Here’s an extremely 2018 saga for ya: a hotel in Ireland has outright banned bloggers after getting into an online tiff with a YouTuber who tried to finagle a free stay out of them.
It all started on Tuesday, when the White Moose Cafe in Dublin posted the following email, purportedly from a “social media influencer” who was asking for a free Valentine’s Day weekend at the Charleville Hotel (which is owned by the same people). The proprietors of the place were… not impressed.
Their response begins:
Dear Social Influencer (I know your name but apparently it’s not important to use names),
Thank you for your email looking for free accommodation in return for exposure. It takes a lot of balls to send an email like that, if not much self-respect and dignity.
And continues in much the same way for some time, asking, quite reasonably, If I let you stay here in return for a feature in your video, who is going to pay the staff who look after you? Who is going to pay the housekeepers who clean your room?
The missive ends with, “P.S. The answer is no.“
Although they redacted the identifying information, the influencer in question outed herself as Elle Darby, who you have almost definitely never heard of. She did so with a 17-minute video titled “i was exposed (SO embarrassing)“, in which she bemoans the unfairness of the response and says she’s the victim of internet bullying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8zElbN2_hg
In response, the White Moose Cafe / Charleville Lodge has banned bloggers. All of them.
It’s truly something.
There’s been, unsurprisingly, a huge backlash from the blogging community, many members of which have been bombarding the hotel with one star reviews and abuse.
Fortunately the bloke who runs the hotel, Paul Stenson, has both a refreshingly breezy attitude towards the controversy and a wicked sense of humour. He’s already thanked the blogging community for the wave of free publicity, and invoiced Darby for the many, many new followers she’s garnered from the scandal.
Pack away the remains of your Christmas decorations, folks; 2018 has officially arrived.
