I’ve been contacted a couple of times now with offers of “sponsorship deals”.

The creepy thing is, in both cases, they basically wanted me to write an ad and pretend it wasn’t an ad, like I was just randomly touting their service as something great I came across/use. They showed me examples. They were gross.

I’m not a huge fan of the old-style ads and commercials, but they make sense to me as a model — there’s a lot of friction to having readers/watchers pay with money, so ads allow them to make a “micro-payment” using their attention. But what these “sponsors” seem to want is for me to present a positive statement for them without mentioning they paid me to do it.

I’m very in favor of the idea of me getting paid for the writing I do here—financially it makes more sense for me to be spending my time bagging groceries than writing here. But I would rather not write at all than be paid to write with no integrity.

Anyways, the existence of these sorts of deals is maybe something to keep in mind when you see an author mention a product or service.

(I promise I am not secretly sponsored by Grillo’s Pickles, I just love them)