Billmon, a blogger I really like, who i put in the blogroll a day or two before he entirely stopped posting, has written an article for the LA Times called Blogging Sells, and Sells Out

Here's a good snip:
"At the time, the idea of buying a blog struck me as funny, like trying to buy a conversation. Now, having seen blogs I admired mutate into glorified billboards, and having witnessed the emergence of the 'sponsored' blog (in which the blogger is literally an employee of, or contractor to, a corporate owner), I can see who's likely to have the last laugh"

I post this not to revel in my own blogiosity, which would be a fool's gambit, all things considered, but rather to bring up the latest in a long line of bought and paid for counter-culture experiements. Billmon mentions rock and roll and rap, previously subculture now feeding the media machine. Punk has, to me, always be the best example of the phenomenon. A movement based entirely on being angry at authority which, in under two decades, became as commercialized and socially neutered as Britney Spears. In a pretty good book called "Angry Young Spaceman" this trend has gone so far that companies invent and seed counter-culture movements so that they can sell the associated products. And who knows, maybe the spray paint intdustry secretly popularized graffiti.

I doubt there's anything to be done about this. Revolutionaries, when successful, always become the mainstream. But the process of assimilation seems to be speeding up, which doesn't bode well for cultural revolution in the future.