I'm sure this has been said many times already, but reading a few of the ill-conceived "defense" of blogs is just irritating and i like to hear myself talk, as do most of you, obviously, so here goes.

yes, many of us benefit from blogs.
yes, blogs that get a lot of traffic ruin deals. here's why.

many people are inherently lazy or aren't interested in travel to the point that most FTers are (but everyone loves a deal!). if a blogger does the work and mines through 20 pages of FT topics, carefully selecting choice deals-- then writes out the steps one by one (with screenshots!), they essentially give deal/trick access to the billions of dumb and/or lazy (myself included) people out there, who in turn share it with friends and extended families of dumb and/or lazy people. case in point: read the comments of many of the blog entries out there. "how i search for _______ ????? how i do this???" yeah. there are people who are even dumb and or lazy too make it work when it's written out for them.

and here is why i can totally commiserate with the FTers who have been on this board for ages.

yes, the info is free and open to the public. but the INTENT of sharing this info was never to have information go viral. it was to share it among a community of like-minded people, and there were silent "rules" in place that you would get called out on (e.g. try not to call the credit card company asking about workarounds because it MIGHT just be possible the company isn't aware of said workaround- i've seen people doing just that, in blog comments too)

when you break these deals out of the community and put it into a nice package for everyone (let's call them normies) on a regular basis, the consequences are two fold (and probably a gajillion fold): more people = things sell out faster (which honestly isn't the biggest issue here), and you put that info into the hands of a population that doesn't understand what discretion is, and doesn't care what the consequences are if they abuse it. exhibit A: oh you mean I can message Chase repeatedly and ask them to bump my 25k bonus to a 30k bonus that wasn't even a real promotion in the first place?? let's everybody message them at once, I really need those 5k points!

so regardless of what is ethical or practical, the fact that bloggers take the original intent of this board and take it to a whole. notha. leval-- the fact that they make dolla dolla billz off of it-- and the fact that their readers indirectly notify credit/banking companies of every post (ergo killing deals left and right)...

THAT is what is irritating for most folks and i really don't see how you can argue against the fact that, to the FTers who find the deals, and make nothing from it, it is almost as annoying as when you sit next to someone on the airplane and they start expelling gas, and they think you can't hear it except you can totally hear it. also it smells. that isn't a challenge to prove me wrong by the way so don't spout your fallacies at me, i don't care.

and some of those comments were jokes and hyperboles. see if you can find them all.