We Didn't Ask for This

I look around the office and find that I am surrounded by people just like me. This isn't what we wanted. We never even dreamed of this life. We wanted to be painters and scultpors and writers and film makers and dancers and actors and musicians and comedians and djs and all of that. We wanted to create works of art for the world to enjoy and maybe find meaningful. We couldn't afford ad agencies and public relations experts or even an advertisement in the City Paper—but there was the Web. The Web was dirt cheap and reached audiences around the globe. So we learned to use the Web as a tool to find and engage like minded people all over the planet. Then the Web grew crowded. It sold out and went corporate. Meanwhile, nobody cared about our paintings or dances or poems or the songs that we sang. The Man, evil as he may well be, saw much money to be made in the Web, and so also saw the value in this knowledge we had gained in working with it to promote our own artworks. The Man brought us in from the cold and our parents' basements, treated us well, and paid us in sacks full of money. We didn't ask for this. All we wanted was to be artists and put a roof over our heads. We didn't want to be rich. We didn't want to work for The Man. But you didn't care about our art. Maybe it wasn't good enough. Who knows? It doesn't matter, because now we work for The Man, and we're rich. We didn't want to be rich. We just wanted to make art.

Bad Company - Planet Dust