A lot of the bloggers whom I follow are writing every day in November and I love having all of the new posts to read each day (see my sidebar, their new posts pop up at the top of the list). It's inspiring me to write more, but about what? I have been blogging here for almost 16 years, starting right after the birth of my fourth child. I blog to keep the memories archived, print a book each year with all of the posts and photos, and hope it proves to my children just how much I loved them. Ha! At my funeral reception, they can split up the years of books amongst them...which means I should blog until I have a number of years easily divisible by 7. Looks like I'll be blogging for five more years! Today let's discuss some current pet peeves.
I keep seeing one of my biggest pet peeves on social media lately. To be honest, I have a lot of pet peeves, as is common amongst Type A people. Man, I wish I could be Type B or C or whatever the less neurotic type is that doesn't overthink everything and need things to be organized and orderly in order to feel sane. But alas I am not, and so back to that pet peeve. It's when people use the word LOOSE when they mean LOSE. Like "Loose weight on this diet!" No, people can LOSE weight on your diet and then their clothes might be LOOSE but if you confuse LOOSE with LOSE I just might LOSE it.
I also get really annoyed at influencers who are just way too young or inexperienced at whatever it is they are pretending to be professionals in. I don't want to see a mom of two young kids who is 27 years old telling me how to parent my kids. I want to hear about that from a mom who has raised her children to adulthood and has a wealth of knowledge to speak from. But the reason that you don't often hear from moms like that is because they understand that the more they "mom" and the older their kids get, the less they actually know about parenting. The young ones think they are perfect parents and the older ones just know how far from perfect they are.
I don't like it when young models push anti-wrinkle serums (that serum did not take away your wrinkles - you just don't have any yet!) or when fitness influencers talk about how "this one move will transform your body" when it's like um no, you are in the best shape, and work out for hours and eat perfectly, and someone who's out of shape and does ten minutes of crunches each day isn't going to magically transform into you. Be honest!
Even more annoying are those influencers who are soooooo vague and want you to message them to join their business and be able to quit your job and make tons of money at home. They claim to travel around the world and work just a few hours a day. Like what is the job exactly? How come you never talk about the job and only try to get people to join you? Is this a cult?
Related are the posts that tease you with a good recipe or nice outfit and then make you comment a certain word for them to then DM you the link or recipe. Just post the recipe for all to see! I don't want to have to jump through all of these hoops to learn how to make a low calorie version of orange chicken. But I really do want that recipe.
Come to think of it, it's really social media *in general* that annoys me and that's why I have gotten off of it personally. It just always left me feeling icky. However, since opening the Ice Cream Cottage, I had to set up a couple social media accounts which have been very helpful in advertising, but not helpful to my hapiness when I start scrolling. I think I'm much better at providing content than consuming it, which I could overthink about how that makes me a despicable person but let's just wrap it up there. I'd love to hear about your current pet peeves!
Ha -- your vision of the kids divvying up your posts after your funeral cracks me up. But I'm glad we get at least five more years of your posts! I am 100% with you about loose. As an editor, it is one of the words people routinely misspell -- I think because spellcheck doesn't catch it. "Lead" is right up there, too, when people use it instead of "led." As in, "Last week, I lead the kids' field trip." And I think I like this post idea so much I am going to borrow it from you!
ReplyDeletewhat company do you use to print your posts in a book?
ReplyDeleteI've used Blog2Print but there are others out there, just google blog to book :)
DeleteYou make some good points here. I'm not on social media much, but I find if I start scrolling on FB I end up down a rabbit hole and have nothing to show for it but frustration with myself. I cringe when I see people misuse a word. I'm laughing at the young moms giving advice. So true. My post for tomorrow actually inclused a few things that I hate. Like cranked up AC. I don't want to drag a winter coat with me when I go places in the summer.
ReplyDeleteDo you print all the year’s posts, or pick a number of favorites? I’ve thought about doing that, but I’m so behind now and in the early years I blogged almost every day. So it feels overwhelming. But I would love to have hard copies. (I’m still wary of the Internet, and imagine it swallowing things up so they get lost forever! 🤣)
ReplyDeleteI print them all except any reviews that I've done. Honestly it's just peace of mind to have them in hard copies, like all my work hasn't gone to waste, but nobody ever looks at them. They are just sitting on the shelf for the future. Some years I had to make into 2 books because of how much I wrote back then. You could always combine years of less writing into one book, you pick the dates and then can get rid of the posts you don't want. I wait until there's a 30% or 40% off sale and then order the years I'm missing.
DeleteI have the same pet peeves as you. People trying too hard to be influencers when they know next to nothing. Another one, you didn't speak about is people trying to be SO MOTIVATIONAL and SO INSPIRATIONAL and I personally know there is nothing inspirational about this person; they're more of a hot mess than I.
ReplyDeleteOh I agree with so many of these!!! Especially can’t stand the fashion influencers who share a really cute outfit but then want you to DM them some code word in order to find out where the jeans are from. No!!! I won’t do it! It’s just so annoying.
ReplyDeleteAnd that is so cool that you’ve printed all of your blog posts! I would love to do this but am afraid it would cost soooo much because I have written a lot and many earlier posts were pretty long and/or include a lot of photos. I did print a book of one of our family vacation recaps that I love. How many pages does one book of all your posts for a year end up being?
I'll tell you my pet peeve: when someone posts a fabulous photo and I comment on it to be nice, and then they DM me to tell me they're selling this special serum/ makeup/ what have you and would I like to join their team. OMG I JUST WANTED TO BE NICE. But also, strongly agree about people who comment about raising children when their children are babies. Or they don't have children at all. I had someone tell me how I should be raising my boys to be good men, including getting them to do something specific, and this woman did NOT have children, yet she implied my kids would not eventually be good fathers. Thanks, I've got this covered. Sheesh!
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