Posts Tagged ‘blogging’

Growing Pains

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

Blogging is a funny old game. Putting your musings, opinions and rants out there for the world requires a kind of fearlessness. There’s a whole lot of judging going on, and rightly so, it’s out there, people are going to have opinions. But what I didn’t account for when I started was that people will drop in at certain points on my blog, read it once, form an opinion (quite often a negative one) and that’s the stance they judge me on from that point forth. I guess it’s just like life, first impressions and all that, but when you’ve been blogging over three years, things change, morph, evolve, grow – can your audience grow with you?

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Posted in life | 23 Comments »

Are Anonymous Comments Killing Blogs?

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

Blogging is still a relatively new phenomenon and bloggers find themselves being the opinion leaders, the influencers, the ones with their finger on the pulse of what’s really going on. This, of course, is something that traditional media finds tough to swallow. To them, bloggers are all angry little nitwits, living in their mothers’ basements, spewing their resentment about life into the online world. I would argue though that mainstream media are confusing bloggers with anonymous commenters, who are dragging the whole medium down.

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Posted in life | 26 Comments »

Bang(s) Goes 2010

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

Well, it’s been quite a year in Bangs World. I moved back to England at the end of ’09 after six years of galavanting in various cities around the world and wasn’t quite sure what lay ahead. Then 2010 started and my luck took a crazy turn. As the year rolled on, something more and more mind blowing would happen each month. I couldn’t quite take it all in myself. But I sure have had some great times and as always, documented them here on this blog.

In January, I lamented the fact that no one had told me that my lover (in my mind) Idris Elba had been DJing at a place I often frequent.

Well the universe must have been listening, because in February, I won a competition to have Idris Elba call me on Valentine’s Day. It was a joyous, momentous occasion and I stand by my theory that Idris totally wants me. I made this video, which I was later told, he watched. Mortification!

On came March when I caused a bit of a hoo-ha by declaring that Europeans Dress Better Than Americans – that made for an interesting comments section. I also talked about how much I hate runners – oh how that came back to bite me in the ass later in the year.

In April, I got some Jimmy Choos and was oh so happy about it.

In May, I shared probably one of the more personal posts I’ve ever done on this here blog, where I talked about my struggle to come to terms with my looks. It sparked some great discussion and yes, reading the comments made me cry, multiple times. I still get emails about that post and am so moved that it touched other people the way it did.

In June, one of my readers questioned whether I hate women – how could I not respond to that one?! I flung maxi dresses into a category with Uggs boots and Crocs – an opinion which lead to someone who had been very keen to work with me refusing to do business with me at all. Seriously. So very professional. The Sex in the City 2 movie came out. I was unimpressed.

In July, I wrote an open letter to parents, letting them know that the sun does not actually shine out of their child’s ass. Surprisingly, parenting groups didn’t call for my beheading. A group of bloggers got together to write about the shambolic Mac/Rodarte collection which lead to the line being scrapped – blogger victory! Then I stirred up a bunch ‘o shit by writing a post called Woman Law: Being a Lady - behold the hate it garnered!

In August, I got fed up with people asking me to write for them for free. I got up on my soap box, wrote a post called Blogsploitation and it turned into a kind of protest march with bloggers from all corners coming out saying they felt the same – some really great comments that show how much of a solid community bloggers are.

I had quite a few requests from my American readers who thought it’d be funny to hear me rap and so, in September, I debuted Bangs Goes Rap with my pretty epic rendition of Jay Z’s 99 Problems. I am waiting to a) become a YouTube sensation and b) get a record contract. I was also nominated by my beautiful readers for a Cosmo Blog Award and came runner up in my category, which was totally amazeballs.

October was a landmark month for me. After being approached back in May to run a half marathon, D-Day arrived on 10th October when I actually ran 13 miles and didn’t die. Hands down one of the most amazing moments of my life. I then wrote about the drama I had going on behind the scenes with the PR company who’d asked me to do the half mara and caused a bit of an internet shit storm.

In November and totally stepped out of my comfort zone and wrote about my acne and my lovely commenters surrounded me with love and support like never before. I celebrated three years of the blog and wrote a Beginner’s Guide to Blogging to help out anyone who might be thinking of taking that step into the blogosphere. I also signed up for the Paris Half Marathon. I put a call out on Twitter to see if anyone wanted to do it with me and overnight, I had 19 girls signed up. Team Bangs on the Run was born!

