You have to be pretty. And really, if you want to hit the top, you have to be white. As I mentioned above, at one point, I joined these sites out of curiosity. Eventually I bailed on all of them for the following reasons:.
Loss of creative control. Bloggers mistakenly thought they had been taken advantage of. They were wrong. All these fashion-based social networking sites state in some manner in site terms of use that once you post a photo, you give the site licensing rights to your image. Granted, bloggers are usually thrilled to be featured, but not always.
As a professional writer, my words are my money. My blog posts and images are my intellectual property. Why would I want to give someone else control over the dissemination and use of my property, with no compensation? Or without proper notice? Why am I advertising for another site on my blog for free? These fashion-based, social networking sites tempt users with points and features and potential exposure.
They want you, bloggers, to leave the confines of the blog you pour your heart and soul into, and come post your photos on their site—so others can rate you for the infinitesimal chance that you might score a big feature, traffic, and ultimately, money. But there are other ways to connect with bloggers and grow your readership—Independent Fashion Bloggers IFB , BlogHer, Blog Catalog, and using Twitter and Stumble Upon can help boost traffic, without the need for a gimmicky sidebar widget that pulls readers away from your blog.
Plus, IFB provides free tips that help protect bloggers and show them how to improve blogs and increase readership. If you want to meet more bloggers, simply join in the discussions there. Why should I support a site that perpetuates one standard of beauty?
I believe in celebrating individuality. After I got a taste of Weardrobe, Chictopia, etc. I am more than my face, my race, my clothes, my hair. Before delving into this, there are a couple other things to consider. First, on all the sites, featured bloggers are chosen through some combination of public scoring and editorial selection. Second, my study of Lookbook. You should know that I made assumptions about ethnicity based on names, appearance, and geographic location.
Most participants listed their ages, and could be classified as young age 15 to age The race and ethnicity of participants was obvious except in a handful of cases where there was some racial ambiguity, which forced me to draw an unverified conclusion. But this variable is of little significance, because my overwhelming finding on all the sites was as follows:. The site provides the following audience statistics:. Clever, huh? In the same way that popular outfits are voted to the top, the users who post them get increases in karma.
What is average karma? On the NEW page, the Karma Filter uses average karma in part to determine how much each look is shown. What is hype? But click through the archives for any given week and the photos speak for themselves.
The overwhelming majority of members in the Top and Leader sections are young, thin, white Caucasian women. Lots of hypes for lots of PYWTs—pretty, young, white, things. Cece—who I would never consider overweight or unattractive, in fact, quite the opposite—included the following screen capture of her own outfit post, with zero Hypes on Lookbook. I know Cece is not alone in her bewilderment and feelings of rejection.
Unfortunately, she is in the minority demographic for these sites, and consequently, very few other members identify with her, hence no hypes.
And no matter how we try to change it, it is human nature to identify with what we know. Students in a classroom or lunchroom naturally and unconsciously segregate themselves by gender and race. We do have a permission to use content for our own purposes, but we have never done this in a way that harms our users or profits at their expense.
Our community is nothing without our members, and we know that in order to succeed, we need to do right by our members, not take advantage of them. We try to elevate our top members and hook them up with new opportunities, not detract from their success. The widgets we provide our users allow them to drive traffic to their own looks or profiles.
Similarly, on the front page of LB, we feature a Facebook widget for our Facebook page in a prominent position as well. This is because our following on Facebook helps us stay connected with our audience and having an active presence on Facebook makes LB more successful.
We see ourselves similarly as a tool for bloggers. An active presence on LB is surely not necessary to be a successful blogger, but it definitely does not hurt. This is stated explicitly in our TOS. When we get wind of younger users, someone on our community team will eventually gently let them know that they cannot have an active account until they are of age.
To exclude people who wish to participate in the community, within our terms of service and community guidelines, would be similar to the very sort of discriminatory exclusion that this article stands against, would it not? I hope that this establishes more clearly our intentions and values.
I am happy to discuss any of the issues above in further detail, and I can be reached via email at yuri [at] lookbook. Vahni — I do ask that you re-post this response as a separate post so your readers can know how seriously we take the well-being of our members and our community.
When she's not writing or trolling Instagram, she loves spending time with her Aussie husband and furbaby, Macy. On negative comments and user control over their comments We obviously do not encourage nasty comments, and actually have a very strict policy when it comes to trolls or offensive people that leave personal insults or negative feedback that is not constructive.
Also, all users already do indeed have complete control over their comments. On the notion that we want our users to abandon their blog and use LB exclusively We have never tried to encourage any of our members to give up their blogs. On the widgets we provide our users to promote their LB accounts The widgets we provide our users allow them to drive traffic to their own looks or profiles. On the age limit of membership on our site.
Many thanks and best wishes. Share 0. Tweet 0. Whoops, that's against the rules. I have 5 views of an outfit, whereas you can only have 3 max.
And so I do a differently shaped crop, to make the picture wider. Still too tall. And finally I roughly crop in a square so you can see my gloriously messy room, and it finally goes through. Did I mention they make you go through all the posting steps editing the photo, etc. This took me about 1. I am slowly going to die trying to promote myself. Also-- I asked some questions in the forum, and from what I've seen of these forums, they move slowly.
Or rather, people prefer to ask other people to vote or comment on their photos or post in silly topics like "if I were a Christian Louboutin, which Louboutin would I be? Also, they're mean places. There's a snitching thread guys. I guess it's OK to self-moderate in the community to an extent, but people are snarking hard-core. For example: "omg, that Amy girl keeps posting pictures of herself with that duckface!! I think I just have some culture shock moving from YLF to other fashion forums populated with a very different audience.
Also I can't get over how hard it is to post a photo and it's made me so cranky. So sorry. I was thinking about doing something similar, but now I'm kind of put off and afraid! I'd read before that these blogs reject photos that aren't "pretty" enough, but it seems very user unfriendly to boot.
It is such a shame that people comport themselves so poorly online. That weird site, Hot or Not?
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