It’s a small blogosphere after all

Catching up on my RSS reader, I saw that once again, all hell had broken loose stemming from a snarky post written by a controversial blogger. Just another case of drama in the mom blogosphere. It’s the usual sideline entertainment so I won’t bore you with details. Instead, I want to point out something about influence – and not so positive influence at that.

As I was following the story, I landed on the front page of a mom blog I’d never read before. I started reading this blogger’s thoughts on the bloggy firestorm and her thoughts on mommy bloggers.

She’s a new blogger who had won a trip to mom blogging conference awhile back. In her post, she talked about her surprise at many of the attitudes that surround blogging and that were present at the conference. For most of us, we’re immune to the bad that comes with the good in blogging. Instead, we know who we’re interested in learning from, who we keep at an arm’s length, and who we’d like to meet and befriend. All in all, a very convoluted business.  (Sounds crazy, right?)

I continued reading her post until I came to a story of her conference experience:

“I stopped at one break-out where one mommy blogger was complaining that she had been told that she would be test driving a new dishwasher. But after waiting for almost a month the sponsor asked if she would please accept a new washer and dryer instead. She sighed that sigh of those who feel they have been incredibly inconvenienced and said, ‘I agreed but I think they should give me the dishwasher too for the inconvenience I have suffered.’”

I stopped in my tracks as this anecdote sounded eerily familiar. Hadn’t I had an impromptu meeting outside of a conference room about the status of my appliances for review? Hadn’t I casually mentioned to the contact I was working with that the company should throw in an extra something for my trouble?

But see here’s the kicker. I WAS JOKING. Really!

Unfortunately, this blogging newbie walked away from with this distaste for bloggers. And I had contributed to this! All of a sudden I was a bad influence on the mom blogosphere.

Quickly, I sent the blogger an email, letting her know that I was completely joking around with my contact and that I was incredibly grateful for my role in the Frigidaire Test Drive.  And as “uncool” and unpopular as my attitude might be – I’m grateful for any and every opportunity I choose to accept to participate in. Sure, there are many frustrations that come with this gig, but for the most part, I feel really lucky to be part of it.

There will always be crap and ugliness associated to everything, every job, every gig, but there is also good.  I’ve met some AWESOME people in my bloggy-travels and am sure there’s more to come.

And from now on I’ll leave out the sarcastic humor. Lesson learned.

Jill Notkin blogs at The Daily Grind of a Work at Home Mom when she’s not tweeting @AlexCaseyBaby. She is also the Managing Director of MotherTalk division at Mom Central Consulting.

Mom Central