The Stylebytes Mystery

She left us with a note saying she was off to Stockholm for a long weekend. That was almost a month ago. Were it any other blogger, you might say “oh… they probably ran out of ideas”, or “they just got sick of blogging”, or it’s just a lot of work with little returns… but Agathe, aka Stylebytes is different. She’s been at this for almost three years pretty much blogging daily. Sometimes she’ll take a break for a couple of days… or the frequency may slow down a little but a month? I was worried.. apparently I’m not the only one, and finally yesterday Style Bubble broke the silence, we’re all a little worried.

If it weren’t for WendyB I’d probably worry in silence… but she encouraged me to let you all know that on May 17, Agathe confirmed me as a friend on Facebook. I’m guessing she’s still alive, and this photo I found in her profile posted by one of her friends on May 4 tells me she didn’t get kidnapped by gypsies.

Ok, posting pictures from her Facebook profile might be a little stalkerish…. I’m sort of very sorry for that.

Back to Agathe, where is she? Why did she suddenly stop blogging? In the last few months Stylebytes have become even better than ever. Her and her husband have been taking loads of beautiful and inspiring photos. She’s been getting tons and tons of comments, features in magazines and newspapers… all of this is just thrilling for a blogger. So why stop?

Negative Comments?
For some time, I’ve noticed in her comments that some people have been giving her a hard time about her weight. That she had some kind of eating disorder, etc. I don’t know Agathe personally, but I’ve been reading her blog daily for about 2 years and I’ve never noticed anything strange about her weight. I think I have more demons surrounding body issues than she does. Whether or not she has issues doesn’t stop negative comments from getting troublesome. Maybe they got out of control?

Hackers
Maybe someone got hold of her blog and email and is holding it for some ransom? Little do they know, unless you are some high powered fashion blog like Manolo’s Shoe Blog, there isn’t a whole lot of money. Well, there is but you pretty much have to give up your analog life, and maybe your first born son. Either way, I’m pretty sure Agathe isn’t about to hand over any of the above. After all, I’ve watched enough suspense thriller movies to know that the first rule about ransoms is to never hand over the money.

The Pig
Maybe little Molvin is sick. Maybe Agathe came home and her husband accidentally … you know… what most people do with pigs, well, not the Jews, the Kosher Jews.

Maye she came home saw the pig was gone, causing obvious problems with her husband, and that’s why she’s not posting. I would seriously break up with Rocky if….

Personal lives can have a huge effect on one’s blog life. When traumatic things happen, it’s hard enough to trudge through the vital functions of life, let alone the extra curricular things like blogging. Some extra curricular things are easier to take up during tough times, like drinking, but again, that inhibits blog time.

Sick of Blogging
Occam’s Razor is the principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.

In layman’s terms, the simplest explanation is usually the most likely truth. Blogging is hard. It takes a lot of time. Doing the photographs, doing the research, keeping up with all the other blogs. It takes time. Agathe does Stylebytes purely as a hobby. Maybe she just got a taste of civilian life and is now enjoying her analog evenings. Wow, what a concept. (middle finger pic from Stylebytes Phiary)

Stylebytes was the first fashion blog I read (the second blog only to Pink is The New Blog). If it weren’t for Stylebytes not posting every second of the day I’d probably still be a reader and not a blogger myself. The thing I like about Stylebytes is that it continues to evolve in a genuine way. Rather than resorting to gimmicks (which I may start doing for kicks) she’s shared with us her thoughts about her sense of style. It’s helpful, really to all of us.

Well, here is a few pictures I pulled from her site that stick in my head as points of inspiration in my own personal style. I do hope she comes back, because I’m not sure blogging would be the same without her.

UPDATE: Stylebytes.net has been taken down… here’s a post from Style Bubble about it.