Me, myself, Instagram, and a summer of droppings and (unrelated!) broken things

"Hercules against the Hydra" ~ via Wikimedia Commons (Wolfgang Sauber)

Goodness, it is has been over a month since I wrote my last post. That doesn't surprise me though, for I have been besieged, beset, and beleaguered by a legion of problems, of which more anon (including the more amusing ones!).

But first a word on social media. I have historically been a Facebook fan through and through...well, not an unconditional one, I should add, as there is much that is wrong with Facebook, and I don't just mean the constant slew of ads for slimming hose and relaxed fit slacks. I never really took to the bitty bearpit that is Twitter, or the soothing aesthetics of Instagram, where beautifully shot images drift by like cumulus clouds. Beyond that, for a long time I had a downer on the hashtags that are such an integral part now of the virtual landscape. Their messy, spiky aspect upset me, especially when posters used a vast thicket of them, including hashtags in foreign languages. This struck me as the acme - nay, nadir! - of SEO savvy, but then I don't like pushiness and self-promotion in any guise, and struggle to embrace it myself, even though it is very much the modern way. For if you don't take active steps to climb out of the Google sandbox, you will never be heard in the chorus - some might say babble - of Internet voices.

And I don't know how it came about exactly that I started to gravitate towards Instagram after all...I may partly have been propelled into its arms by the increasingly strident tone of Facebook, the ramping up of its adverts, or the depressing snippets of news which cannot fail to catch your eye at every turn: Brexit, climate change, factory farming, pop stars dying before their time. Instagram is a languorous oasis of sensory delight by comparison, albeit peppered with the offending hashtags. I continued to wrestle with the concept of these, trying to see them merely as labels on the drawers of a cyber filing cabinet, and not as so many mini-portcullises, bordering on medieval instruments of mental torture. You can tell that I have a serious aversion to the things, bordering on hashtagophobia!

#croissantmutant

But gradually I came to enjoy picking out photos to upload onto Instagram - I steadfastly refuse to call it 'Insta', mind, for that way lies 'nom nom nom' and 'sleeps' (shudders). I even got to the point of having fun with the hashtags, occasionally running with ones that had no precedent on the Interwebs - hashtag neologisms, if you will. It surprises me that I was the first to coin #catmustbecateredfor, and there are only four other posts under #croissantmutant. That is worth checking out actually, for the one that looks like a ram in particular!

And then there are all the filters to play with, like some kind of instant colouring game(!) - a new toy for me, would you believe? - albeit I quite often end up posting pictures simply as nature intended.

If you would like to check out my page - which is embarrassingly light on perfume-related imagery, though I plan to rectify that by and by - I am flittersniffer on there. Just noticed how many 'glittersniffer's there are, but there's only one of me. What even is a 'glittersniffer'? Though didn't there used to be a perfume with gold bits in it?...hold on, at least one version of Donna Karan Gold and a JPG is also coming vaguely back to me. I am betting that they don't mean that though.

Okay, so a brief word on the summer of droppings and broken things - those would be flea and mouse droppings, not things that have been dropped, in case of any confusion. The poor birds don't last long enough in the house to leave any such calling card, plus it is ten mice for every bird 'present', to be fair. Yes, it has been a rum old time lately, with typically between four and five things going wrong every single day. Today so far there has only been 'a bad night's sleep' and 'a big fat dead mouse', so a good day really by recent standards. Though my eye eczema - complete with distinctly unfetching atopic pleats (you really don't want to know) - is back with a vengeance, and making blinking uncomfortable. (It counts towards yesterday's tally.)

"No idea how it got in, mum."

Here is a smattering - and splattering! - of recent mishaps and problems, to give you an idea of why I have been missing in action as far as blogging is concerned, though I have been inordinately busy in a firefighting / Hydra head chopping / Whack-a-mole sense. There was an equally lengthy selection in France, but one set is enough!