Rounding the year out, in December, I gave you a guide to X Factor and warned you about Bitchy Boys all while making embarrassing videos of myself training for the Paris Half Mara.

It has been one helluva a year, but it would’ve been nothing without the support, encouragement and love I’ve received from you, my readers, my lovely blog family. Thank you so much for laughing with me, crying with me and sharing my joy. It really does mean the world to me.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see what 2011 has in store!

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Posted in life | 10 Comments »

The Bitchy Boys

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

It’s no secret that women can be bitchy. A raised eyebrow here, a dirty look there, graduating to the backhanded compliment, gossiping behind people’s backs and lastly, the full on bitch fest smackdown. Oh yes, we’ve all either been that girl, known that girl or hated that girl. But what has been largely perceived as a predominantly female trait, bitchiness has some new contenders to the throne: boys. Oh yes, the fellas have turned bitchy and they’re taking no prisoners.

The epidemic of Man Bitch has been spreading for some time now. Don’t get this confused with super camp gay men who will snap their fingers and roll their necks while cursing out your outfit – the Man Bitch has infected every type of male on the man spectrum.

Men love to bitch and gossip and put people down just as much, if not more so than women. Ever noticed how if a group of girls are bitching and a man’s present, he’ll act aloof at first but by the end of the conversation he’s the one throwing down the worst insults? Or that men are super talented at mixing shit up, going behind people’s backs, telling stories they know will rile someone up or hurt them – in the past, this was put down the the male mentality of ‘survival of the fittest’ but let’s call it what it really is: bitchy. I mean, that’s what it is if a woman goes behind people’s backs and does those things, right? Then there’s ‘The Game’, you know that code that some men use to pick up women that requires them to ‘neg’ the ladies in their presence (pay them a backhanded compliment) – while every pick up manual tells the fellas this is a sure fire way to pick up chicks, it is, for all intents and purposes, a bitch move.

For years, male bitchiness has managed to fly under the radar. It was just all so beneath them, or so they had us believe. But one thing has blown their cover: the internet. And in particular, blog comments.

Blog comments is where the Man Bitch comes out to play. It’s like he’s been jerking off for years and the right blog that says just the right thing to piss him off is where he can finally shoot his load. I’ve had negative comments left on this blog before, by women, but the nasty comments, the straight up brutal, hurtful, hideous can’t-believe-you-kiss-your-own-mother-with-that-mouth type comments are almost exclusively always left by men. They go for the jugular.

If a woman leaves a mean blog comment, or bitches you out to your face in real life, the common response from those around you is ‘she’s just jealous.’ Because of course, we like to allow ourselves to think that everyone wants what we’ve got. But if a man leaves a mean comment, the common response is ‘he just wants you.’ While my ego would like to believe that every man roaming the earth is just that attracted to me, I’m pretty sure that isn’t the case. Men leave these comments (usually about our looks or how hideous our personalities are) because they like to think their opinion matters to us, that I live for the sole purpose of strangers on the internet finding me attractive, that if they call me ugly I’ll be running and hurling myself off the nearest bridge.

Well, I’m still here bitch.

Perhaps there need to be more open forums in which men can show their true bitchy colours – support groups, what have you – so they don’t feel they have to hide behind pseudonyms or anonymity on the internet. Say it loud and proud Man Bitches! You bitch and you like it!

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Posted in relationships | 10 Comments »

Consequences and Repercussions

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

*peeps out from behind curtain* Is it safe to come out yet?

Well, as *ahem* a couple of people may be aware, yesterday I published a complaint letter I’d sent to Mission PR regarding how they had mishandled a Nokia campaign they’d asked me to blog about (whereby I was asked to run a half marathon, then pretty much ignored until three days before the race). My aim in doing that was to start a conversation so bloggers and PRs can communicate better and bloggers (and the work we put in) are actually taken seriously.

What began as me wanting to start a conversation turned into nothing less than a shit storm. The post spread across Twitter and the interweb like wildfire. Friends who work at PR agencies were emailing me to say the post was making the rounds in their offices as a kind of ‘How NOT to Treat Bloggers’ cautionary tale. Messages and tweets of support poured in. I could barely keep up with the response.

Within hours, both the MD of Mission PR and Head of Communications for Nokia had personally called me. And to their enormous credit, both agencies took responsibility. They didn’t try to make excuses. They apologised, they listened, they were adamant about learning from this experience going forward. It takes a lot for people to admit they’re wrong and I give both Nicola Stephenson of Mission and Anna Shipley of Nokia great credit for reaching out to me on what must have been a very difficult day for both agencies. It was agreed that my travel and accommodation costs would be covered immediately.

