It's a whole different world out there on-line...

Today I’m feeling…confused. And not feeling the love for the corporate on-line world that is trying to infitrate the blogosphere. Received an email from some random guy at askmen (huge, nothing special, testosterone-filled, on-line mag) offering to trade links with my tiny fashion blog. Odd.

They also wanted me to link to a news-y piece they were running, pegging Catherine McNeill as the upcoming model to watch. Apart from the fact that I ran a similar piece on Miss McNeill nearly a year on ago this blog (just before Testino put her under contract), why does a mid-market on-line magazine, aimed at men, with overtly male-friendly, women as objects, content, think I’d be interested in sending my readers to read an uninformed piece of page filler? My intelligent & informed bloggers are hardly going to consider them as an expert source of opinion, especially when it's not her work in the fashion industry that they are interested in...

(They didn’t help their cause when, following my jokey reply, pointing out they were a bit slow off the mark on the news front, and attaching a link to my own year-old story, the guy replied all miffed, saying:
" Yes well im sending you our feature page on Catherine McNeil with the possibility of a link exchange, no need for unnecessary insults"

Right. That's obviously what I was doing. Personally insulting him. Obviously.

Surely it must have occurred to him that if (ethical) bloggers are going to link to features they need to be pertinent, interesting, relevant AND up to date?

(And now here's a proper insult for him: Dimwit.)