Over the last few months, the blogging world has changed a lot. There seems to be bad vibes, people bitching and arguing left right and centre and just plain nastiness and it's starting to become a community that isn't very welcoming. Bloggers have prided themselves for years on the warm, welcoming community we have and unfortunately there's a few that spoil it. I'm not saying everyone should get on, you can't like everyone and that's life but you can't spend your time worrying about what others think and that's what got me thinking about blogging cliques.
It comes up in blogging chats so often and from looking in from the outside it seems many have a pretty poor understanding of the difference between blogging cliques and blogging friends. I have met a group of girls through blogging that I would now class as great friends, we go out shopping, we go for dinner or coffee and we generally just hang out and spend time together. Our blogs are our mutual interest and not the be all and end all of our friendships. Time and time again I have tweets or emails from people saying they're being left out, why aren't they invited and why are we so cliquey. It really pisses me off because when we hang out, it's not a blogging meetup, It's friends meeting for coffee. You don't see me pestering you over meeting your old uni friends and not inviting me, it's exactly the same and it shocks me that people who are essentially strangers have the audacity to act like it and think that there is nothing wrong with their actions.
When did people get so rude? Or has social media just highlighted it even more? I don't know. I see the most of it on Twitter, bloggers calling each other out because they weren't invited somewhere or they feel they were left out. These people aren't friends moaning, they're strangers and it's so sad to see people's warped sense of entitlement. It's a completely different ball game when it comes to blogging events or meet ups and sometimes I feel like that's where the confusion lies. Time and time again this happens and it's almost turned into a pity party to enable people to bitch about it, which in turn makes everyone else ask what's wrong and a tiny irrelevant problem gets turned into a huge deal. I'm not saying blogging cliques don't happen because occasionally they do but before you label genuine friends as a 'clique', think twice.
