On Bloggers’ Intentions and the Adversarial Nature of this Space

Apparently, one of my posts has consistently reappeared on the BoardingArea front page over the past couple of months.

First, let me say that I have no direct control over what appears on the BoardingArea front page. My blog is not even a BoardingArea blog (I am a lesser Prior2Boarding blog), so the only times when I get the ability to have my posts on the BoardingArea front page are when I’m a “featured” blogger, which only happens about once every six months.

Second, do people really think that I’m intentionally reposting the exact same content over and over again? If you take a second to think, this seems highly improbable:
1) The post only appears once on my blog.
2) The post retains its original timestamp in its url, and all of the comments are retained.
3) If you follow this blog in any method (e.g. Feedly), this post is not reappearing.
These three facts (the first two of which are apparent to any visitor of the blog) indicate that no, this post is not being reposted. I do not know why it is reappearing on BoardingArea repeatedly.

More generally, I don’t understand why so many people in this space assume malicious intent on behalf of bloggers, particularly for those bloggers who do not blog as a primary source of income. There is huge variance in BoardingArea blogs in terms of readership, the amount of time devoted to the blogs, and income, and by and large, most people are not intentionally malicious.

Yes, there’s lots of bad content out there. But if you don’t like something on the internet, it’s really easy to not click on it/stop following it/not read it. If I didn’t like Thai food, I wouldn’t go to a Thai restaurant every day and complain loudly about why the restaurant is so terrible and out to get me because they serve Thai food and Thai food is terrible (for the record: I think Thai food is delicious).

So if you don’t like a blog, don’t read it–my life is certainly better for no longer reading a number of the most “popular” blogs. It’s sad that the miles and points community has become so adversarial that hordes of people seem to be waiting to pounce on bloggers and assume the worst in them. The next time you feel this way, I encourage you to stop reading whatever it is that’s making you angry, go outside, and do something more productive. And if you find that a certain source is continuously doing this (my blog included!), you should probably stop going to that source.