Sponsorship/Embedded Marketing/Paid Posts
I got youtube premium awhile ago and went down a rabbit-hole around the ethics of social media. Various commentators noted that people who produce social media content should be transparent about sponsorships and so on. And if people are just creating commercials, they should be up front about that. I like the idea of transparency and I'm on board with people being transparent about whether or not their posts are sponsored. My youtube rabbit-hole phase made me think more broadly about my ethics as a blogger. I have had a very small number of books given to me because I am a blogger (a long time ago, not now) and one time a long time ago I did have one of those buy me a coffee buttons. What I learned from these experiences is that I do not like monetizing my blog. I found that it hampered my creativity. My blog is not a business. It is a hobby. It is fun. It is freedom. It is pure and genuine self-expression. I do not want my blog to be work. I'm very lucky because my work sustains me, and so at this time I don't need to monetize my blog. And so none of my posts are sponsored, and there is no paid content in this work. Nor am I currently seeking sponsors or promotional partners.
No Negative Reviews
One time years ago I posted about the book Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox and someone DM'd me on Twitter (back when Twitter was a mostly fun place) to say that a more famous Indigenous person had written a negative review of Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox and I think that they were implying that I should modify/take down my post. I stand by my position that Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox is an adorable book. I used to keep it in the backseat pocket of my car so that if small children were in my car they could read it, and then eventually I let someone keep it. Anyhow, this very brief Twitter interaction made me think about the concept of negative reviews. The title of my blog includes "Happy Place", and I have always envisioned it as a space where I celebrate things that I love. And so if I am sharing something on my blog, I am sharing it because I believe that it is worthy of time and attention. As such, there are no review which are in the spirit of "no one should read this book" or "cancel this author."
That does not mean, though, that I only provide positive promotion. This is not a commercial Sometimes a work provokes me. It causes me to ask questions, unpack things, or sit with discomfort. Writing helps me process things. When something provokes me, I chew on it. I try to understand, "what is it inside of me that this has woken up?" I try to make it make sense to me. In my opinion, "this made me think" is high praise, especially for creative works. And so sometimes there is that kind of processing happening in my posts. "No negative reviews" also does not mean that I uncritically agree with everything all the time. If someone is claiming to speak on my behalf or represent me, I believe that I have the right to speak back to that work. That being said, even if I am provoked by a piece or speaking back to a piece, if I am making a post about it, that means that on the balance of things I like the work. And if I create a post, my intention is to draw attention to the work and encourage people to seek out the work. If I encountered a work that I found troubling or confusing or problematic, I just would not blog about it. And actually, sometimes I will journal about things when I don't like them, and through journaling, sometimes I work out the tensions that I have with a work, and then eventually I arrive at a place where I am like "okay, wait, now that I have resolved that tension, I actually do like this work."
There is such an amazing bounty of good work out there that I will never be at a place where I say, "gosh, I ran out of things that I love so I guess I will blog about things that I dislike now."
In the Spirit of Celebrating Indigenous Works
Overall, when I post, I do so in hopes that my work supports Indigenous writers, artists, film-makers, and scholars. I hope that by drawing attention to various texts, I am creating curiosity in others to explore further.
In the Spirit of Furthering Conversations and Exploring Ideas
For myself, when I post, I am often moving my thinking along with respect to ideas that I encounter or conversations happening around me. Sometimes I will analyze something, and try to examine it closely, because doing so helps my own thinking. A long time ago I had a situation where I made a chart and posted it and the author reached out... I cant remember what exactly she said but the gist was that in the act of creating a chart, I had demonstrated that I did not understand the spirit of her work. Here is where a complexity arises. As a reader, I am pursuing my own self-development by writing blog posts. I take a text and slot it into my own little world of meaning. I am playing with it and interpreting it according to whatever is happening inside of my head on that given day. These posts are reactions - not promotional blurbs. So, if you are an author and you feel misunderstood by my reflections - apologies in advance. I hope that this does not hamper your ability to create. Please, keep writing.
Inside the Critics' Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times
I listened to a podcast by Phillipa Chong who interviewed book reviewers, and the podcast was so interesting that I read the book. She interviewed people who wrote book reviews professionally, as in, they got paid to write reviews for newspapers and their reviews were paid. I am not in this class, but it was still an interesting read. One of the motivations that she identified for reviewing books as "self cultivation." When reviewers read a book in order to review it, they had a deeper experience with the book, and reading in order to review the book helped them cultivate their skills as readers and writers. That is definitely one of my motivators for blogging. Anyhow, one of the trends that she noted was that reviewers felt free to punch up (write opinionated reviews of people more famous than the reviewer) but reluctant to punch down (write opinionated reviews of new authors). They did this because they wanted to support new authors, and were worried that if they wrote anything but flowerly reviews of new authors' book, then it could harm the new authors. However, the effect of this tendency to only have strong opinions on established authors is that it actually reinforces the high status of already famous people, and reduces attention on new authors. The reason why is that we are in an attention economy. Opinionated reviews grab peoples attention, stir things up, and actually result in more people talking about the book that was the subject of the opinionated review. So, an opinionated review can increase attention on a book, increase conversation about a book, and drive sales. Whereas when someone writes a flowerly review which is bland is forgettable, people read it and move on with their lives. She calls this "The Conservative Effect." I think this is so interesting, because as a blogger, I do not see my role as simply marketing books. I'm here to share my genuine human experience as a reader. That's what sets me apart from the robots. Reading her book affirmed for me that it is okay to have opinions on books. I still don't post negative reviews, but after reading her book, I feel more comfortable about posts where I did include a hot take about one or two things inside of a book.
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