How This Happened

I've been reading all the blog posts floating around the internet in the aftermath of Anthropocalypse. Most of them have focused on the importance of budgeting and being financially responsible. While I think that is a very important topic, I would really like to see a discussion on how this happened and what we can do in the future to prevent it from happening again. I mean, does no one else think it's crazy that Kim, who had such a high-profile presence on the Internet, was able to do this for such a long time to so many people? After reading about all the experiences and having lunch with a friend/victim yesterday, I've come to the conclusion that there are 2 reasons that she got away with it so long:

1. People didn't speak up for fear of being bashed by "the community" if they said anything negative about Kim.
2. As a result of #1, each person thought this was a "fluke" that only happened to them.

In my eyes, #1 was the driving force behind this whole scam, and I know a thing or 2 about #1. I have personal experience in incurring the wrath of "the community."

It was an ordinary winter's day, January 6 to be exact. I had made a post on my blog the night before wearing the Crocheted Clouds Dress. In this post, I professed my love for this dress and pointed out that, in my opinion, it looked better on curvier figures. I found this really exciting, because as we all know, most clothing looks better on slimmer frames, that's why models have that body type. I said that I had seen the dress on less curvy bloggers and it just sort of hung on them. Well, little did I know the shit storm that statement would set off. That day, I was at work staring at this computer just like I do every day, when a comment popped up in my email. It was from one of the bigger bloggers in the community, and it stated that she didn't think it was necessary for me to make the comment I did about how other bloggers look in the dress. I apologized for offending anyone, but I stood behind my statement. My humble blog which usually received an average of 7 comments a day, started being inundated with comments from people who thought I was a horrible person. I was shocked and hurt by the things that were being said about me. I felt horrible, so I deleted the offensive post and posted this in response. I continued to get hateful comments over the new few days. That post ended up receiving 103 comments. I've never had that many comments in the history of this blog, not even close. I felt like I had been ganged up on by the popular girls. I was insulted in every possible way. Here are some of the highlights:

"Why don't you take down this post altogether, as some people have suggested? Are you simply enjoying finally having people comment on your blog? You're just riding on the success of more popular bloggers by using your blog to create scandal about them. Not cool."

"If you'd like to be taken seriously in the blogging community and maybe be a part of something bigger than yourself NEXT time, then maybe you should just try being nicer and not bashing on your fellow bloggers."

 "Bonnie, if you honestly feel bad at all for your derisive comments, you should do the first mature thing here by removing all traces of this mess from your blog, including this post, and by keeping a tighter leash on your comment system so that people can't anonymously attack other bloggers and commenters on here. Are you proud of yourself for making your blog such a conduit of hate and viciousness?"

"Most of us had never even heard of your blog until this mess got stirred up today. I heard about it on the grapevine and thought "Bonnie who?"

After reading these comments, I think it's easy to see why people would be afraid of putting something negative out there about another blogger in "the community."

When this happened to me, I was baffled by a couple of things. First, I never remembered signing up to be a part of any "community." I was inspired by other fashion bloggers and decided to create my own space on the internet. I didn't realize there was a community who apparently had rules about what I could and couldn't post . Second, I didn't understand the point behind moderating comments. If someone had something bad to say about me, I didn't think it was my right to silence them. I think anyone who reads my blog knows that I don't filter out anything. When I announced my separation, the comments section got pretty ugly on here for awhile. Even after I was finally convinced by friends, readers, and other bloggers to moderate, I deleted maybe 3 comments. I just hate censoring people even if they are bashing me.
   
I know it sounds like I'm hating on the community, but I'm not. There are a lot of positive things that come out of it. I guess I'm just trying to say that in any community there are unspoken things that come about due to human nature, such as hierarchy and cliques. I don't think there is anything we can do to prevent this, but I do think there is something each one of us can do that might help going forward - stop being so sensitive. I've struggled with this over the past week. I've had people say a lot of nasty things about me, make fun of me, and just be down right mean. I was devestated at first, but in time, I was able to make peace with it. I always tell my kids, "Just because someone says something doesn't make it true." I think we all need to apply this logic going forward. As we have seen, restricting a community of any negativity at all is a recipe for disaster. Just my opinion folks.