I’d like to point out something that I think was greatly overlooked yesterday. I sent that letter to Mission last Thursday and the Head of Digital did call and apologise to me at that time. I made the decision to go ahead and publish my letter of complaint on my blog because I felt the apology came as too little too late. But they didn’t wait until after I’d published to apologise to me. For me, it was also about much more than Mission. This is happening to bloggers all over and I feel as though the attitude of these big companies is ‘they’re just a blogger.’ They don’t consider that there may be repercussions for acting poorly. There’s a certain attitude that it doesn’t matter because they’re a big company and we’re just the little fish.

It occurred to me that I’d probably been approached in the first place as it was understood that I may have a certain level of online influence. In making the decision to publish the letter and name the companies involved, I think we now know what online influence can do.

That blog post has had over 15,500 hits so far.

The response has been overwhelmingly positive – though I’m sure my face is on a few dart boards in PR offices right now. I had a couple of negative comments about how I agreed to do this for freebies, they didn’t come through and I should stop crying about it. For anyone who has read my blog post about the actual half marathon itself, it’s clear that this was about much more than freebies or monetary gain for me. This was truly a life changing experience. It’s about so much more than a free phone, or sports kits or hits on my site. In fact, it’s not about that at all. It’s about how you treat people and the handling of a campaign. As I said to Anna Shipley of Nokia, there was a real opportunity here for this project to be so great and the reach to be so much wider than it was, if it was handled properly. When I think of how this whole experience has changed me and how many people have told me they’ve been inspired by my journey, it saddens me that I wasn’t given the opportunity or resources by Nokia and Mission to spread that word further, inspire more.

The decision to publish the letter was not one I took lightly. I wrestled with it for days. Had I not done that, the half-baked apology I received beforehand would probably have been seen as enough and perhaps Mission and other agencies would continue to believe that’s an acceptable way to treat a blogger (or, you know, a human). At least now, both Mission and Nokia are taking a serious look at what went wrong and other agencies are looking at how they handle blogger outreach.

So, is there anyone out there still questioning the power of bloggers? *gives Andrew Marr a death stare*

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Posted in life | 28 Comments »

The Tale of PR and The Blogger

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

Yesterday, I told you about my half marathon journey. Today, it’s time to tell you about what went on behind the scenes. I was initially approached by PR company, Mission, to run the half marathon and blog about it on behalf of their client, Nokia. I was told I would get certain things in return for that. I got absolutely nothing.

I wrote a letter of complaint to Mission last week and they have called me to apologise, but as that was done three days before the race, it was sadly, too little, too late. The decision to publish this letter was not an easy one. My aim is not to get anyone at Mission in trouble, purely to highlight the massive disparity that currently goes on between large companies who claim to specialise in social media platforms and the way they actually treat bloggers.

Myself and others in the blogging community put huge amounts of time and effort into what we do. Publishing this letter may very well be career suicide but I feel I owe it to bloggers to publish this and hopefully, other companies can learn from it and take what we do seriously.

Dear Mission,

It is with regret that I’m writing a letter of complaint to you, but unfortunately I feel as though I’ve been left no other choice.

Back on May 21st, you contacted me to see if I would lend my voice to a campaign you were working on with Nokia – The Nokia Outdoor Series. It sounded interesting, like a challenge and I was very excited to be involved. I was told I could pick one of the events Nokia was having and blog about my preparation for it. I chose to participate in the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon and fully committed to the project.

For lending my voice to this campaign, I was told, to quote your email “Part of the project entails training with Olympic athletes, interviewing them, free sports kits, a platform on the Nokia Outdoor Series website (which can be linked back to your own site to increase your hits) and many more.” I was also told I would hopefully receive a Nokia phone to film my training sessions and my travel and accommodation would be paid for when I was to train with an olympic athlete and go down to London for the race itself.

I’m disappointed to report that over the past four months, as I trained very hard for this half marathon, devoting huge amounts of my time, energy and money, none of the things promised to me have been delivered. Very early on I was told that Nokia had decided not to do the sports kits. I made two video blogs, neither of which  ever appeared on the Nokia Outdoor Series site and I was given no explanation for this other than Nokia couldn’t get their act together/were impossible to get hold of.

I was offered a training session with an olympic athlete, but was only given six days notice and couldn’t get away from work in time. I was sent a phone, which I was told I will have to send back when all is said and done.

