Does anyone else get really fed up with bloggers and their never ending spending?

[NeonPinkNails]

I guess this is an AIBU but it's S&B related so posting here.

I am getting really tired of bloggers paying lip service to 'buying from the high street and sharing ideas for making the most of the clothes you've got' or whatever it is they claim, when in reality their job seems to consist of buying stupid amounts of ridiculously overpriced ugly stuff that your average reader hasn't a hope of affording and getting loads of freebies.

I know any of us could give it a go if we had a rich husband but I just wish they'd be a bit more honest instead of dressing up hours spent browsing fashion websites or jetting off to exotic locations as 'research' and expecting people to read what amounts to their own personal wish list.

Well not me any more. Anyone else?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2745053-To-think-that-buying-stuff-is-getting-out-of-hand

I think the whole blogger thing just annoys me because many of them clearly don't need to work yet write (often badly) about going shopping, 'researching' trends and attending fancy press dos as though it's in any way comparable to people working hard in actual jobs earning money to pay for their own clothes. Pictures of their latest designer buy slipped in between all the high street stuff that's supposed to be good enough for the rest of us just rubs salt in the wound.

Don't get me started on the bloggers/YouTubers that teens are obsessed with - I've had to sit through one too many Zoella shopping 'haul' pretending to be interested because DD is. Self-absorbed doesn't even come close .

I love style blogs, but you do have to take them with a pinch of salt - when they tell you that this or that is the best they've ever tried, they'll never use anything else - until next week when they're promoting another product.

I guess that if bloggers don't spend, they wouldn't have anything to write about.

I tend to gravitate towards bloggers who have normal lives and budgets and blog as a hobby.

It's been a while since we've any had threads on this! I no longer look at any bloggers because they've just become an extension of fashion PR. Leaving aside all the non disclosure issues, this has made them very, very dull.

It's a shame the earlier bloggers were a really interesting and talented bunch but that's the PR industry for you and one day, it's going to eat itself. Until then, I've gone back to watching people in the street and on the bus for my style ideas - far more interesting and doesn't make me nearly as cross.

Floisme you're so right, it really is a well oiled machine nowadays, everyone flogging the same brands creating bland unoriginal content.

People watching in real life also made me realise that most of the "looks" you see on blogs and Instagram actually don't exist in reality. They are so contrived, hardly wears head to toe trends. Outfits are far more interesting with a bit of personal style and individuality included. Or at the other end of scale, people dress for practicality, and you know what? They world doesn't explode if you do the school run in scruffy joggers!

"hardly ANYONE wears head to toe trends" ..and other typos...can't type today..

The make up ones annoy me a bit. I go on there to try and learn some different techniques and all I ever see is them promoting a new load of make up.
Stopped watching them now!
Then yesterday I was looking for some reviews about a certain product and could only find tutorials about how to apply it !

Yanbu (I know it's not AIBU but you aren't).

Can't comment on the fashion blogs/vlogs as I don't read or watch them but I do follow some that focus on make up/beauty. There seems to be a glut of bland upper-middle class twenty somethings producing the same wishy-washy, beige-y, lifestyle slash beauty slash fitness flummery at the moment. And don't get me started on the ridiculous 20 step skincare routines hawking whatever high-end brand is doing the rounds. Or the bizarre obsession with 'clean eating'.

" expecting people to read what amounts to their own personal wish list"
So don't read it then. Simple.

Well I'm not intending to any more as I said, that's what the thread was about .

I rarely look at them anymore. Boring. Just long lists of links to polyester crap.

You don't need that many followers to make as much per year as an office job and they don't just get free stuff, they get paid to instagram or film items. Some of them get 10k for a mention for example. I just checked a random Youtuber on Companies House and her "company" has over a million pounds in assets.

I think they have become just another marketing channel and only very few can do that successfully.

Some of them are an interesting mix. Comebackmum for example clearly has very unique content but then she has to churn out a product review or two to pay the bills.

I'm in Scandinavia and quite a few bloggers here are quite open about how they make a living. One of them for example blogged about a digital marketing workshop that she attended recently. The bloggers there were taught to use the formula AIDA to make readers desire whatever they were marketing. So if posts you've read recently seem a bit cookie-cutter, the chances are it is because the blogger has been to a seminar like that and is using a readynade template for her posts

I don't mind them. Prefer real life or indeed online style chat though 😉

Me too. I don't expect dialogue from a lovely glossy copy of Vogue but somehow I do when I'm online - and if there's chat to be had I want two-way and info specific to me, not just babble.

Fashion is all about the pictures anyway, and I prefer them on paper. Lovely shiny sheets which smell alcoholically of ink. Yum.

I read a lot of blogs, and a lot of magazines - I'm under no illusions about how blogs work in terms of PR, affiliate marketing and so on. I think the landscape of journalism and the landscape of marketing are both changing as print becomes less and less popular. I came across this post the other day which I thought was interesting:

www.notdressedaslamb.com/2016/09/why-all-bloggers-need-to-take-a-short-blogging-break-now-and-then.html

That is an interesting post. Two sides - as a business you need to keep on top of cash flow so was she not thinking as s business and being too nice?

On the other hand do the people paying her not see her as a proper business and think they can rip her off. Is the "hobby blog" what most people think?

On the OPs point when they all started flogging the same shoe brand at the same time that was when I gave up!!

They are just the same as magazines. Where there is an issue is teenagers and kids and vulnerable people who don't necessarily distinguish between airbrushed aspiration and reality.
I think they are part of a toxic culture of spending, getting into debt and wanting to be perfect. Fine for adults for fun but bloody awful for teenage girls.

Judydreamsofhorses interesting article, lending even more credibility to the "rich husbands " argument. Of course there are successful bloggers who earn £££, but for most of the 40something or mummy bloggers that are frequently mentioned on MN, it's a hobby that may or may not make money, but most certainly will not affect whether the mortgage will be paid.