Over the past few days, there’s been an increasing amount of articles, social media posts and comments about bloggers and the blogger industry. A girl emailed a hotel asking for a discount or free stay in return for publicity of that business and well, this has lead to realms of rants, negative comments and what some would deem cyber-bullying. The way I see it is a self-made business woman (a blogger) at the age of 22 has built a following online, makes money from it that she can fully depend on and while there seems to be little attention given to this, instead the whole industry is being deemed as a load of freeloaders.
Back in 2015, I started blogging. I wanted an outlet where I could air my thoughts and hopefully, inspire people. Since then, I’ve had the liberty of meeting 100’s of amazing people who are in similar boats (some making a full-time living from blogging) and the majority of whom, I find to be genuine and kind people. Sure, they enjoy the perks of going to events, trying products out and the mingling. Like any job, they work hard and offer a service in the form of their writing and posts.
It’s not my job to sit here defending 100’s of bloggers and I won’t be spending my time on that. If you like someone’s content, follow them. If you don’t then well, don’t follow. It’s really that simple. Just do me a favour and acknowledge the fact that it’s taken work and effort.
The point of this post is to share a beautiful story that I’ve taken my time before sharing for no other reason than sheer procrastination.
I attended an event with O’Briens and Bord Bia last September. A Morning with Rachel Allen was a morning with lots of other bloggers. I met people I knew from before and others whom I’ve since become huge fans of. One of those ladies who I ended up meeting in cyberspace after the event was Katia. Katia has a food blog called Proper Food full of tips and tricks from the world of cuisine in Ireland and around the world.
A couple days of days later, Katia posted on the Irish Bloggers Facebook group that she had been gifted a camera. This had lifted her so much that she had decided to give away her old camera for free in the group! Not having a camera myself and really wanting one for my blog, I messaged Katia to ask if I could have it. She then messaged saying I could but only on one condition – that I paid it forward too. I then went back to the thread and pinpointed a lady I could offer a kindness to. I paid it forward to her with the same message – let’s keep it going. Thankfully, when I looked back on the thread in the following days, there had been several other acts of kindness.
Comments of positivity flooded the group as we all exclaimed how pleased we were about the kindness and support being shown.
There’s a whole community that’s been built on support, kindness and good deeds. We pay it forward, offer technical support and meet outside of our general circles so that we can enjoy each other’s company. Sometimes, we don’t even share it on Instagram.