Bearded Dragon Advice

We need to sort out some modding issues. Thanks for understanding.

There’s a few reasons why I’m leaving:

This blog is a lot of work/stress and I’m very busy with my photography and it’s just going to get worse when I start college in January. We have 70+ messaged in our inbox right now, and in the 4+ months we’ve been up and running we’ve had over 15k blog hits, this is a very busy blog and as stated previously I really don’t have time for it.

I’m tired of the harassment from some of reptiblr. The anon hate and hateful comments on our posts have become too much. 

The sock thing where people intentionally misconstrued what we said to smear us was the final straw. I’d spoken about leaving before but that was the tipping point in this decision. 

I’m not going to be deleting the blog, I couldn’t even if I wanted to as there’s 4 other mods, but it might be slowing down. 

If you want to keep up with me and my beardie Ted you can on my photo and personal tumblr, or on Instagram.

I’ve enjoyed modding this blog, make sure to give your beardie some pats and treats for me.

So, will this blog die then? If it'll die, then will there be an announcement.

Ur still great tho and have done a great job educating lots of people

I’m sorry to announce that I won’t be a mod on this blog anymore. I’m sure that this will lead to some rumors, so I’ll make a couple of things clear. 

No, I am not leaving because of the “sock incident” (where I worded things very poorly and the post blew up on me rather than someone messaging me and asking what my wording meant.) And no, I am not being kicked out. I am leaving because I want to, for several reasons. So you should not under any circumstances send hatemail to people in a misguided attempt to defend me. (Which has already happened, and I don’t approve of it. They were always anon so I don’t know who to block from this blog but cut it out, seriously.) Nobody specifically is causing this.

You may have noticed that I have already not been answering as many asks as I already have. I have been taking many breaks away from this blog for the same reasons why I am leaving.

I am leaving because of a few reasons:

People are putting me on a pedestal, and I hate it.

I joined this blog because I wanted to help beardies on sand and with improper UVB, simple stuff like that. And because I answered these questions concisely and thoroughly, and provided links to people who say it better than I do, and I was the only mod actually answering asks, people started looking to me like I was an expert. I never wanted to be seen as an expert, I just wanted to help beardies with crappy husbandry.

People keep asking me for medical advice, particularly urgent advice.

I am not a vet. I have 0 qualifications to make a call like that. All I can do is try and guess what might be wrong. But people were taking my guesses as a diagnosis, because again people were seeing me as an expert because I parroted sources. They’re not diagnosis, and they never were. And now people seem to have this idea that I am claiming to be an expert and that they can come and ask me all these health questions. I just try my best to answer them but seriously, go see a vet. Especially if you think it’s urgent. Stop asking this blog for vet advice. We are not vets.

People would not leave me alone.

I have a life outside this blog, but people expect me to be glued to the inbox 24/7. People would send me an ask that has been covered a bajillion times already in this blog, and all they would have to do was read a little bit and find an answer. Instead they’ll send multiple asks - the first ask, and then like 3 - 5 different “why haven’t you answered it yet/answer my ask!” messages. It came to the point where I couldn’t enjoy anything like a movie or a video game because every five seconds my phone would go off with an alert.

Pressure from many different sides to stay in one opinion.

I love learning about bearded dragons. I have messaged a few people before who have reblogged our stuff with updated info and thanked them personally for giving it to us. However, any time I would correct information, someone would use it and twist it to say “BDA has no idea what they’re talking about, never trust anything they say!” It really discouraged learning and changing opinions, and a lot of messages I would get were very rude. It was more conducive to try and “save face” and just not say anything at all. I’m a person that is trying to make everyone happy, so this kind of pressure was and is extremely stressful to me, especially when it feels like I’m the only mod trying to keep up with all these people. And another thing...

People treat us like we’re all the same person.

I always sign my posts as “Mod Seth”. Those are all my posts, no other posts are mine. So I would get people yelling at me for something another mod did, or treating our blog like one entity when there’s 6 (yes, six) other mods. 

Personal health reasons.

Due to private health reasons, I won’t be able to mod this blog very much longer anyway.

Basically, I’m not an expert, I never was an expert, but people keep treating me like I am one and holding me to unrealistic expectations. I felt confident that I could help beardies when I first came on, by correcting bad husbandry. But the blog really got away from me very quickly as more people asked more complicated things. It all became very overwhelming and I cannot keep up with it anymore and I don’t want to keep up with it anymore, I want to be seen as a person trying to learn more about reptiles every day again and not this caricature of me that everyone seems to have where I claim to be an expert vet and my knowledge is flawless. I never claimed this and I’m really tired of people putting words in my mouth over it.

I wanna thank everyone who’s been kind and helpful. 

I wanna thank everyone who has given me updated information and new sources and correcting our posts when needed, especially those who have messaged with me directly. 

And I wanna thank the blog admin for taking me on in the beginning.

I hope that I have managed to help a lot of beardies in my time here, that is the only thing that ever mattered to me in the end.

You’re welcome! I hope they get separated by the owners… Thank you for spreading the knowledge to the owners, we are happy to help.