Throughout all of this, I had to constantly contact you guys at Mission to find out what was going on. No one dealing with this project seemed to make an effort to touch base with me regularly. When I did get in touch with you, the standard response was that you were waiting to hear back from Nokia and would get back to me in a few days. You rarely did.

Through all this, I remained committed to what I said I’d do. I have a very loyal blog and Twitter following and they have been supporting and encouraging me as I blogged and tweeted my way through my training program, lost a stone in weight, became more committed to fitness than I’ve ever been. I spoke about this so much at least two people that I know of have signed up to do the half marathon, one of whom is doing it for charity and has raised a significant sum. I’ve been emailed by countless others who’ve told me how I’ve inspired them to start a new fitness regime, lose weight or commit to a healthier lifestyle.

The half marathon is this Sunday (October 10th). I emailed you on September 20th, after not hearing from you for well over six weeks, to ask what was happening on the day of the race. I was yet to receive a race pack or any information about it (when I know that those things had been sent to race participants weeks prior). I was given the standard response that you’d check with Nokia and get back to me by Friday (September 25th). Friday came and went. I emailed again on Wednesday September 29th (now just 11 days before the race) to again ask what was going on. I had no idea if I even had a place on the race. I relayed that I was now rather anxious, given the amount of time and effort I’ve put into this and the fact that I’m all over the internet saying I’m doing it – now it looked likely that I could show up and be told I don’t have a place and can’t run. Again, you told me you’d double check with Nokia and get back to me on Friday. On Friday you emailed to tell me a colleague would book my train ticket for me on Monday and that you were still finalising my place on the half marathon. So, after initially approaching me about this half marathon back on May 21st, my place is still being ‘finalised’ 9 days before? What on earth is going on?!

You asked me to send my preferred train times as you would cover the cost of my ticket. I asked if my accommodation was to be covered also, as agreed at the beginning of this venture and was told there was no longer the budget for accommodation. So yet more money had to come out of my pocket.

Frustrated with the mishandling of the situation and unsure whether I had a place on the marathon or not, I contacted The Royal Parks Foundation (who are in charge of it) directly, explained the situation and asked if there was any way they could sort it for me. Within 24 hours, they got back to me with confirmation that they had secured me a special last minute place on the race. In 24 hours they did what Mission has had four months to do.

Needless to say, I never heard from your colleague on Monday about the train ticket. I called you on Tuesday to ask if it was being booked and was told it’d be better if I booked it myself and send you guys the receipt – so yet again, more money comes out of my pocket (don’t worry, I won’t be holding my breath for Mission to reimburse me).

Yesterday (Wednesday October 6th) you called me to say you’re still sorting out my place for the half marathon. Four days before the race! Unbelievable! I told you I’d sorted it myself as it was clear that nobody there was doing anything.

I apologise for the tone of this email but I am just really quite astounded at the poor handling of this situation. I don’t blame the individuals handling the account. Nokia very well may have been impossible to deal with – but explanations should have been given every step of the way. Considering you’re in the business of communication, there was remarkably little of it taking place. I’m a reasonable person and I don’t expect the earth, but I do expect what has been promised to me to be delivered and where it can’t be, I’d just like a reasonable explanation as to why.

It’s not as if I was given a product and asked to write a review on it. You asked me to do a half marathon! I trained for four months! I had a personal trainer, I was getting up at 5.30am to go running, I have literally exhausted myself with my efforts. My side of this bargain has been well and truly fulfilled. I have raised awareness of this half marathon and people have signed up to it as a result of the coverage I have given to my own preparation. And yet, I have received absolutely nothing in return for it. Does that seem fair to you?

It appears that Mission don’t have an understanding or appreciation for bloggers or social media. I may just be a small fish to you, but I am a client and should have been treated as such. I imagine if I was a Guardian journalist covering this event, I’d have everything that was promised and five star accommodation for the race.

I am sorry I had to write this letter. I was genuinely excited about the project and am hugely disappointed with how it’s been handled. I sincerely hope this is not how Mission ordinarily conducts itself in the blogging and social media world.

Yours Sincerely,

Muireann Carey-Campbell

My hope in publishing this is that we can at least start a conversation. Social Media is exploding and it’s hard to adapt and keep up. Perhaps this will go some small way towards a dialogue that enables us all to work better together and avoid things like this happening in the future.

(In the interest of full disclosure here, when someone from Mission called to apologise to me, twenty minutes after I sent this email last week, they told me I could keep the Nokia phone that had been sent to me. So…there’s that.)