• Throwing up headache for two days (three times)
• Toner cartridge splatter painted a pale carpet
• Suitcase wheel mysteriously self-destructed
• Mouse droppings all round the perimeter of the living room
• Unidentified droppings on all hinges of the pantry
• Cat has ongoing flea issue
• I have itchy red lumps - praying they are mosquito bites, being more socially acceptable
• Found a bed bug casing, which I have convinced myself is historic (to avoid going mad)
• Patio has suddenly sported / sprouted? both white and green lichen!
• Phone malfunction - batteries found to be a crystalline corroded mess
• Splashed a radio with chilli con carne, now permanently stained auburn, and tacky to touch
• Bought a second hand set of drawers which will cost three times as much to fix than I paid for them (Moral of the story: buyer beware - of Photoshop!).
• Bought a pair of trainers before realising they were two different colours
• Accidentally sent my hole puncher and stapler to France
• No sooner had I repaired one silk curtain that had perished and sheared, when I noticed that the other one has gone the same way.
• Treated alleged water marks on a second hand table with oxalic acid - quite a H & S-conscious undertaking, I might add - only to discover the marks are metal - from some piece of industrial machinery that had been sitting on it. Procedure declared a resounding failure, and meanwhile have inadvertently bleached my drive (not pictured).

I will return with 'normal' blog posts though, once things have calmed down. I would like to review a new perfume from Swindon(!) for example, and more besides - but first I sense there may be a few more Hydra heads to chop and moles to whack...!

UPDATE: I have just remembered that there was another trigger for taking up with Instagram again...I managed to fix my broken blog link in the bio after several hours of deep Googling - turned out it lacked a security certificate in the format it was in, plus for some strange reason the 'www' part of the name was causing an issue, so I took that off. So there's another example of a broken thing I managed to fix!

Bonkers turns 5!, and an updated stocktake

Source: community.babycentre.co.uk

I was surprised to clock the fact that today is the fifth anniversary of Bonkers about Perfume! I have missed a couple of anniversaries in past years, due to being sidetracked one way or another: the three year milestone found me still in the midst of house move related chaos, while the four year one fell during a band tour. I did, however, have the forethought to mark my 3.6 year anniversary in June 2013, and so I thought it would be fun to look back at my thoughts on that occasion and see how much, if at all, my views on the perfumed life and blogging have changed.

A number of the themes from that post still hold true: 'the mania is past, but I still love perfume', 'my collection scares and delights me in equal measure', and 'the people matter as much as the perfume, if not more so'.  I am also still very much into 'slow blogging', whether I happen to have work - or not (as has been the case rather too much this year).

But my stance on a few topics has shifted since last year, plus I have thought of a few other things to mention, so here goes...

Decorating killed the perfume fridges

In my 3.6 year post I voiced concerns that the damp atmosphere in my fridges might be doing my perfume collection as much harm as the chilled temperature was doing it good. And then I had the two bedrooms decorated in the second half of 2013 and it took me all of two seconds to decide that whirring lumps of metal and glass are not a particularly aesthetic look, and both fridges were promptly relegated to the garage, where they remain today. One of them is an actual fridge in fact, rather than just a drinks chiller, so it does get pressed into service at Christmas as a temporary turkey repository. My perfumes take their chances in a cupboard under the stairs or shoeboxes under beds - oh, and I have one open receptacle for favourite bottles, that is just kept on the floor, but in a darkish spot.

The late Charlie Bonkers with one of the fridges at the old house

The Facebook ban has lifted - as mysteriously as it appeared!

Back in June 2013, I was troubled by my inability to promote my blog posts on Facebook, owing to the fact that a supposed 'friend' of mine anonymously had reported my blog as 'spammy or abusive', as a result of which I was not able to link to it on an indefinite basis. Then just last week, some two and a half years after this dastardly deed ;), Liz Moores tipped me the wink that the ban had vanished - as she was able to post a proper link to my review of Angélique. I feel like a suspect against whom all charges have suddenly been dropped. So, to reprise the point in my earlier stocktake - 'You can't please everybody' - you can't, but it seems the obstructive effects of trollery have an expiry date after all.

A bit blurry, but featuring an actual Facebook link to my blog!

I am no longer - even ever so slightly - affiliated!

At the time of my post last year I had recently agreed to display a promotional banner for Ormonde Jayne in the side bar of the blog. It was a house I had a lot of time for, and the static banner seemed in keeping with my general scheme - in fact it added a welcome dash of colour in the margins. I was most particular that I didn't want anything flickering or revolving, as that way lies an amusement arcade. However, it had only been up a matter of weeks when the PR company who acted as the go-between in this arrangement was ditched by the brand, taking my little punt at 'monetising' with it. I haven't had the urge to investigate any further tie ups, though I do get a steady stream of strange requests, the most recent being:

"We are on the lookout for fantastic bloggers (like yourself) to join our new blogger program to utilize our site to help earn more money from the products you write about as well as expand your reach with our network of users and social channels!

