point is that sales advertisements are what's causing my computer to slow down and freeze, not the actual content of the web site!

It seems like virtually all aspects of life have become little more than a giant sales pitch.

We watch TV shows and movies, and you know damn well that it's not just random coincidence that the protagonists are drinking Coke rather then Pepsi, and using an Apple laptop, and eating Kellogg's cornflakes for breakfast.

Product placement.

Just another sales pitch. And consider this: YouTube influencers likely derive as much revenue (if not more) from having a "sponsor" and from the advertising of products for sale, as they do simply from pitching their own interesting content.

Today's episode of the Curator Cat Blog is sponsored by...

I actually became truly aware of the depth of commercialism at a time when I was researching how to make a living from your creative and artistic endeavors.

After some weeks of looking and hundreds of different examples, it became remarkably clear that most writers and artists don't actually make a living from their actual art and words, but from talking about their art and words, and selling associated products about art and words.

In fact, a substantial number of the "somewhat influential" creatives I studied seemed to make very little from their actual art and publishing and the vast majority from "peripheral efforts.

Not very encouraging for those of us who dream of living a creative life!

Of course, it will be a while before you'll find yourself here and seeing "The Curator Cat Blog, sponsored by Fancy Feast." In fact, it's something that will likely never happen, because a blog about the lives of some random cats like us does not have the same commercial value as a blog dedicated to the functional aspects of cat care.

And that's unlikely to happen here!

Thankfully, it's our blog, and so we get to do what we want with it. That's one of the beautiful things about publishing on Hive, rather than somewhere else.

Meanwhile, part of the objective of the blog is to build an HBD savings balance that might eventually help pay for a new computer, so abovementioned crashing — due to the overabundance of movie-style ads — doesn't become a really serious issue.

Till the next one... Feel free to leave a comment — this IS "social" media, after all!

=^..^=

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