“So… what do you even get out doing a blogger feature?”

The title is something a family member asked me back when I was stateside. My family and a few friends are vaguely aware that I blog about Japanese stuff. Mostly the twin, since my biggest posts do feature them indirectly. (They’re cool with it by the way.) The rest are aware in the way that I might ask them a question or two to help structure a post, or what to include for context, etc. I’ve asked a few of them if I can summarize conversations we’ve had about a topic, etc and most of them are chill with the idea.

The the sea of a million of other conversation topics, my blog rarely comes up and honestly that’s fine. Which is why the above question startled me a lot when the person asked. They had shown little interest in my blog – they aren’t a JPop Culture consumerist like me. They were polite and encouraging in the “glad you found a way to still write thoughts and feelings and find a little community”, etc. I had mentioned I was working on my Monthly Favorites in conversation, they naturally asked what it was, what I got out of doing it aside from satisfaction, etc.

At the end, they asked if it was a networking thing. Like back in ye old days of Instagram, like for like, follow for follow, etc. I told them no that it wasn’t really a reciprocal thing. I wasn’t expecting anything in return for featuring anyone. Most people were usually nice enough to say thanks or something, but I never expected that sort of thing either. I just liked the post enough to share it on my platform so hopefully other’s would read and engage with it.

Their face looked really puzzled. So I was putting out a post once a month, featuring other bloggers, with the expectation of absolutely nothing in return. Just my own personal satisfaction of writing about other people’s posts in the hope some of my audience would go take a look at them. I said yes, that technically that summary was correct. They got even more puzzled and asked if it was considered charitable.

It was my turn to get a little confused because I hardly considered a blogger feature an act of charity. So I said no, very few of the blogs I feature are in need of charity (I didn’t want to split hairs about patreons or ko-fi) that some had way bigger platforms then me, others smaller. I don’t really look at numbers, it’s a content thing. I just wanted to share what I had found interesting in case other people found it interesting – for free.

I thought that was a satisfactory answer. I don’t know if they did because we then had a several second staring competition before more or less nonverbally agreeing to drop it. I wrapped up my writing, and they puttered off to do something else. It was a conversation I had largely forgotten until a few weeks ago.

I think it’s an interesting thing that relates back to blogging in general, but I’ll stick to theme: what do I get out of writing a blogger feature i.e. Monthly Favorites?

Well, I technically already answered this question. It’s just personal satisfaction in sharing posts, videos, etc of stuff I enjoyed for reason or another within that month. I call it favorites, but I don’t always like the posts. The majority of the time I do, but I try to share posts that were thought provoking, or an interesting concept. I might not always agree with the opinion expressed but I think it’s not a dangerous thing, and should be considered by others.

A lot of the time I feature posts that I thought were so well written and interesting, but I didn’t quite know how to comment on it. That happens to me a lot as of late and I always feel super bad just leaving a like, subscribing to the blogger, but not commenting. And just commenting how cool I thought their post was feels a little empty to me. So the next best thing aside from that is sharing that post somehow. Hence the feature.

That’s just a little about me and about how my Monthly Favorites works. I don’t expect anything from it, I just launch it into the blogging void and see what echos back at me! Anywho, I’ll see you guys when I get back into it.

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