The Ultimate How To Upset Bloggers Guide

I’m just clickbaiting. This isn’t a how to upset bloggers guide. But if you did visit this post for that and you really want to know how to do it – do what you normally do which upsets people and voila!

So why the title?

Well, yesterday I had an interesting comment-chat with Rory on his post:

A Guy Called Bloke and K9 Doodlepip: Did You …

He mentioned in his post that when he first started out blogging, he inadvertently upset a couple of other bloggers. Upsetting those bloggers upset him. He made amends as best as he could, learned a lesson and incorporated that lesson in his blogging life.

In our chat I stated that:

As for upsetting bloggers, I could write a How-to-upset-bloggers post on it

as I’m particularly skilled at it due to being me and doing things my way. If I’m feeling particularly impish I might actually do that.

After I’d posted my comment, I experienced a memory rush of the times I’ve upset other bloggers.

I should probably point out that it was always by accident and never intentional. I don’t need to do it intentionally as my ability to do it unintentionally just keeps doing its thing.

Usually the upsets are small. When I first started blogging the small upsets used to mortify me… and I’d end up making things worse by trying to make things better (I’m very successful at that too), turning a small upset into a big upset.

Small upsets can be caused by:

Misunderstandings. My style of self-expression is a bit confusing, a bit mixed-up foreign to all including aliens. People take me seriously when I’m being silly, think I’m being silly when I’m serious. Don’t know what I’m talking about but are certain I insinuated something insulting about them.

Slight clash of character. I’m tactless. A bit too blunt. If saying the wrong thing was an Olympic event, I’d win a gold medal every time and be hated for ruining the competition for everyone else.

I get up people’s noses with my attitude, particularly the “we’re all equals here” stance. That gets me into trouble offline too. So does all of the above and below.

There’s a certain type of blogger who views themselves as a cut above the rest. They expect people, especially other bloggers, to respect their authoritah and be servile towards them.

When I blog-bump into one of them, they will try to put me in my place beneath them.

When that doesn’t work they go for the ignoring the insignificant pea routine.

Which is all for the best because that type of blogger also expects other bloggers to follow them loyally, LIKE every post they publish regardless of whether you actually like it or read it (it’s all about the Stats, Dahlings), tell them how fantastic they are, what a writing genius gift they have, pepper their posts with compliments.

While they don’t do any of that for other bloggers in return unless it benefits them to do so – like if the other blogger is a bigger fish.

When they deign to do so you as their inferior have to acknowledge the honour, grovel, I am not worthy, grovel, thank you for noticing me, grovel.

Narcissism by Wrong Hands

I wonder how many bloggers I’ve upset by saying all of that? The answer is probably none because the type of blogger who would be upset by that doesn’t read my posts.

Unless I link to one of their posts without realising they’re one of those types of bloggers.

That happened a few months ago. I was inspired by a post, shared the link, shared an excerpt, and explained why I had been inspired by it. That blogger followed the pingback. They didn’t read my post properly or didn’t understand what I’d said, and got upset with me in a comment. I apologised. Never heard from them again. End of that story.

My very first greatly upset with me blogger story is one I’ve told before. I find sharing my mistake-making mess to be very therapeutic.

It happened during my early days on Tumblr. I posted an illustration of theirs from their deviantart, with title, name of artist and linked it to that account.

That post went viral on Tumblr overnight, it got something like 50,000 likes and loads of reblogs, and ended up as a featured post on Tumblr’s in house blog. The Tumblr platform is faster and more manic than WordPress, and the reader is like a waterfall of images and words, you can Like a 100 posts in a minute and reblog in a blink of an eye.

I can’t recall how I found out that the artist had a Tumblr, but when I did I excitedly visited it and… their most recent post was a passive-aggressive rant about some blogger getting all this attention after having posted their illustration, and how that blogger had ruined their day, this was the worst thing which could happen to an artist and their work.

I felt sick to the stomach. Passive-aggressive attacks tend to do that to me… they also tend to make me angry. Bloody artists (my father was a professional artist, I grew up surrounded by artists, and worked in the art business… bloody artists!)!

I had followed blogging etiquette, credited her, and it was linked to source. I just hadn’t realised that she had a Tumblr, there was no link to it from her deviantart or I would have reblogged. I messaged her and apologised to her for upsetting her, explained my error, and reblogged a bunch of other illustrations from her Tumblr. She forgave me and took down her passive-aggressive post. End of that story.

After that I became more assiduous about checking if an artist had a Tumblr, which made sharing the artwork of new artists less of a pleasure and turned blogging into a chore.

Hmmm… I think that was around the time that I started writing more posts of my own. So I guess that upset blogger did me a favour.