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Posted in life | 166 Comments »

Homecoming Anniversary

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

At my leaving party in Toronto with blogger, Casie Stewart

One year ago today, I moved back to England. Looking back on my year, I can honestly say, coming home was the best decision I ever made.

There was years worth of build up to it, of course. I left England in January of 2004 for New York where I’d been offered a couple of internships. I lived there for a year and a half, struggling every day, living a hand-to-mouth existence, clinging on for dear life because I fell in love with that city the second I got off the plane and didn’t want to leave. When I finally came to the realisation that I’d run out of road, I came back to England, applied for jobs at every magazine going, got rejections from every single one and had no clue what I was going to do with my life, until I was offered a job teaching in Japan.

In October 2005, I boarded a plane for Tokyo, with no knowledge of Japanese and zero teaching experience. To say that my year spent living there was a learning curve, would be the understatement of the century. When my contract there was up, I decided to move to Canada. Having been born there, I have dual citizenship and it just seemed like an easy move. I went to Montreal first, then realised two months in that without being able to parlez the Francais, I wasn’t going to get anywhere there. So, I moved to Toronto.

And there I stayed for three years. I spent a brief eight months in Halifax, Nova Scotia (where I was born), with my extended family, but went right back to the TDot as soon as I could. This blog was born in Halifax, as I tried to figure out a way to get my writing to the masses and my incredibly supportive boss, Joanne David, at the jewellery store I worked at, believed in me enough to let me get this off the ground while I worked. When I moved back to Toronto, I came up against wall after wall when applying for PR or media jobs. So, I got a job as a travel agent to pay the rent.

I hated it. You’ve probably gathered from the tone of this blog that I may not be the best person to put in a front line customer service role. I couldn’t stand that I couldn’t be creative all day. I had to master all these different computer systems, be nice to people and actually care about where they were going, when all I wanted to do was blog.

After a year of that, I woke up one day and said ‘I don’t want to be here anymore’. I called my parents and said ‘I want to come home’. Once I said it, it was like a giant weight had been lifted off me. I’d been trying to make it work for so long, but I was a long way from home to just be surviving. It’s not like I was living the dream.

I quit my job and spent the summer in Toronto just enjoying the city and my friends as I prepared to move.

Now I’m back, everything just makes so much more sense. Having the support of family and old friends around me has been invaluable and spurred me on in a way I could never quite find in Toronto. And the blogging community here in the UK are something else altogether. I’ve met so many wonderful people since being back.

I’ve always been the person who will dive right in and see what happens. I’m not rich, far from it. Money has little to do with my experience and what I want to do in life. It’s all about drive. As long as you have that, you make it happen. What I learned from the whole experience was to make as many changes as you need to, to make your circumstances right for you.

Who knows if this is it for me? I go where the wind takes me. Wherever the next opportunity comes up, I’ll go. I don’t feel tied to any one place, which is the great thing about travel – the world is your home.

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Posted in life | 8 Comments »

Blogsploitation

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

Do me a favour – don’t email me asking to blog for you in return for fresh air. You’re not the first and you surely won’t be the last to have the nerve to send these emails about how it’ll be great ‘promotion’ and give me wonderful ‘exposure’.

I think I’m doing alright on the exposure front, thank you. I mean, I’m exposed enough for you to have even found me in the first place, right? And while I’m sure you have the best will in the world, ‘promotion’ and ‘exposure’ don’t pay the rent or buy me shoes. At least be honest: you approached me because you like what I’ve got and you want some of it.

Nowhere but in the creative industries do people get away with this bollocks. I can’t ask an accountant to do my taxes and say I won’t pay him, but the honour of him working for me will give him great exposure.

I had an email recently from a start-up magazine, gushing about how much they love my blog, saying how they think there’s a special place in the magazine for me, they’d love me to do a column – in return they’d just want some promotion on my blog. So, let me get this straight: I get to spend my time writing for you and in return, I get the privilege of promoting you on my site? Get the f**k outta here!

You approach me because you see that my site is doing fairly well. You have placed a value on it. Don’t be surprised to discover that I value myself. Yes, you’re damn right, I will reply to your email with my rates and nothing else. When you want to get serious, feel free to contact me again.

