Sorry

A nice gal who has offered me encouragement and advice is going through a hard time right now. Boy if I could even begin to explain some of my emotional ups and downs, relationships on and relationship off, well, it would take a long time to even start. Suffice it to say - I've had my share of heart aches - and caused some too. You don't get to this point in your life without experiencing or causing any pain. But whatever has happened - I've learned from it and moved on and in a lot of ways I am stronger now than at any other time of my life. This gal is younger than me and most likely has a lot more to go through before she gets here - but she will. She'll learn from every good emotion as well as bad - and she will keep moving - getting better and stronger with each step. I wish her well ...

On another note entirely - I just visited the Etsy forums and I must admit I am astonished. People are so nice and so helpful - but God help the newbie who asks a question out of a lack of knowledge about how things work - and they can be beaten to a pulp. Sadly tonight a brand new seller set up her shop yesterday, listed her items today, then had the audacity to ask in a forum thread if it was possible to have a heart removed from her shop. She was jumped on - poor lady. Not everyone was mean, but there were quite a few people who were unmerciful and it was really disgraceful. Someone posted and said that some of their artist friends laugh at them for having a shop on Etsy because of the "middle school" atmosphere. That atmosphere turned into a stench tonight.

Turns out the poor lady mistook someone's avatar as spam - thought it was someone playing a joke - didn't know what calling out was - much less that she was doing it. At about PAGE 20 of the thread giving her a pounding and poking all kinds of fun at her expense - she emptied her shop, posted one more time with an explanation of why she had asked the question - and took her toys and went home.

Is this what we want Etsy to be? I am SO new compared to a lot of people but I recognize certain people already who are all too willing to jump on top of the pile if there is someone being crushed at the bottom. I won't buy from those people. They can say - well they don't need people who can't take a joke etc. Well - that's their choice. But I don't want to push people away (especially customers) and I certainly don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. It is really naive to think that people WON'T judge your shop by the personality they see exhibited in the forums.

Amazing. Amazing and sad. We don't know what that seller could have brought to Etsy. Could have brought some established customers of her own who might have looked around and become all around Etsy customers. Could have brought some good ideas, a fresh outlook - could have been someone who would have featured people on her blog all the time- or been great at promoting Etsy as a whole.

And she just might have been a really nice person besides. But now we'll never know. Sad.