Are You Part of The In-Crowd?
Katiebabs has a really interesting post up at her blog. It’s entitled Don’t Play In Our Sandbox Because You’re Not a Part of the “In-Crowd”.
KB starts by asking a couple of questions:
Does the consensus across book blog land believe there’s an “in-crowd”? Are there specific blogs or bloggers who give off the vibe that they are too cool to associate with or come across like the cool kids at high school who walk down the hallways with their nose in the air, where you don’t have the right to acknowledge them because you’re not important enough to be a part of their group?
Now whenever anybody talks about ‘The Big Blogs’ I automatically assume that they’re talking about the Smartbitches and Dear Author. Oh come on, you know you do too, but for some reason, people seem reluctant to mention them by name.
I could be wrong of course, there could be other Big RomLand Bloggers out there that I’m not aware of.
I did start answering the above questions on Katie’s blog, but you know me, why waste a perfectly good answer on somebody else’s blog when you can post it on your own? Hmmm….Does that make me a bad blogger? Ahhh fuck it.
Anyway, I digress.
With regards to the question about the ‘in-crowd’ – I don’t particularly think that there’s an in, and an out crowd in RomLand, however I do believe that there are blogs that people automatically gravitate towards, in large numbers, and some that a more select group of people will look at. I also believe that there are some blogs that tend to be involved in everything romance-related, and some who aren’t.
Let’s take Smart Bitches for instance. I don’t think it’s a secret that I’m no longer a fan of theirs, but I have to acknowledge that they’ve been great advocates for the genre.
The reason that they have so many visitors to their site is mostly due to their dedication, hard work, and consistency. And they also have a ‘voice’ that appeals to lots of people. Of course some of the success has probably been due to luck too – for instance that Cassie Edwards plagiarism lovefest totally helped take them to another level, but on the whole, I think the SBs have been the architects of their own destiny.
Come on, they wrote a book, and it got published. They did a million and one promos all over the States for said book. They did a million blog tours promoting Heaving Bosoms (well it sure seemed like it at the time) They’ve been on seemingly every romance panel known to woman. They’ve had lunch with publishing industry insiders. They attend a lot of book conferences, where they invariably end up speaking on various panels.
In other words, they’ve really worked their socks off, and the success of their blog is reflective of that hard work.
The same can be said for Dear Author.
I know that there are lots of collaborative voices over there these days, but the fact is, the driving force behind Dear Author has always been Jane. Even when back in the day when there was just her and the one Jayne, she had a greater ambition for her blog, than most of us have ever had for ours.
The guys over at Dear Author may not have written a book, but nobody can deny, that like the SBs, they’ve also worked their socks off to make their blog what it is today. I think that as far as e-book technology is concerned, Dear Author has always been the number one place in RomLand for people to visit for all things e-publishing. In fact, I think that their good work in this area was the reason why the SBs have also taken such an interest in digital publishing, because we all know that there wasn’t much about e-publishing being posted on the site prior to Jane’s Sunday Digital Publishing column, was there?
Anyway, my general point is, in order for both the SBs and Dear Author to have gained the army of followers that they both have, they’ve worked a lot harder than the average RomLand blogger.
The problem is, because of their success, it’s easy for other bloggers to either feel resentful towards them, or to feel inadequate in the face of their seemingly unsurpassable popularity. In my opinion, I think newer bloggers (and by ‘newer’, I mean people who have been blogging for less than two years) tend to feel this way, more than those who have been blogging for a good number of years.
As the resentment builds, you probably start taking things personally. For instance, if you take the time to post a thoughtful comment and the blog owner doesn’t even bother responding, you end up feeling slighted. As if they ignored you on purpose. This is what I call the paranoid phase in the blogging lifecycle. I think the majority of us have all been through this at some stage or another, I know that I have.
But the thing is the longer you blog, the more you understand that just because somebody hasn’t responded to your comment, doesn’t necessarily mean that they are ignoring you. You begin to understand more, how time consuming it can be to respond to every commenter.
I’m pretty sure lots of people have been annoyed at my lack of response to comments over the years, but I can assure you, it’s not a personal thing. If it was personal, I’d be more likely to comment, just so that I could tell the commenter to fuck off.
I guess the way I feel about the whole cliques/in-crowd/Out-crowd argument is that it’s usually not about the perceived clique/in-crowd, it’s usually more about the person who feels that they’re on the outside, and about their own personal self-esteem system.
I don’t believe that any blog owners out there seek to exclude others, because at the end of the day, we bloggers are fairly narcissistic individuals. We wouldn’t blog if we weren’t interested in getting feedback from our readers, after all.
I realise that some people probably will feel excluded, especially when they’re constantly seeing the same names extensively involved in various projects in RomLand, but I certainly don’t believe that that’s what the ‘big bloggers’ set out to do.
Off-topic slightly, how many people here have written what they thought was an amazing blog post, and got pissed off when hardly anybody commented? I know I have.
The one that always comes to mind for me was the post that I wrote about Romance Writers and Domestic violence. I’d put so much work into that piece, only to find that nobody seemed interested in talking about it. The comments started to flow eventually, but it took people long enough.
As I intimated earlier, I think the in-crowd perception can also arise, when you see the same names grouped together. For instance, how often do we see speaking panels that include SB Sarah, DA Jane, and Angela James? Also, how many times do you see Kassia Krozser’s and Malle Vallik’s name linked with the other three? Enough times to begin automatically linking them together perhaps?
Katie also wrote:
Blogging should be where you can have fun and relax, a way to put all the stress of your real live to the side for a few moments, a vacation if you will, where you can be another person or let your true self shine without the fear of being put down or ostracized.
I tend to disagree with this sentiment, mostly because I think one’s blog should be shaped however you want it to be. If you want the type of blog where people feel at home and comfortable, then go for it, but also, equally, I think that if you’re someone who likes to fan the flames, and make people feel uncomfortable, then that’s your prerogative too. There is space for both in RomLand. Personally I find really homey blogs, where it’s hard to pin down the blogger’s actual character, and belief system, very dull. Unsurprisingly, I prefer bloggers who misbehave from time to time, but I know that that’s not everybody’s cuppa, and nor should it be.
Katie continues:
I’ve never been a part of the cool kids or that “in-crowd”. I probably never will. I’ve always been on the cusp, on the outer edge, trying to figure out a way to belong. But I’ll always be an outsider left out in the cold, much like those who try and fail to enter that popular dance club and never will because their name isn’t on some sort of VIP list.
I think that we as a people are a little obsessed by the whole in-crowd thing.
In my opinion, the in-crowd label wasn’t thought up by people perceived to be in the in-crowd, on the contrary, I believe it was thought up by those measuring themselves against other people who they perceived to be of a higher status, and finding themselves wanting. In other words, it’s about you, not them.
Blogging isn’t my life, and I don’t ever intend to take it that seriously, but I know that not everybody feels the same. Those people who look at DA and the SBs and perhaps find themselves feeling a little envious/resentful of them, you have to ask yourself this question, do you really want that same success for your blog? And if you do, are you willing to work as hard as they have to achieve that success?
As a quick aside, personally I’ve always preferred Dear Author, even before The Unfortunate Chancery Stone Advertising Incident, but I wonder if I was to do a poll on which site, Romance readers preferred to visit the most out of the two of them, what the outcome would be?
OK, let me ask you anyway, if you guys had to pick either Dear Author or Smartbitches to visit, which would you pick? You can only pick one. No diplomatic bullshit answers please, just choose one.
Posted by Karen Scott · 
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