Assembling Lifestyles

Playfully acknowledging the contentiousness of blog advertising, an early banner advertisement for BlogAdNet said: ‘Okay okay I confess! I am a Blog Ad. Please don’t call the cops!!!’ With the additional subheading ‘Asia’s First Blog Advertisement Community’,¹ it simultaneously frames advertisements as a (sub) cultural transgression and as a generative opportunity for the ‘Blog Advertising Community’. The potential monetary rewards are made clear, but the tagline reference to the ‘community’ takes us beyond paid promotional activity motivated by cold cash, to the informal comfort, support and security that ‘community’ usually represents, recalling arguments regarding the discursive role of community in