Narcie The Narcissist’s Story
remember Narcie… she’s still being a bit special

When I started An Upturned Soul, a lot of the posts I published on here at first were ones I’d written for Tumblr. I kept both blogs going for a while… and when I published a new post, I’d do it on both blogs.

One post – A Very Human Enlightenment – led to another blogger on Tumblr writing a whole rant about it.

Which led to me writing my own post about their ranting about mine – How To Piss Off A Narcissist without even Trying. They claimed to be a narcissist and were annoyed by idiots like me who whined about narcissists.

I’d actually upset that blogger before with one of my posts on a previous Tumblr I’d had.

I’d posted an image of a painting or photograph, and I’d written what the image inspired in and meant to me under the image.

That blogger reblogged my post, but removed my words, which was a normal thing to do on Tumblr and would have been fine except they felt the need to link back to my post with an explanation about why they’d removed my words, the pains they had had to go through due to blogging etiquette, and how they wished people like me wouldn’t ruin images with unnecessary blah blah.

I made the mistake of thanking them for being so considerate… we ended up having this long messaging conversation. I avoided contacting other bloggers for a long time after that.

I don’t think they recognised me, but I did recognise them and their style of upset. End of that story.

Experiences like that, while they can be upsetting in many ways… they’re great for confronting your own issues. Seize the storm and ride the wave!

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

– Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours

The “How To Piss Off A Narcissist without even Trying” post is one of the more popular posts on this blog, it only has 16 LIKES (it upsets me when people say things like that… Ursula, you have upset me!) but it has had 76,951 views.

My blog tends to get viewed more than it gets LIKEd.

Which reminds me, my viewing stats have been rising recently but I can’t figure out why… it could be a WordPress glitch. It is super glitchy at the moment. I kind of love it more for being messier than I am (I’ve probably upset it by saying that).

Btw, you won’t upset me if you don’t read either of those posts (or this one). You won’t upset me if you don’t LIKE my posts either. The only thing which mildly upsets me is when bloggers LIKE my posts but I know they haven’t read them. It messes with my stats, don’t do it!

I’ve upset a few bloggers by not playing along with the let’s increase our blog stats by LIKE-ing each other’s posts regardless of whether we read or like them game.

And I’ve upset them by not promoting their cries for more Followers to achieve some number goal to get a notification from WordPress congratulating them for collecting X amount of bloggers.

by Sarah C Andersen

I did try to play those blogging community games, but it bothered me that I was doing that.

I felt as though I was selling my soul.

That’s a bit dramatic, but being dramatic as a blogger can be entertaining for the reader… and the drama can shine a spotlight on what may be too subtle in life outside of the blog, the post, otherwise to see.

So many of the things which have upset me about myself in my offline life, have also occurred in my online life. In many ways blogging has given me the ability to see old habits, patterns, cycles more clearly.

If you click LIKE not because you read a post, not because you liked a post, not because what was in the post interested you in any way, but to win blogging friends… and get them to LIKE you.

Doesn’t that devalue the LIKEs?

Or does it make them more valuable?

For me it made me aware that I was (once again… shall we add it to the other trillion times?) not valuing myself.

My inner narrative was telling me: The only way other bloggers will like you, accept you, let you play with them in this sandpit is if you pretend to be who you think they will like, accept, play with… which isn’t who you are.

So what happens to who you are, does it shrink a bit more, disappear a bit more, become a bit more dead inside to deal with the sadness, the grief, the increasingly angry inner screaming of please let me for once just be me openly and freely.

I don’t want to play with other bloggers if other bloggers don’t want to play with the real me.

And I don’t want to play with other bloggers who are not being who they really are, but who are pretending to be someone else to be LIKEd.

I want to play with other bloggers who are being the real them.

Let’s make authentic us cacophonous music together!

What’s that really annoying because it’s very good saying:

Bloggers often complain about society… I definitely have. BUT we are society, so we’re complaining about ourselves.

What can we do to turn our frowns upside down… ugh, I can’t believe I said that!

I have managed to upset myself as a blogger again.

This is a good place to end this mess.

Over to you!

Please give feedback of the radical honest kind to celebrate Mercury going into Aquarius and Mars in Aries Squaring Pluto in Capricorn all of which are totally effing with natal placements in my chart!

One astrologer (whose blog I love) said that today was a good day to – Get Real About How You Feel!

Do it in the comments (you can always ask me to delete the comment if you regret later).

And now for some muzak (warning: viewers maybe be upset by this either because they hate it when bloggers share videos, they love it when bloggers share videos but the content can’t be viewed, the content can be viewed but is upsetting to them in a manner the blogger who shared it didn’t consider or did consider and decided to be insensitive anyway):