Thursday, September 15, 2011

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Many of you (all 16 of you ;p) have probably been aware of what has happened with the Anthroholic blog and her fraudulent personal shopping services. I feel a little bit out of place posting about this since I'm a very new Anthro blogger and I'm pretty unknown, but I have been an Anthro blog reader for a very, very long time and so I've been reading about all of the events and feel the need to reflect. 

I almost had a transaction with her a couple of months ago. She reached out to me when I posted an APB on an item. She had this item and was selling it at a reasonable price but she was being incredibly pushy about getting payment right away due to her travel plans. Something about her polite pushyness, her unwillingness to look at other solutions and her convenient and ready excuses about travel plans sent red flags to me. I desperately wanted this item but I did not feel good about the circumstances and so after sending emails back and forth for days I reluctantly passed and purchased this item on ebay instead for $100 more. I'm really glad I followed my instincts because until yesterday I felt really foolish for having paid more for this item on ebay.

I just wanted to say how impressed I am by some of the very honest and genuine posts that are being made by her betrayed blogger friends. It's hard to put yourself out there to readers and share your self in such an honest way, it's so easy to hide behind outfit posts and posts about 'things' in the midst of something so hugely betraying and very public. It's hard to take a stand against a friend when you see them behave in such a wrong, and totally incongruent to the person you know behavior. Especially when you don't have the full birds eye view of events and you really want to be able to give them the benefit of the doubt. I just want to say how much I respect the integrity of these bloggers and I respect their words.

These types of things happen in real life every day and sometimes we have a hard time seeing the ugly truth until it really hits us in the face and is too hard to avoid, and sometimes it's just a million tiny offences that never quite hit us in the face. It can make us feel bad and very jaded in people in general and that robs us of being able to experience other more genuine friendships. It felt really good to read these posts this morning and to know these bloggers are sharing their real selves and not projections of a fantasy they want us to believe. I may have had a change of heart about how I shop and my consumer habits but I have not had a change of heart about reading these ladies blogs. 

Some of the ones I've read so far:
Anthro Closet Chaos
The Top Drawer
The British Anthropologist
The Stylish Soprano
Effortless Anthropologie