The "It's half twelve and I'm procrastinating" rant. Things that piss you off about the blogging world? Part II. With Reader Comments!

Posted by on Friday, January 28, 2011

Le continuation. Yes, you can tell I'm failing my French GCSE :P

I had quite a few lovely comments on the last post, which were incredibly informative and expressed what I was trying to express, but far more coherently. Henceforth, I thought I'd add a couple here and use them to expand my points. If you'd rather I didn't, please just comment/email me and I'll remove it!

From Jaljen:
"Love me, love me now blogs? Nah. There's one high-profile one (whom I shall not name) who has excellent nail swatches (Eastern European may narrow it down a bit) but does rather use her blog as a way of eliciting sympathy/outpourings of "Ah, you poor diddums....". I got sucked in until it got old."

Which provides a nice lead to discuss...

The "Sympathy pl0x" blogger

The type that's complaining about her personal life in every other post. I don't mean like a one off, or even once a week. Most people think nothing of feeling sympathetic towards someone who's going through a rough patch. But there's a difference between doing that, and attention whoring. You know who you are -.-

The "Forever left out" blogger.

The type that always complains on Twitter/Facebook about everyone having been sent a new product to try but herself, or everyone recieving an invite to an event but herself. That sort of thing. I'm sitting here thinking that if PR companies are planning to go down that route, surely they'd have to invite everyone?
Perhaps you don't have as many followers as the other people that have been invited. Maybe your blog doesn't appeal to the PR company. Ultimately, there's no obligation for them to invite you to anything. Focus on improving your blog so that they will, if you're that bothered about it.

Ulmiel also mentioned about people following just for giveaways, which I'll expand to discuss:

The "Ten updates a day, and nine are giveaway notifications" blogger.

I'm going to admit, I was guilty of this back in the day before I realised one could have more than one link in a post and it was fairly easy to group giveaways into one monthly post. But it just gets annoying when you check your dashboards and find all these giveaway notifications from the same blogger. There's nothing wrong with entering multiple giveaways, but just have them all in one post!

Ditto on sidebars, they don't annoy me at all.

The "I'm an insider, and that makes me better than you" blogger.

There are a couple lurking around the UK blogging scene in particular - crossovers from working in fashion or magazines (that's all we know. We're not told that much more) who suspiciously fail at using cameras or describing colours in much depth but often do posts on how PRs feel about bloggers and the inside workings of the industry. I don't know what's true and what is exaggerated, but I just find certain bloggers referring to the rest of the blogging world as if they don't belong to it quite amusing.

Thanks so much for the discussion on the last post, guys. It was so interesting to read!

9 Comments

  1. I just went back and read your first post and then I read this one and I agree with you. I absolutely can't stand seeing other bloggers beg for free stuff on company fan pages. I don't have the guts to ask for free stuff from a company and to be honest I'm not that interested in receiving free things either.

    I don't mind when bloggers get free things...its obvious to me whether or not I can trust their opinion. The thing that bugs me are the ones that get everything they use/review for free and the ones that sugarcoat every review just because they didn't pay for the products. I've seen some bloggers (and people on youtube) who give glowing reviews of everything and sure enough the FTC disclaimer says they received the product for free.

    I don't see the point in using PR product photos for reviews and thing either...if you are reviewing the product you (hopefully) own the product and should be capable of taking a picture of it for your own blog. If I decide to do a top coat review I take a picture of my own bottle, I don't go online and find a stock image of it. What's the point of that?

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  2. The "Ten updates a day, and nine are giveaway notifications" blogger.

    about that- you can also use the individual pages (it's on the posting tab- right next to the new post and edit post feature). I like to post about the giveaways there, it's the same like the sidebar but not that obvious shouting-"you should enter THAT giveaway NOW"

    I can understand that doing an individual post about it is easier and less editing/maintenance but I guess I hate seing 23492304923 blogposts on my dasboard about one popular blogger's giveaway

    Oh and the same PR-Email contents over and over again on the bloggers who get them (tough they are spreading the news, I'm not that fond if I see the same PR content over and over again by multiple bloggers)

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  3. you're so right. I can really see those types too. I guess I know who you're talking about by that certain person haha
    xx

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  4. It's the Previews that p!ss me off the most. Misa Wishes is all over the blogosphere at the moment. Show me swatches or shut up!

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  5. @jaljen
    I agree, I hate preview posts, I think they're redundant.
    I am really happy when I find new posts on my blogroll, but when I see that 10 blogs have the same title (OMG, the new XY collection preview)I'm 5 seconds away from hitting the unfollow button :facepalm:
    I know it maybe isn't fair, but I can't help myself :D

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  6. These posts are awesome! And so on point! Like Jaljen, I hate the previews too - unless accompanied by swatches. There are other things that bug me, some of which you mentioned, but I won't waste time on that as I have more blog reading to catch up on!

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  7. If you don't like what they post why do you continue to read it!? A blog is someones personal way of expressing themselves-- my personal opinion is if you don't like what I post-- Don't read it. No sweat off my back.

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  8. I hate the previews too, when they're everywhere. So annoying :P

    @Antoszewskia: Not going to lie, I usually do unfollow a blogger whose posts I don't like reading :P I find I can't win, then, because said bloggers then take to Twitter to whine about how they've lost followers...

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  9. But your personal opinion is very welcome here :P Forgot to add that in before I clicked "Post Comment". :P

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