After eleven and a half years…

Many of you have known The Food Pornographer as a food blog. For many months now, I have felt disconnected from the thing called ‘food blogging’, or what food blogging seems to have become. I spent much of my break over the festive season thinking about whether to keep blogging at all.

When I started blogging there were no freebies, no media releases or PR pitches chocking up my inbox. There were no invitations to menu launches, blogger events or free meals; there was no hashtag #invited – which has reached plague proportions, it seems. I’m not interested in being a part of this.

I started blogging because I wanted a creative outlet, a place I could write and share my pictures. Although I called the blog ‘The Food Pornographer’, I never set out to create a food blog as such. I never set out to be a reviewer of restaurants or promoter of things.

I’ve never been one to monitor my web stats or obsess about growing my followers. I am still often asked how many hits or followers I have. For years, I tried to have an acceptable answer ready, based on the web stats which I wasn’t all that interested in. These days, my answer is usually “I have no idea”. I know people are reading my posts on social media or the longer stories I share here on the blog because we interact, through comments and so on – I’ve had wonderful conversations and made genuine connections with people – for me, it’s never been about popularity or numbers, just as it’s never been about reaching the point where invitations and freebies became ‘normal’. I’ve made real friends because of this blog, which means far more to me than any other so-called measures of success.

I have had some fantastic experiences and travelled to amazing places because of this blog, but I will no longer be accepting any invitations/freebies (events, famils, travel, anything). I prefer to pay my own way and to do my own thing. I am not interested in ‘helping’ promote brands, and I don’t particularly like my blog content referred to in terms of ‘coverage’.

If I share information about anything – a restaurant, an upcoming event, somewhere I’ve been, I do so not because someone emailed me and asked me to, not because I’m getting free tickets in exchange, not because I attended a VIP event or bloggers’ preview. I’m sharing just as I would when I tell my friends about things I’m excited about. I have no interest in being an influencer, nor a shill.

I enjoy writing and taking pictures and will keep doing so. I plan to keep posting updates on social media, and writing longer pieces here on the blog. I still love food and I will write about it (among other topics of interest), but I’m not ‘food blogging’ any more.

Perhaps it’s time I changed the blog name…

To those of you who have supported the blog over the years, thank you.

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