All this has just further solidified my belief that the big blogs operate as a country club clique. You are either a member, or you aren't.

OMAT starts a kick starter asking for travel money and as you can see on the other thread DP and FTG practically trip over themselves to donate (DP even begging his readers to do so in a post). An AA employee on her personal account disagrees with OMAT, and VFW puts her on blast in a public shaming.

Bloggers look out for each other a lot more then they look out for their readers. I'll never forget when a cousin of mine had his chase account shut down for transferring saph points to a friend. He was mystified bc he had read online from TPG who had multiple posts with circles and arrows showing everyone how to do it and saying how it was ok (and how this enhanced the value of the card). This was going on when he was legitimately SPONSERED by chase with their "chase the points guy" series (or something to that effect). He reached out to TPG for help (considering it was his advice) to get his account back. Never heard back, never got a mea culpa.

But now OMAT is asking for money, and they are all backslapping each other and encouraging their readers to give. Not very frugal. Not necessarily in the best interest of their readers either. And somehow I'm skeptical that they'd do the same dog and pony show for you.

Going to FTU and the Chicago seminars was eye opening to see the cliques in action. The way some of them acted like rock star celebrities was laughable. Some of the egos were enormous. It was worth the price of admission on a humor level, that's for sure.

Long bit short, none of this stuff these last couple of days particularly surprised me. However it is refreshing to see great content still being produced in the blogging world by some of the lesser known blogs - saverocity, milenomics, travelisfree. Truly some enlightening stuff there, worth checking out