I would love to schedule a quick chat with you and our CMO about the program, he can explain how it works, what you get and how to get started! Just let me know a time that suits you and which medium (Google Hangout, Skype or phone) is best."

If I was in any doubt about my lack of fit for such a commercial enterprise, somebody suggesting we meet in a 'Google Hangout', whatever that might be, would pretty much nail it.

Source: torquemag.io

A Top Sniffs and Nasty Niffs post is not in the offing 

At the start of 2014, I ventured a round up of my favourite perfumes from 2013, dubbing it a  'slightly wonky edition'. For I had sniffed so few of the actual releases from that year that I decided to supplement them with any 'newish' perfumes that had crossed my path in 2013. But when January 2015 comes round, I can't see me attempting even a hybrid post like that, because I am so behind the curve with perfume launches - and testing generally - that such a list would be a complete non-starter. ;)

Guest blogging, and liking the sound of my own voice!

I have noticed a trend in the perfume community to enlist the help of guest bloggers - either to add alternative 'voices' or to maintain a steady flow of content. Even at the five year mark I will be honest and say I don't feel the need to introduce another 'voice' on Bonkers, which may be a bit selfish of me, but there it is. I figure that if someone wants to read a different style or tone of writing they have only to hop across to one of the host of other blogs out there. Put another way, I guess I have yet to get sick of the sound of my own voice, as it were (sorry!). As for the need to maintain regular content, in the spirit of slow blogging I don't adhere to any particular schedule, so that doesn't really apply to me.

I am getting more into skincare

Ex-Mr Bonkers used to joke about my being prone to fads: jogging, sudden urges to walk on Cannock Chase, cooking, knitting, whatever it may be. Perfume seems to be a long running fad at least, albeit at a lower level of intensity. Meanwhile, my interest in skincare is at an all-time high, fuelled as of this week by the doctor taking me off my long term regime of antibiotics to combat acne. From now on, the wellbeing of my complexion is in the sole care of brands such as La Roche-Posay and Paula's Choice, which - however well formulated these products are - is a bit of a scary prospect. I do struggle to follow a single routine though, not least because I have accumulated so many tubes and samples that I want to try all of them out, sometimes even segmenting my face into different trial zones(!) Then other days - or more usually nights - I can't be bothered with all the steps of a proper skincare ritual, and end up just slapping on a bit of Astral, my new surprise cheapie love, which may get a post of its own at some point.

Perfume Land is still a warm and friendly place (by and large)

Much has been written about what a courteous, supportive and generous place Perfume Land is, with its many blogs, Facebook groups and off-line gatherings, both formal and informal. My own experience of the 'perfume scene' has also been very positive and heartwarming in the main. Underlying tensions do sometimes surface, however, and there are even occasional outbursts of mean spiritedness, posturing and borderline thuggery. But I shan't dwell on these. I would say: 'You know who you are', but I am not at all sure they do!

Source: lefroybrooks.co.uk

I am still 'bonkers about bathrooms'

My bathroom renovation - research for which has popped up in blog posts over the spring months in particular - has ground to a halt this autumn, owing to all the relevant tradesmen going temporarily awol. As I don't like the thought of being without a bathroom in winter, I probably shan't mount a major cat herding offensive now till next year. But even though the project has stalled, my heart still skips a beat when I see an unusual or particularly sought after sanitaryware fixture. Last night, for example, I spied a Lefroy Brooks deck mounted bath shower mixer set at a friend's house, and was unfeasibly excited!

Finally, I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the readers who have supported Bonkers down the years - or who have only recently come across it! - not forgetting the many who have landed here entirely by mistake. Followers and non-followers, lurkers and regular commenters alike, I salute you all. For while I probably would blether on like this even if no one was out there, knowing someone is reading does make the whole thing feel more worthwhile.

Results of the Puredistance BLACK sample draw!

Source: Puredistance

Right, so the shortest day of the year is past, and with it the deadline for this latest sample giveaway hosted by Puredistance - for three 2ml vials of their new BLACK perfume.  I have done the biz using Random.org, omitting those readers who opted out of the competition for various reasons.  By my reckoning this leaves eleven people who are both interested in receiving a sample and have met the conditions set by Puredistance of either following them on Twitter or liking their Facebook page.

These readers all went into Random.org's virtual tombola and the winners have been drawn.

