:: Love/hate relationship? ::

What do Guiness, Apple, the Metropolitan London Police and Star Wars all have in common? Their advertising has either been critiqued in blogs or had links to their spoof ads from Mad Magazine or "Dave from Canada" showcased in blogs during the last month.

I wonder why it is that so many bloggers seem to have a love/hate relationship with advertising? It seems curious, given that a big part of the appeal of reading blogs is the ad-free nature of the vast majority of them.

What's the connection? Where's the intersection? Is it because of the ad-heavy nature of the commercial Internet? Is it because so many of the people who create the ads are, as a consequence, online? Is it because advertising has become so important to our 21st century culture that it has become popular culture in its own right?

Questions abound, as do possible assumptions, but no concrete answers are to be found to date.

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