I thought high school was over: "Hot Shot" bloggers

WARNING: This isn't a positive post. This is a lot of complaining, ranting, and personal opinions about hot shot bloggers. Feel free to skip it, especially if you're just going to leave hateful and rude comments. Cuz that's not very nice.

No matter how long ago high school was for you, I'm sure you can remember it pretty well. Your experience may not have been like mine, but I remember lots of cliques. Popular people, "losers," band geeks, drama nerds, super athletic, bookworms, punks, preps, skaters, and even racial groups. I don't know where I fell, I had friends all over the spectrum. I guess I was a floater.

The BFF and I at graduation. We hardly look any different....

And I don't know about you, but I sang hallelujah the moment I walked out of graduation. I knew the people I cared about I would see again (plus facebook was JUST coming out and that was all super exciting), and the others hardly crossed my mind. Especially all those hot shots. You know the type, the ones that are always tooting their own horn, stomping on people they think they are better than, pushing themselves up in any way they can, and honestly, just being plain rude. I hoped that by "growing up" a little bit people would realize that that is childish.

Boy was I wrong.

This isn't the first time I've dealt with hot shots, and of course it won't be the last. My naive 18 year old self was, well, naive. Maybe I am still naive, because I expected better from most bloggers. I mean come on, you can totally censor what you're going to say! You can delete and rethink a million times before anyone knows. I know, it's stupid, everyone will always deal with difficult people for the rest of their lives. But for some reason, hot shot, stuck up bloggers weren't something I ever worried about when I entered the blogging world.

There are a lot of craft bloggers out there that I would label a "hot shot." I won't name any, but I'm sure you can name a few of your own. There are a few things that bloggers do that lump them into my hot shot category. Please read all the way through and read my comments below BEFORE throwing knives at me. I am not knife proof.

• A blogger with a lot of followers, but bases their whole blog around that fact. "Check out my facebook page, you should join the thousands and thousands that like me!" "If you are reading, please follow me and become a part of the 10,000 people that follow!" "Don't leave without subscribing!" Crap like that. It's like joining a cult.
• A blogger who is totally stuck up and haughty. I don't think you need examples of this. 
• A blogger who has way too many rules. "I would love to have you guest post, but X, Y, and Z need to happen and I must approve of it. And it needs to be original, and you can't post it on your blog ever." "You can do a giveaway but the fee is X amount, the giveaway item needs to be over $XXX, and you need to do XYZ to be able to qualify." "To link up to my party, follow all 10 rules or I delete it."
• A blogger who is so obsessed with their own populartity it's all they talk about. "ZOMG I totally went to this blogger meet up that only popular bloggers can go to because they get to go for free and met all these other popular people and we all just soaked up each others popularness. (Mean Girls reference :D) Loser blogs need not come." I mean really, how often do you see blogger conferences/meet ups where all the hot shot bloggers meet up with other hotties and don't even mention awesome people they met that aren't as popular as them? Are us little folk not good enough for you? When do you ever see someone like me at a blog conference meeting up with hot shot blogger and that hot shot blogger blogging about it? (Run on sentence much?) It's popular people only talking to popular people because they are too good for anyone else. 
• A blogger who is 99% advertising and 1% crafting. "Check out X, Y, and Z sponsor, who sponsored this post." "Look at this craft I had to do because so and so sent me materials to do it" "Check out all 10 of my giveaways going on right now and the 20 more to come tomorrow" "Do you advertising with me? Only a million dollars a month!" "If you want to do a giveaway, it must be worth hundreds of dollars"

I typically unfollow most of these haughties. Ugh. Advertising is what gets me the most. There is a pretty delicate balance with all of this, which I DO understand. It's perfectly fine to have a lot of followers. There are plenty of huge blogs I follow because they are genuinely awesome and actually have creative ideas and who just seem genuine. It's fine to toot your own horn every once in a while, especially when you're actually being awesome. Its perfectly alright to do a little self promoting. It's ok to have  a few rules. And it's ok to advertise. Everyone wants to get more numbers, there are a lot more perks that come with big numbers. But sometimes I want to scream "Seriously people, open your eyes!! There is more to life than numbers." Let me give you an example, the real reason I am writing this post.

{image via google}

Over the summer, there was a certain hot shot blogger than hosted a pretty dang big giveaway. Thousands of dollars in prizes, three winners, all pretty exciting! I rarely ever enter hugely gigantic giveaways like this, mainly because there are way too many rules and things to do. "You MUST do all fifty million of these things BEFORE you can enter, then you get ONE comment." Ugh, not worth my time.

I really don't know what possessed me to enter this particular one. (Maybe because one of the prizes was a blog makeover and at the time I was searching for one?) It was exactly one of "those" giveaways. This giveaway required you to "like" more than forty facebook pages for you to even enter!! And you got ONE entry. I mean seriously, what the heck? But I did it, I liked over forty facebook pages using my blog's facebook page, which just made sense to me. I am on my blog's facebook page more than my personal one, I use KC&A to help promote other bloggers and businesses, and I just like to keep all things crafty in one place. It gets confusing when I mix crafty life and real life too much, not to mention my news feed would get so overloaded with friends updates and hundreds of craft updates I would never want to be on facebook.

