An open letter to delfi.lv

Dear Delfi,

First of all, allow me to offer my congratulations on being one of the leading news portals in Latvia. I don’t visit very often but, clearly, a lot of people do.

I know this because, on Wednesday, a lot of people started visiting my site from yours. Intrigued as to the reason behind the sudden jump in my readership, I followed the link that was bringing everyone here. When I saw the headline ‘Irishwoman Disappointed with Hipster Centre’, my surprise was twofold. First of all, I was amazed that an Irishwoman walking down a street in Riga was considered ‘Entertainment News’, and secondly, as you never asked for my permission to use the post, I was rather confounded to see it (poorly) translated on your website.

Now I understand that it was a slow day for entertainment ‘news’. The other main stories were as follows:

• Woman goes out in public after divorce (8 comments)
• Man who was an alcoholic 25 years ago, is (shock horror) still an alcoholic (25 comments)
• Leonardo DiCaprio and half-naked love frolic on the beach (6 comments) – they were in the sea. What did you expect her to be wearing? A leopard-print jumpsuit and stilettos?
• Two women dazzle at motor show (8 comments)

Dazzling ‘ladies’

And then there was me – 95 comments.

Here’s the thing – I like my Latvian blog readers. Even if they don’t agree with everything I say, they manage to express their opinions in a reasonable manner. While it’s true that a few people who found me from your article are smart people who can understand humour, the majority appear to be troglodytes with wifi. Their arguments against my blog are mainly ‘go home to YOUR Ireland’ and ‘Latvian women are more beautiful than Irish women so nothing she says matters anyway’. YAWN.

Of course, I can understand why they think everything on my blog is negative. They’re basing their opinions on your incredibly selective ‘article’ which focused only on the negative. While you may have thought you were doing me a favour by stealing my work, your underhand approach to boosting your own stats has failed to impress. I don’t need readers like that. I don’t need any help with my blog hits – it’s trundling along nicely towards 200,000 hits all by itself, thank you very much.

Your sneakiness has eroded what was left of my sweet and trusting nature. You’ll have noticed that there is a new addition to the footer section of my blog, or if you haven’t, here it is:

• © Linda O’Grady and Expat Eye on Latvia, 2013-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Linda O’Grady and Expat Eye on Latvia with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

And yes, in case you’re wondering, this includes shoddy, selective translations.

I look forward to reading more of your entertainment ‘news’ in the future. Perhaps ‘my’ article could start a trend – ‘Swede trips over pothole’ or ‘English man receives surly service in restaurant’ could be two future articles.

Yours faithfully,

Linda O’Greidija (Expat Eye on Latvia)