Come to think of it, because Bonkers attracts relatively few comments compared to the larger blogs that host giveaways, you do get particularly good odds on here!  Just saying...;)

And now without further ado, I can announce that the three winners are:

HANNAH

HOLLY

SABINE

Congratulations to the three of you and I hope you like BLACK as much as I do!

Drop me a line on flittersniffer at gmail dot com with your address details, and Samira, the PR lady at Puredistance, will get your sample off in the post, fearlessly braving the postal regulations of your respective countries! Depending on when you clock this announcement, it will either be this side of Christmas or when the PD team come back to work on 30th December.

KLOUT: A Force To Be Reckoned With Or Kommercial Klaptrap Koncealed As Kudos?

I used to do Pilates. Then in December, my instructor upped and emigrated to New Zealand, and I haven't done any exercise since. December was probably also the last time I did any "klouting" to speak of. For anyone not familiar with Klout, it is the latest social media craze. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, where you can have actual conversations (after a fashion) with other members, the way you interact on Klout is by awarding...well, klouts...to other people whom you consider to be influential in a chosen field, be they journalists, TV presenters, bloggers or whoever. A klout is like a token of approval, a recognition of merit, and the more you receive, the higher your ranking on an index that runs between 0 and 100.

But awarding klouts to other people is just one way in which your overall Klout score is calculated. A raft of variables is taken into account, including numbers of @mentions, retweets, likes, and comments.

As Klout explains on its website:

"The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure:

True Reach: How many people you influence

Amplification: How much you influence them

Network Impact: The influence of your network"

Note the phrase "drive action"...It is significant and I shall come back to it later.

I just checked and my own score has gone up 3 points (to 50) since I last looked. Yes, people have kindly carried on klouting me while I stopped dead in my tracks six weeks ago. So why did I do that? Well, partly because I was travelling most of that month, but also because I started to doubt the meaningfulness of the whole Klout system.

For starters, my fields of expertise or influence include Perfume and Travel & Tourism (which are fair enough, given the focus of Bonkers), but also Chocolate, Weddings, War, and to a lesser extent Hot Chocolate, Toolbar and Cougar. Okay, weddings...hmmm...that might be something to do with my posts on Kate Middleton's wedding scent, Illuminum White Gardenia Petals. But war? And hot chocolate? And toolbar??? It is baffling.

So that was one thing, and another flaw as I saw it is that it is considered good form to klout back people kind enough to klout you, so to a certain extent the mutual klouting cancels itself out, like when you retweet somebody's blog post and they return the favour. Ironically therefore, my being paralysed with indecision lately and failing to klout anyone in return may explain why my score has risen in the interim.

But the main reason why my confidence in the Klout system faltered is the fact that notable blogs, personalities or organisations such as Now Smell This, Katie Puckrik, Chandler Burr and Roja Dove, Andy Tauer and Ormonde Jayne, IFRA North America and the Fragrance Foundation (to name but a few) - none of whom were registered members, but who had managed to clock up Klout scores anyway - had rankings that were behind my own. That's like saying a marathon runner isn't a sports person because they've never entered a 1 km fun run wearing fancy dress. As a measure of influence - even confined to social media - Klout's net was surely way too narrow.

And then, out of the blue, right around the time I was having my dark night of the soul about the fallibility of Klout's measurement methods, I received an email from Katie Puckrik herself, congratulating me on my ranking and explaining that she had just signed up, having read about Klout in a "well-placed article" in the NY Times. However, her early enthusiasm was already tempered by a reservation about which social media were being analysed, Katie being of course famous in particular for her blog and her YouTube perfume reviews.

Katie: "...unless I'm mistaken, they only seem to take Twitter/Facebook into account, at least judging from the stats they pull up. I have a sneaking feeling that my YouTube activities aren't factored into my ranking."

So I wrote back, explaining my own misgivings, and a Klout-centric "Perfume Pen Pals" exchange ensued. Katie sent me the link to the article in the NY Times, which further confirmed my surprise that I had such a high score - a score that would gain me admittance to exclusive society bashes in Manhattan, no less - which seemed a very silly state of affairs, given the relative nobody I actually am.

Vanessa: "Well, I found that NYT article really quite surprising - in a strange Emperor's new clothes kind of a way. At 47 (my Klout score at the time, not my age), I might just be admitted to those velvet rope do's - seems quite topsy turvy really."

