One day I'm going to be a famous writer/director and I'm going to produce a movie that is the story of my life.
Now, I drink a lot of coke, I eat a lot of Pringles. I love red bull and Fanta. I shop at K-Mart and I own an iPod. If I wanted to produce the story of my life as well and as accurately as I could it would inevitably include various allusions to big corporations. Some of my best conversations have been about how I love the sweet, sweet taste of Fanta.
However, my life story is one of being a tortured, misunderstood artist. A geek bullied in school, a long haired hippy who smokes pot and learns guitar. It is my belief that such a story would only appeal to iconoclasts, hipsters and bohemians. IE, people who hate seeing what they perceive as placement advertising in movies.
Thus, the plot of my movie would alienate the mainstream and the perceived placement advertising would alienate people who would have otherwise enjoyed the plot. If I'm going to be famous I'm not going to get there by appealing to vague, meaningless notions of 'selling-out'. I'm going to get there by sacrificing my art in order to appeal to a bigger audience. As such, I would remove from the script of the story of my life any allusion to any corporation even though they were only there for the sake of accuracy. Essentially, I would sell out in order to make it look like I'm not selling out.
This, ladies and gentleman, is why some people SHOULD get over the self-absorbed 'I'll never sell out' rhetoric. Whether you're a socialist, objectivist, egalitarian, free-market centrist or communist the fact is a lot of art exists in capitalist environments. In such an environment things like placement advertising only serve to make art more prolific. Art that is good, is good. Art that is bad, is bad. Art that makes money is art that makes money.
Note: I'm never going to be famous, but this writeup wouldn't work without the conceitedness.
Also: I'm not trying to say selling out CAN'T ruin art, but if you're going to point out 'placement advertising' in films you better be able to say what detrimental effect it has on the movie besides simply being 'placement advertising'.