Tea? It’s a dirty business!

As Sarah Rose points out in “For All The Tea in China”, tea is quite an unhygienic product by the time it arrives in those fancy containers. But that is not the dirtiness I’ll be talking about today.

I’ve been blogging about tea in written and video form for around two years now. After my tea shop closed, I had very limited outlets for my opinions on tea. So I created these things and found a bit of an audience.

I’m sarcastic, arrogant, way too self-confident and opinionated. And one of those opinions is that I am realistic.

I believe I know exactly how good, bad or indifferent my work is.

I have no hope of being anything but amateur in any respect. No-one is going to pay me to make videos or wrote this stuff.

But I want to be the best amateur I can be.

Often, I end up looking at the work of others.  Like any field, there is the good, the bad and the ugly.

I guess what I tend to dislike the most is a video that shows someone drinking a cup of tea and then saying ” I like it/loathe it/ give it 4 out of 5 / enjoy the vegetal undertones with a  hint of beetroot and asafoetida”. As there is no aroma or taste available, it’s frankly dull. And I include some of my own early work in that.

But as I have recently discussed on-line via DM with several people, it’s not up to me to pull down someone’s work. I may think someone is hopelessly inept and inane, but I don’t believe it’s up to me to tell them. By being supportive, it might help them to “improve”. (there’s that arrogance again)

So a recent new arrival on the scene seemed to me to be very much in the region of “the bad” (on my “the good, the bad and the ugly scale) and this was compounded by an absolute ton of self-belief.  Self-confident and serious to the point of rib-tickling laughter, to be unkind.

This person – accurately described to me by others in Twitter Direct Messages as “inane”, “boring”, “virtually no personality”- even  “mildly unhinged” – is also an amazing self promoter. Churning out these low-quality no-real-content videos, there are mechanised tweets way to many times per day to promote them.

That person has also reached out to me. A lot. The tone of the tweets has been sycophantic and childish. At first I assumed this person was a bit of a fan and also, not very bright- if the first doesn’t imply the second anyway. (Actually it doesn’t, I am privileged to have some amazingly clever followers).

But then suddenly, this person went from harmless  crank to something a lot more sinister.

A post was made on a Tea Trade forum, suggesting that this “reviewer” was in fact engaged in what amount to little more than a protection racket that works like this:

1. “Reviewer” builds following and market clout
2. “Reviewer” lavishly praises some tea companies and roundly and abusively condemns others
3. “Condemned” tea companies try to find out what the problem is and reach out to “Reviewer”
4. “Reviewer” demands money and/or free product to revise opinion.

That’s the sort of thing that will move someone from either ‘the good” or “the bad” and firmly into “the ugly”.

Usually, unless you are one of the people involved, it’s hard to see where blame lies in a public spat. But in this case, it’s like seeing a police officer trying to reason with a drunk who is babbling about Beelzebub and brandishing a hammer – it’s highly unlikely to be anything more than it appears. Reasoned argument on one side, vituperative personal abuse on the other.

As an aside, Tea Trade offers a wonderful voice for us teaphiles, and the whole thing was no reflection on the site. They closed the discussion down pretty fast.

So, I’ve decided that I’m going to “unfollow”, block and simply ignore this person. Additionally, I’m pretty sure that others who’ve discussed this with me via email, DM or skype are going to do the same.

I suspect a sensible person, if reading this blog and deciding it was about them, would quietly ignore it. Not so: I expect a torrent of abuse. Well, bring it on.

If someone is going to try to hijack the wonderful, silly, tannin-soaked, geeky, passionate amateur tea-blogging universe for personal greed and gain, then be prepared to fight – because I’ll be fighting to stop you.

And don’t bother saying “you and who’s army”. I’m quite sure I have one.