Katie, meanwhile, wrote to Klout, inquiring about the basis of the rankings, specifically whether her YouTube and Blogger presence was factored into her overall score.

It sounds almost too good to be true, but the person who replied to her email was called Kameron (with a "K"!) Maybe all the staff have to kloutify their Christian names as a condition of working there... : - )

Hi Katie

I apologize for the delay.

At this time, the only networks that contribute to your Klout score is Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google+. The other networks that you can connect for your Klout profile, we are still testing.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Thank you,
Kameron

So far, so lopsided. I had not even heard of Foursquare, for instance, so how influential can that be? And Google+ is pretty new.

Vanessa: "...YouTube is absolutely massive - think of the reach and impact of those viral clips of cats playing the piano etc that are seen and circulated by millions. How is that not influence? And what about the luminaries who are very influential, but do not engage with social media particularly - like Luca Turin? At least I don't think he does, whereas I have seen photos of Andy Tauer's hotel rooms in London and Chicago, and one of a chicken in his oven."

And then I started wondering about what Klout is trying to achieve at the end of the day, and have a feeling it might be something to do with linking up influential people (as determined by Klout) and brand owners.

"Free Stuff

Klout Perks are exclusive products or experiences that you earn based on your influence. Influencers have earned sweet Perks like laptops and airline tickets."

Sweet perks, eh?

"Don't Stress

You have no obligation to talk about the product. You're
welcome to tell the world you love it, you dislike it, or say nothing at all."

No worries - I had no intention of stressing!

Then in the FAQs on Perks we learn more about how their location is determined:

"Often companies are interested in giving Perks to influencers in a specific neighborhood. For instance, pizzerias in North Beach don't care how influential you are if you live in NYC. We look at a collection of data to determine your location, including the zip code that you put in your Klout profile, your Facebook location and your Twitter location (don't worry, we never share our data)."

Well, hold on a minute...the Klout people don't appear to have determined my location very closely. The only perk I have earned so far is a $10 voucher off an online sports gear company that I have never heard of, and which I can confirm is nowhere near where I live and exert my all-important influence... ; - )

And finally, when you click on the "Business" tab of the Klout website, the full purpose of the scheme becomes apparent.

"Klout measures influence based on the ability to drive action, not potentially misleading metrics like follower or friend count."

"Drive action" is the key phrase here - it isn't about driving action for its own sake but ultimately - or so it seems to me - about driving consumer purchases.

"Klout has analyzed over 85 million people on major social networks, and is used by over 3000 brands and applications."

And now for the bottom line:

Your customers don't trust advertising, they trust their peers and influencers. Get your product into the right hands and let them do the talking for you.

So by engaging with social media generally and by busily klouting one another and increasing our scores, we are grooming ourselves to become better brand ambassadors for a host of consumer products, like self-fattening farm animals.

Katie: "There I was thinking it was a simple aggregator, ranking influence in a social stock market kind of way, when in fact it exists primarily to make Klout bigger. And in such a clever way, because here we are scrambling around to get Klout to acknowledge us, while all they are interested in is that we acknowledge it."

So tell me, are you bothered about "doing the talking" for a pizzeria in North Beach or wherever you may live? And if consumers don't trust advertising, having seen how we may be being used as brand "mules", do you still trust Klout?

Now I gather that HR Managers are starting to look at Klout rankings as a measure of what sort of "mover and shaker" a job candidate might be. Perhaps they are the new gap year or Duke of Edinburgh award. So I am not saying that an individual might not benefit in terms of career advancement or admission to fashion shows and the like on the strength of his or her Klout score. However, fundamentally it smacks to me of a peer network marketing scheme built on vanity.

In fact, on an impulse I just googled "Klout" and "vanity", and found an article describing it as the "ultimate vanity metric". So there you go - there's an actual term for it!

And to everyone who has klouted me up to this point, thanks for that, as I know it was done in good faith and I appreciate the support. Only now I am not so sure that Klout has all the klout it's kracked up to have. And neither does Katie, despite having a "K" in her name...


Photo of Klout screen from offthegrid-pr.com, photo of graph from ubergizmo.com, photo of chocolate from en.wikipedia.org, photo of Katie from beauty-video-tutorial.com, photo of Katie Puckrik Smells from handpickedmedia.co.uk, photo of velvet rope from howtobeamoneymagnet.com, photo of cat playing the piano from curezone.com, photo of pizza restaurant from foodhoe.com, photo of Klout logo from level343.com