More complaining about the Internet.

Of course, I'm terribly late to this party... I was catching up with some blog reading of blogs I don't read on a daily basis and realized some parts of blog and are a little too cupcakey, even for me. There's a major DIY home design blogger who recently asked her readers to 'donate' money for a major item for her home. She freely admitted to not needing the money and you would understand why if you looked at the photos of her huge, incredibly beautiful house and garden. Given that many of us know people that are in very real danger of plain not having a house, or their house literally falling apart and there being no money to fix it, you can see why this might rub some folks the wrong way. While it does rub me the wrong way too, that isn't why I'm posting this. I think part of people's problem with this was the use of the word donation, which in most people's minds means charity or collecting for a recognized charity. Perhaps contribution might be a better word to use for this situation. The blogger doesn't do a ton of advertising. I think she was thinking of it as a way to monetize the blog and I have no problem with that, so long as it's all out in the open. If a pro blogger wants to try to monetize by direct contribution, that's fine. So yes, she could have posed the request for money more gracefully, but I don't have an issue with the heart of what she was trying to do. The blogger does deliver lots of quality content with little advertising. Actually, my huge problem with this blogger was her response to the critics of it. He immediately pulled the post on this fundraiser with cries of bullying and how mean people were. Seriously? I didn't read the actual responses on her blog, as they're now gone, but I've read other bloggers response to her and it seemed reasoned, critical but not unkind. Just people questioning why they should give money to someone who obviously has so much already. Certainly not what i'd call bullying. Real bullying is out there. Feminist and lesbian bloggers getting threats of rape and murder. Bloggers having their real life names and addresses published. Credible death threats. It's driven some young kids to commit suicide. Getting called out on your privilege is not bullying. You put anything out on thte Internet, you're opening yourself up for criticism. That's just the way. Unless someone threatens violence or to silence you in some way, you don't get to call bully just because they didn't agree with you and were willing to say so. It dilutes the meaning of the word. Bullying is a very serious problem with dire, even deadly anyway, I've said my piece, so I'll just leave you with a photo of my cat.