You look around at the pictures on the wall, the colour of the carpet and the furniture. Perhaps it is not to your taste but you are in somebody else's house so you bite your tongue and show good manners, keeping some of your thoughts to yourself. It's only right.
You don't start criticising everything from the moment you walk in and you don't start taking over the conversation either. If you simply do not like being in that front room then you should get up, make your apologies and leave. You do not have to come back - ever. Equally, if the blog owner effectively asks you to leave then maybe it's best to just go without creating a scene. There are many other front rooms you can visit.
Remember that the owner of the blog may have been nurturing their place for years. Visitors will have come and gone. There will have been many stories and ups and downs. There's history. We should respect that.
The owner of the house will be different from you or me. Would we really want to live in a world where everyone is just the same? Just clones with the same outlook on the world. Accept they are different and delight in that.
It's easy to judge. To brood quietly in the corner of the parlour - not saying a thing - just taking mental notes, gathering evidence to confirm your prejudices. Anybody can do that. Much harder to host a gathering in your own front room, to put yourself out there and actually say what you think.
In visiting other bloggers' front rooms, I may have made some mistakes. However, I can say in all honesty that since I entered Blogworld sixteen years ago, I have sought to be a pleasant guest. I would like to think that my visits have been coloured with interest, compassion and good humour. I am not looking to score points or to "dig" at people. What's the point of that?
When you visit someone else's front room, smile and show polite respect. Perhaps after you have really got to know the host you can suggest changes to the wallpaper and ask searching questions about the pictures on the wall but that only comes with time and mutual trust.
Sadly, I know that there will be at least two people out there in this big wide blogging world who will now be ferociously searching for "evidence" that what I have said here is at odds with my past conduct. To them I would say - why not just be nice? After all, it's nice to be nice. Look for positives, not negatives nor chinks in the other person's armour. That's not nice.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://beefgravy.blogspot.com/2020/12/visiting.html