I liked so many pages and left so many comments I got banned from facebook for a few days. They thought I was a spammer! Once my ban was over, I slowly liked the rest of the pages I was supposed to. I made sure to leave comments, just in case they needed to verify my "liking."

{image via google}

Days passed. And guess what.

I WON. 

I won the second prize package!! I was at my parent's house when the winner was announced and luckily one of my friends told me I won so I wouldn't miss the deadline to reply.

I hurried over to the page, excited out of my mind, since the one I won had that blog makeover. Yay!! My heart sunk when I saw something that looked like this:

Prize winner #2 winner: so and so blogger comment number infinity. Congrats so and so!

What?? I thought I won that one! Did my friend make a mistake? I scrolled down a little more and saw something like this:

"You may have noticed that this winner is different than the one we announced before. She decided not to follow all the rules so we chose a new one."

WHAT!? "Decided not to follow the rules??" Are you freaking kidding me!? I got banned from facebook for liking so many pages!!! And why did she have to word it that way? I was completely humiliated, because I knew some people had seen my name up there and now they all thought I was some cheater. My cheeks were red with seething humiliation. I knew there had to be a mistake, I double checked because I got banned and didn't want anything to fall through the cracks. So I emailed the host. After I sent it, I felt like I should go back and triple check...just to be sure. I checked and checked and checked and checked and my heart fell out when I noticed that yes, somehow I had missed Groopdealz.

Crap. @#$%&! I can't believe I missed one. I finished checking to make sure I didn't miss anymore, and then I saw the real kicker. One of the sponsors had updated their status with something like this:

"I noticed that the original winner didn't like my page, what a bummer! She really missed out!!"

.............................................are you kidding me? I AM RIGHT HERE!! How could I see that status update if I don't like your page?? I went back and looked and I had even LEFT A COMMENT. I was right there, in plain sight. The sponsor didn't even take the time to really check, she wrongly disqualified me. By then I looked something like this:

{image via google}

I left a not very nice comment on her wall, but immediately deleted it. Granted, I DID miss one of the pages, so TECHNICALLY I shouldn't get the prize. (Though I very reluctantly admit that because I really wanted it.) But she wrongly disqualified me, and that really upset me. She squealed on me, but Groopdealz, who's page I had actually missed, didn't say anything. (In case you are wondering, my blogger name includes my blog name, so there shouldn't have been any confusion that I was KC&A)

What's worse? The host of the giveaway didn't even bother to check. If she had bothered to check, she would have seen that I did in fact like that page that said I didn't! But no, she just lazily chose a new winner anyway, being completely irresponsible.

What's the worst of all? Even though I missed Groopdealz on facebook, I already get their emails!! I am already one of their numbers!

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like I should have at least been emailed, or warned, or SOMETHING with a prize package this big. I would have, it I were hosting.

I emailed her, and told her in the nicest way I knew how, that she should remember that there are people behind each of those numbers. I tried my hardest not to be rude but still get my point across. Because I believe it's true. There ARE people behind each one of those followers, each one of those likes, and each one of those emails. I feel like we should be treated as such! I feel like it is extremely disrespectful to think of us as so expendable. Ugh. Once I sent that email, I unfollowed her blog, unliked her page, and stopped following her on twitter. I will not stand for this, I am not an expendable number. I am a real person, with real feelings, who is REALLY influenced by the way you handle yourself and your blog. If I have a terrible experience at a store, I am never going back, and I will tell all my friends about it. Same thing here.

She never emailed me back. Not even now. She didn't even bother to address anything I had said. Again, I was just a number in her inbox. I mean, I know I miss emailing back sometimes, things happen. But I don't overlook emails like this.

 {image via google}

Even two months later I am still a little peeved about it. And it's not JUST with her and this experience, it happens all the time. Maybe it's just me, but I want people to like my page because they want to. I want them to follow because they like the crap I post. I don't want them to like me just because they have to, that's just stupid. Sure I host giveaways and liking my facebook is an entry, but it's OPTIONAL. So when I see that you HAVE to like more than 40 pages just to ENTER, that just turns me off. When I HAVE to like something, post an exact tweet, and post an exact comment on a page, I just think it's crap. Why are we all just numbers? People are STILL doing this. Just the other day I saw a giveaway that actually had ten rules (no exaggeration) to it, some of which were:

• "Like ALL the sponsors on facebook." Seriously, like 30 of them.
• "Like them with your PERSONAL facebook page, NOT your blog's page, otherwise the number doesn't count" Yes, she actually said that you needed to become a number.
• "Don't like and then unlike when the giveaway is over." Well then, make it optional and I won't!! I'll like them because I want to and you won't have to worry about me unliking them. 

I keep thinking, What is wrong with some people? Why is it all about numbers? I thought you were supposed to blog because you loved it. I thought you were supposed to open an Etsy shop because you love making things. I didn't know blogging was only about numbers and being the best or trying to make a living.

And that is my rant. If you read it, thanks. You get an internet hug. Unless you are going to leave a mean comment. In which case, I implore you to leave immediately.

Please tell me if I ever get like that. I will throw myself off a cliff.