Selling out

This topic comes to mind, as I've just applied to put Google AdSense advertisements on this site on the off chance that some accident of fate makes it wildly (or slightly) popular and I can buy an island and get fat.

It's not really a consistent concept. Those of us in the post-modern poseur segments of society love the term, generally as a way of indicating a beloved band or some other form of light entertainment has dumbed itself down to reach a wider audience, or signed up with an evil corporation, or otherwise fallen from a supposedly pure state.

Of course, none of them were ever really pure in the first place. Your favourite band might have been rocking the local pub for $50 each three nights a week, but they wish they had sold a million albums, and face it, would probably do backing tracks for Justin Timberlake if it meant they could avoid being on stage somewhere bottles are going to be thrown at their heads.
Starving artists have trust funds, that is the universal truth. No one gets a studio apartment in New York, insanely expensive cobalt blues and canvases, and all the cafe food they can nibble while trying to stay thin and drawn, which of course means you must be terribly creative, without some filthy lucre.

Some might argue that there are some genuinely pure things out there. John Butler Trio are still independent. Maddox doesn't run banner ads.

But guess what? Those guys are still there for the money. Maddox is selling books now. John Butler Trio make more money as independents than they ever would on a major record label, because they actually get to keep a little bit of money from the CDs they sell.

Basically, I will always hate Offspring and Metallica for their mercenary ways. But I also realise that calling people sellouts is ridiculous, and every time I come home from work without punching my boss the fuck out then setting fire to him in his office, I have also sold out.
So that's what I think. Now you must think it too.

UPDATE:
By selling out, this is not what I mean.