See, you have no idea what has gone into this. I have spent years building this up. I spent my whole university life doing work placements here, there and everywhere for free. I moved to New York when I was 22 and spent a cold winter running all over Manhattan returning clothes from magazine shoots to fashion PRs to try to prove that I was somehow worthy. I have worked for an absolute pittance that I had to fight tooth and nail for. I have done jobs that I absolutely loathed, that had nothing to do with my overall career plan, just so I could keep a roof over my head in the hope that I could keep writing and eventually someone would be moved by my words. I started this blog with literally nothing and have spent two and a half years working tirelessly on my style, fighting for every reader, every page view like my life depended on it. I still work a 9-5 and come home and work 6-midnight on my blog because I have a readership who I love and don’t want to let down. I’m frikkin’ exhausted, but I’m building something here. I’m building my Field of Dreams and I’m doing what it takes for me to get there.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

You don’t understand the blood (paper cuts are a bitch), sweat (YOU try blogging in a tiny bedroom in Toronto in high summer with no air con) and tears (oh, the tears) that go into this.

It’s only now, at 29 years of age, that I have a 9-5 that I love (writing) that actually pays me – and even then I only scrape by. I have MORE THAN paid my dues. So, excuse me if I don’t value your ‘promotion’ or ‘exposure’. And pardon me if I consider it to be a complete fucking insult to me and bloggers, artists and creatives everywhere that you think it’s even acceptable to send such condescending emails that completely ignore the fact that we’ve spent years ‘promoting’ and ‘exposing’ ourselves, just for you to try to leech off it.

I value myself, my talent and what I’ve built here too much to let you degrade it with this foolishness. Get a budget or find some other way of paying me (but even mention the words ‘promotion’ or ‘exposure’ and expect to get round house kicked in the balls) or just don’t bother.

Thank you and goodnight!

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Posted in life | 68 Comments »

Social Media’d Up

Monday, July 26th, 2010

In 2005, just before I moved to Japan, I stumbled across a peculiar thing called MySpace. I was horrified. Why would anyone want to put themselves out there like that, I thought. A girl had put pictures of herself up and people were ripping her to shreds. I don’t want any part of that, I said and quickly navigated away. Fast forward to today, I have this blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Soundcloud…basically, there is no escape from me on the internet. I got sucked in.

What happened is, when I got to Japan, I saw my roommate was using MySpace. She talked me through the benefits and said it might be a good way to meet people. Hmm. I set up a profile and within a couple of weeks, it had basically become like my own personal dating site (hey, we were in Japan – there’s a lot of lonely American military men out there, what can I say?)

When I moved to Canada at the end of ’06, everyone was talking about something called ‘Facebook’. I don’t need that, I’d say, I have MySpace. But after a while, having MySpace was like being the last person at a party. Plus, the only friend requests I was getting on there at that point were from random death metal bands in Ohio. Yup, I had no choice, I had to defect – so, off I went to set up my Facebook account.

At the end of ’07, this blog was born. Last year, though it petrified me, I decided to start making video blogs. Gradually, one little thing at a time, my online life has grown to the point where I’m online all the time.

So why do we do it? Those who don’t ‘get’ it, say it’s just all so narcissistic to put ourselves out there like that. Do I think that what I have to say is any more interesting than anyone else? Of course I do! I wouldn’t waste my time otherwise. In reality, is it any more interesting? Of course not! First and foremost, as someone who spent much of my twenties galavanting around in other countries, it was just a way for me to keep in touch with my friends – if other people wanted to read what I had to say, cool.

People who don’t use any form of social media love to look down their noses at those of us who do. We’re just all sad little losers, living a fantasy life with no real friends. If that’s all they get from their internet experience, they’re doing it wrong. I’m happy to say I’ve met so many wonderful people through blogging and happily count them as friends now. I  use Social Media to grow both my online and personal connections. For me, one is not really separate from the other.

It takes a while to get used to, as my blog grows, the barrage of negative comments that come every now and then, how people can and will judge your whole life off just one blog post, then click through to some other random portal of the internet without giving it a second thought. How people will make all sorts of suggestions about how you should conduct yourself on your blog or Twitter (how about I just stick these middle fingers up, that good enough?) without considering that they should perhaps start their own blog before offering up their armchair ponderings.

There are a million things about Social Media that drive me crazy (really? Another blurry shot of your drunken night out on your Facebook page? Yawn), but I can’t imagine my life without it.

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NOMINATE ME!

Cosmopolitan has launched its Blog Awards and I would be so grateful and honoured if you would take a moment to nominate  Bangs and a Bun in the ‘Lifestyle’ category. It only takes a second and I will love you long time if you do. Click here and make my day. Thank you!

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Posted in life | 18 Comments »