A Modern Faust.

I just read about a young Scottish man called Cashmore whose personal fortune now stands at £60m. He started writing a blog about technology and social networking sites. The site became popular, the advertisers moved in, and now the blog itself is valued at £200m. CNN wants to buy it, apparently. It’s been described as a ‘must read’ blog. Not to me it isn’t, not if it carries adverts. To somebody like me, putting adverts on a blog is akin to selling your soul to the Devil.

It seems to me that there are those who go through life trying to decide what’s right and then doing it, and there are those who go through life trying to ‘get on’ – which, roughly translated, means becoming rich, famous or powerful. Since I believe that life is but a game, I have no objection to the latter – except when it involves adversely affecting others by subjecting them to things like crass advertising which drives them up the bloody wall. It’s another example – if such were needed – that ‘getting on’ in life doesn’t come about as a result of doing something worthwhile, but about creating something which becomes popular, however worthless it is in other senses. More fool the human race, I say.

But then, people like me don’t have to read Mr Cashmore’s blog, do we? We get driven up the wall by crass advertising quite enough as it is.