Capitalism continues to amaze me. When I started blogging, I wrote an idealistic piece in praise of blogging and how it lets you be, to write what and how you want, and to hell with the rest. But the more I see of it nowadays, the more I know I was wrong. First of all there is google ad-sense, for you to make money even if all the moron reading your blog does is click on some stupid promotion lines plastered in the most ugly fashion over the page. Or right on top so that it’s the first thing you see.

Then there is the whole plethora of awards and ranking, with the blogroll no longer a means of sharing something nice but a you-scratch-my-back-and-both-of-us-get-more-clicks. Technorati ratings. Blogs on how to get your blog noticed. Tips on how to write a good post.

And then the bloggers themselves. Tags which are half-mile long, titles which are a collection of key-words, profiles which are testimonials by a million people. Posts tailored for you to get your five minute fix and keep coming back for laughs.

And I’m sure I don’t know even know the half of it. Yes, maybe I suffer from Sour Grapes Syndrome. And it is true that none of this is pushed down anyone’s throats. You can well maintain a completely private journal online which no-one has access to, for free.

And it is still true that no other medium has done more for free-speech.

But all’s not right in the blogsphere. I am sure that is how it was meant to be all along, of course. The funny thing is, without capitalism, where would we be. Blogging would hardly exist. Why would anyone maintain terabytes of server space just so you could pour your heart out for free. So something so beautiful quickly became an industry of note. Where the machine feeds on you so much that after a point, you need it for life support.

It amazes me How WordPress and Automattic work. No ads, no widgets, every feature free and more added every week. They know something I don’t and as long they are around, so is my blog.

So here is wishing luck to all the bloggers who just go out there because they want to write. Down with the mother-fucking crawlers. Up with the long posts, the ramblings, the posts about nothing at all, the rants, the contextual, the difficult, the arcane, the layered and the inconsequential.

So, Goudy Old Type is my current favourite typeface. My absolute favourite. (This childish line is how I really wanted to start my post before i got distracted).

And ‘On Being Tamiz and A Penn‘ is my favourite blog (This is the point at which I got distracted). Though most of her readers don’t really get her. At least, its safe to say that most of the ones who comment don’t.

Update: Apparently WP does have ads. Though Matt says they are extremely unobstrusive and don’t appear for regular viewers. But still, that was quite a shocker. Even so, I can understand why they need it. Now Matt’s brought in a lovely upgrade which allows us WP users to not have ads at all, EVER. Thats really cool…though I hope it doesn’t burn the wallet.