Five things that are worse than the dentist (or yesterday's visit, in any case)

A few weeks ago while eating a pie, one of my back teeth made a cracking sound and crumbled into my mouth. "Oh dear" I thought, "Oh dear, oh dear". Then I panicked, as is my way, and ran to the toilet to inspect the damage.

In the ensuing days, a sickness overwhelmed me whenever I thought about the tooth. It was giving me a stomach ache. Was it? Yes, it was also tingling; the beginning of a terrible toothache, I supposed. Oh god, they're going to have to take the whole thing out.

I called the dentist, and booked an appointment for two weeks time. Then I called my mum. Standing in an empty meeting room at work I explained, through tears, that I would probably have to have root canals, extractions and finally a bridge put in, leaving me with false teeth like an old woman.

Yesterday I went to the dentist having taken the afternoon off work and enlisted my mum to meet me afterwards, to take me home and feed me soup through a straw.

What actually happened was they fixed it in under five minutes, with no pain or fuss, and I felt a bit silly.

So in honour of me getting wound up over nothing, here are five things that are infinitely worse than yesterday's trip to the dentist:

1) About Me pages written in the third person

Look, drop the act. We know it's you. Unless you're Kate Moss ("Ahm proper busy, wot is internet? Oh do it for me, yeah?"), Michael Jackson (dead) or Flipper (fictional dolphin), you're unlikely to have a team of PRs bigging up your shoes and socks to the lowly public. So drop the "she", give us an "I" and blow that horn with pride. You too, Perez.

2) People who Retweet their #FollowFriday mentions on Twitter

The above sentence will inspire one of two reactions. Either you will be nodding furiously, possibly enraged at the thought of People Who Do #FollowFriday Wrong, or you simply won't care - either because Twitter is dead to you, or because you partake in this Twitter faux pas and don't see what the problem is. In case you do this, please understand that retweeting compliments is the internet equivalent of standing on a chair in a room full of people and saying "BLOODY HELL, THIS PERSON JUST SAID I'M WELL GOOD! SO DID THIS PERSON! LOOK HOW MANY FRIENDS I HAVE! LOVE ME! LOVE ME!" And that's not cool, is it?

3) Companies that send out too many emails

Dear Kurt Geiger, I love you. I own many, many, many pairs of your shoes. Your emails about discount codes and little reminders that the new Spring / Summer range is about to go on 48 hour pre-sale with free postage and packaging are an asset to my inbox. What I don't need are "Star Style", "New In" and "Editor's Picks" emails bludgeoning me over the head with your brand every other day. It's annoying. Please stop. Love from a once loyal, now unsubscribed customer. xx

4) Internet Outrage at the Mail Online

Newsflash to the Daily Fail complainer brigade: Mail Online articles are SEO'd, CMS'd and OMG'd up to the eyeballs for maximum reader rage. They want you to react, because a reaction means hits for their lovely advertisers, and more money for them to pay journalists to write utter crap. So if you generally disagree with what the Daily Mail has to say, don't give them website hits. Don't tell everyone on Twitter how pissed off you are about it. Don't blog about how wrong they are. Ignore. Have tea and kittens instead. Basically, abide by the age old internet adage and don't feed the trolls.

5) Freebie Bloggers

Once upon a time, I replied to PR emails instead of deleting them. 

That moment where you realise that companies will give you free stuff in exchange for some words on a website is nothing short of wondrous. You disguise the adverts (and they are adverts) under a veil of nonchalance, telling yourself that you're doing it for your readers who hang on your every word, that your disclosures are in small enough text at the bottom of each post (or omitted completely) for no one to notice...but they do. For me, there was a cost to getting free stuff; as cosy as those cashmere gloves were, they made me feel a bit like an estate agent when it came to mentioning them on my blog. So, freebie fetchers, product pushers, if you like your blog and hate estate agents, don't try to style it out. Be upfront about it, let it be known that you're in this blogging lark mostly for the free products, and do it under a massive post title that reads

 "THIS IS A PLUG FOR A COMPANY / BRAND BECAUSE THEY GAVE ME A FREE PAIR OF SHOES TO POST ABOUT IT". 

Now that's what you call transparency. 

That is all.