Your blog does not belong to you.

Did you know that your blog does not belong to you? You have no say in what kind of content you place in it or what information you share with your readership. You are forbidden from speaking your own mind and from making posts about anything that you feel is worth being talked about. You can not discuss anything without disclosing exactly WHY you have discussed it and making it clear rather or not you were asked or paid to discuss it. Anyone breaking this rule shall have their blogs exorcised from the hallowed halls of the elite blogosphere and be shamed for having a mind of their own and not being part of the collective consciousness that is ruled by the hallowed "A-listers".

When you speak your mind, or worse, allow someone to pay you for what you have planned to say anyway, you have entered into a realm of free thinking and free choice that is a threat to the A-listers and makes it difficult for them to maintain the control they want to impose upon the world of blogging.

It is the same in any area where there is a level of control imposed by a few that have created an aura of presumed power around themselves. There are those who use this aura to hold others at heel and prevent them from presuming that it is permissible to think for themselves and decide for themselves what is allowable.

In education it is the public school system that claims the power, insisting that a person can not succeed in life without a public education that includes things that may or may not be of any value. It is unthinkable that someone might educate their children, or (even worse to those in the perceived power) that the children might be capable of controlling their education for themselves.

The same has flowed over into the blogosphere, with many a-line bloggers declaring those who might not adhere to their "rules" being beneath the level of so-called reputable bloggers.

But what makes a reputable blogger? Is it more reputable for a blogger to cow-tow to the social norm and let those in the perceived sphere of power dictate what they can and can not do with their blogs? Or is a reputable blogger someone that refuses to be told what they do on their own blog and does what they feel is best for their readership? Maybe that does not agree with the A-listers, maybe it threatens their little enclave of perceived power, maybe it even rattles the boundaries of the blogosphere. But who ever said that a person had to conform in order to be allowed to write a blog?

I would trust a blogger that is open and upfront and says "Hell yeah I have ads, they're everywhere, but you have enough sense to see what you want to look at and know how to ignore what you don't want to see." I don't want a blogger saying to me "I'm a rules follower so you should believe what I tell you" I want one that will stand up, shake their fist and say "Damn-it, I may not write a lot that interests you, but, I refuse to cow tow to the social norm just because it's the 'in' thing to do."

I guess I'm a rebel in the blogosphere. Maybe we need a banner or something, some kind of icon for the rebel bloggers that refuse to allow the content of their blog to be dictated by others. A-listers claim people like me pollute the blogosphere by accepting payment for some of the things we talk about, but they conveniently gloss over the fact that they are decrying the revoking of our freedom to post about what we want to. They say we should be forced to post that we were paid to post something, and ignore the fact many of them are paid as well. I don't hide that I've made money from my blog, I see no reason to. I'm honest in what I have to say and selective in what I present to my reader in the things I am paid to post.

What the A-listers are doing is blacking people that are paid and those with the blog marketing companies into a corner. They are screaming foul so loudly and waving their banners so hard that they are overlooking the simple fact that they themselves have set into motion the events that have made it impossible for the blog marketing companies to demand bloggers post payment disclosure notices. The moment that is done the A-Listers will all scream a undeserved victory and latch onto some other right to strip away from the lowly blogging community that they desire to dictate over.

Had they left things be, allowed the natural course to take effect and the blog marketing websites to advance into more than a beta testing level then they would have never had the mess they have now created because the bloggers themselves where already doing the disclosing on their own blogs, were steering the marketing toward disclosed ads. Now... it's too late. The A-listers have opened it into the realm of a blogosphere rebellion in which the bloggers that know their readers have IQs higher than an A-list blogger have no choice but to stand their ground and refuse to let their blogs be run by others.

I know a few bloggers that post paid information on their blogs, it does not lessen the content or usefulness of their blogs in the least. I think bloggers and readers are very intelligent, too intelligent to fall victim to the cries of witch hunters seeking to cast out the rebel bloggers for having the free will to post what they desire.

I know that when I write about something, I don't write with a riveting flourish of words. I don't catch the reader with information on the latest hardware out in the computer world or my views on politics. To be quiet honest I don't care about either of those things. I do care about Open Source software, and might start a blog on that, but I'm really not that interested in the latest Hollywood gossip. I'm just a simple person that likes to write and uses my blog as an outlet to the world. It's not fancy, Lord knows it's not an A-List blog. But it's mine. It's comfortable to me and when I come here and want to grouse about my life or chatter excitedly about a new program for writers I've found I feel comfortable and at ease. I feel like I can talk and not feel uneasy because my writing has not been read and reread three times and edited. I'm a writer, I don't want to edit my journal for punctuation and grammar and content. I want to find something that tickles my fancy and post it for me to remember and others to consider.

Do the subjects of my posts sometimes originate from a paid source? Yes. Am I paid for some of what I write? Yes. Am I hurting anyone by these so-called heinous acts of pollution on a blog? You tell me.

For now I shall just say that I am not about to give up my blog to those who claim to know what is best for my readers. My readers know what is best for them and if they don't like how I do things then *THEY* can tell me. I'm a rebel, who has roots back to the very dawn of the internet, and I refuse to cow tow to anyone.

:::Proudly plants my rebel flag on my blog, tilts my chin in defiance, and defies any A-lister out there to tell me I'm not blogging right.:::