I felt it was high time for another "It's Half Twelve..."esque rant, but without the grouping because to tell you the truth, I'm running out of ideas :P I just thought I'd float some ideas around. It's not a personal attack on anyone in particular - if I was legitimately pissed off about something, believe me, I'd say. But there are some things that I've noticed that make me just pause and go, "O_o" and I was wondering if any of you guys had noticed the same sort of thing?

This is all rather disjointed with no real flow or continuity, so do bear with me.

Revenge of the Blogger/Bandwagons, thou must join it

Slightly misleading title there because revenge implies that you personally have been wronged in some way.
I don't know if many of my readers are interested in the mineral makeup community but there's been some problems lately with companies repackaging and potentially (and in one case actually) endangering their customers. Google Glittersniffer if you want to know more about it. You'll probably find the other companies once you dig a little deeper.

Anyway, this is obviously highly upsetting and shocking to former fans of the companies involved or those that may have used their products/given them away to friends and family. There are also some really influential bloggers in the MM community (everyone probably knows who they are) that spend lots of their own money trying out new products from indie companies and I personally enjoy reading their reflections and thoughts on the matter, articulated in a cool and reasonable way.

I do kinda feel that it's unnecessary for someone who's never ever tried the products of these companies and has no personal connection to them to be blindly ranting and raving based on a couple of skim read posts. That's just my opinion. (Please don't hesistate to disagree - as always, anon is on if you prefer that.)
Slightly off topic, but phoning and harrassing people (YouTube gurus) in real life based on percieved wrongs on the internet that have nothing to do with you is pretty horrendous too. I don't understand that at all.

Fake Giveaways.

This stuff really annoys me. It's become popular to have people jump through loads of hoops to enter/recieve more entries to a giveaway - (you have to follow me on Twitter/Tumblr/like me on Facebook/read my LUUUX post and then you have to link me and blog about it, read through x number of posts and tell me your favourite look/design etc) and while there's nothing wrong with this, in my opinion (you've paid for the goodies, you get people to do what you want and if the worst comes to the worst, they can just not enter) I find it really rude for someone to just /abandon/ their blog immediately after the giveaway date has ended and never pick a winner or to simply act like the giveaway never happened and enjoy the new followers in the GFC box. Seriously, that's so disrespectful. Fulfilling your a million and one requirements to enter used up my time, so the least I'd expect is for you to keep your side of the bargain, as well. Fair? Or no?
I've interacted with commentors on my blog who have had a blog which I have followed in turn, and entered contests (nail art or giveaways) only to find they simply drop and run and don't update after that or pretend the giveaway never happened.
I have a nasty feeling a certain giveaway that's going on right now will end like this - the prizes seem far too generous and good to be true...

The Issue of Blog Photos

I do feel like one of the things that sets blogs apart from magazines is the fact that magazines use stock photos and talk about the product whereas bloggers will show you the product, swatch it, maybe show you a couple of nail designs they've done with it as well as talking about the product. That's where the sense of "realness" comes from - the connection between reader and blogger, which magazines don't really seem to share.

If you've got a very sucessful blog, you recieve lots of things to review free but you never post your nails/eyes of the day/face of the day and you only use stock photos, I will regard your blog as more of a magazine and less of a blog, and...put less value on your opinion, if that makes sense. Does that sound harsh? I don't know. At the moment, there's not that much of a problem - both sides know where they stand.

However, when a company invites you to a launch or whatever and you're the only UK blogger covering this, but you take only one or two (blurry) pictures of the products, this becomes somewhat of a problem. If the reader can't clearly see the product or what the launch was like, they're automatically going to become less interested in what you have to say. Since I'm rubbish at French and have forgotten a lot of my Spanish, there are not many other places where I can learn about the company. So I'll just give up. I see that as a wasted opportunity on the company's part, to be honest. When it comes down to it, magazines can hire photographer to cover events, but a hybrid can't do it that effectively. Is it wrong to expect a very successful blog to have some basic skills with a camera? I'm not imploring that everyone should own a DSLR (god no, in fact - those things are expensive) but just learning how to use it makes such a difference. Anyway, my own pictures are still quite bad so I can't talk.



Sense of Entitlement?

I don't follow many people on Twitter at all, or other social networking mediums (save Google Friend Connect) but I have seen a huuuuuge amount of pressage over certain bloggers getting sent collections and others not. I find it quite pathetic, to be honest. It all sort of came to a head after this new Illamasqua launch with some people feeling that they should have recieved product/launch invites (if they were located in the UK) as well as some other bloggers. Tell me, why do you feel entitled to this? Like seriously, explain. Companies aren't charities and they're not communist states, either. Should everyone with x number of followers automatically recieve free stuff? Perhaps they looked at your blog and disliked your writing style, or the style of makeup you do doesn't fit the brand image or whatever. Perhaps you've just flown under their radar - but surely all whining about it is going to do is make you look bad? I don't know. Enlighten me, anyone?

As always, feel free to disagree with my opinion.