Heather "dooce" Hamilton has died
May 10, 2023 9:51 AM Subscribe
According to her Instagram. Heather Brooke Hamilton aka Heather B. Armstrong aka dooce aka love of my life. July 19, 1975 - May 9, 2023. "It takes an ocean not to break." Hold your loved ones close and love everyone else.
background? obits for genuinely famous people have them.
posted by lalochezia at 10:02 AM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 10:02 AM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
She's a famous blogger, and probably a friend or online acquaintance of many people here on Metafilter. Previously.
I'll note that the Wikipedia page so far does not list her as deceased. The talk page indicates the one Instagram post is not considered enough of a reliable source.
posted by Nelson at 10:03 AM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
I'll note that the Wikipedia page so far does not list her as deceased. The talk page indicates the one Instagram post is not considered enough of a reliable source.
posted by Nelson at 10:03 AM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
God damn that's young.
posted by mhoye at 10:05 AM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 10:05 AM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
So...this is where we could think a little about how we want to react to people who are expressing repugnant beliefs in a context that makes it independently clear that they are seriously mentally ill. Because those blog posts last year were horrendous, and people rightfully condemned them, but, while they were not the product of psychosis--she knew what she was saying--they were also clearly the postings of someone who was very sick, and not that influential anymore, and...I don't know. I just don't know.
posted by praemunire at 10:07 AM on May 10, 2023 [44 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 10:07 AM on May 10, 2023 [44 favorites]
I'll note that the Wikipedia page so far does not list her as deceased. The talk page indicates the one Instagram post is not considered enough of a reliable source.
I'll leave it to the mods to determine what is a reliable enough source here, but unfortunately her ex (and father of her kids) confirmed it in a comment on that same Instagram post.
posted by Bluecoat93 at 10:11 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'll leave it to the mods to determine what is a reliable enough source here, but unfortunately her ex (and father of her kids) confirmed it in a comment on that same Instagram post.
posted by Bluecoat93 at 10:11 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
praemunire, any links that can clarify your comment? I skimmed the 'previously' link but didn't see any repugnant beliefs.
posted by kittensofthenight at 10:12 AM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by kittensofthenight at 10:12 AM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
I hope this isn't true and is just drama. :( The Daily Mail picked up on it (no comment on that as a source) but just quotes the Instagram.
Heather B. Armstrong was definitely genuinely famous in an Internet way. Since a lot of her writing focused on parenthood, home decorating, and other female-coded topics it's easy to pretend she wasn't. Especially since once she divorced her writing was increasingly chaotic, her kids as subjects got increasingly uncomfortable, her writing about mental illness and addiction was less and less like self-reflection and more like watching a trainwreck, and then of course in the last while, some of her posts were absolutely odious.
But regardless, she was key in paving the way for women blogging about non-idealized motherhood and mental illness, and in some ways she also starting breaking a path for influencers in general, particularly around monetization. It's also hard to express how little information there used to be on "in the trenches" parenting and PPD.
ETA after preview: Oh, I'm sad it was confirmed.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:13 AM on May 10, 2023 [36 favorites]
Heather B. Armstrong was definitely genuinely famous in an Internet way. Since a lot of her writing focused on parenthood, home decorating, and other female-coded topics it's easy to pretend she wasn't. Especially since once she divorced her writing was increasingly chaotic, her kids as subjects got increasingly uncomfortable, her writing about mental illness and addiction was less and less like self-reflection and more like watching a trainwreck, and then of course in the last while, some of her posts were absolutely odious.
But regardless, she was key in paving the way for women blogging about non-idealized motherhood and mental illness, and in some ways she also starting breaking a path for influencers in general, particularly around monetization. It's also hard to express how little information there used to be on "in the trenches" parenting and PPD.
ETA after preview: Oh, I'm sad it was confirmed.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:13 AM on May 10, 2023 [36 favorites]
Praemunire is referring to a couple of very transphobic posts she made last year, apparently, that also weren't totally coherent.
posted by sagc at 10:15 AM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by sagc at 10:15 AM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
praemunire, any links that can clarify your comment? I skimmed the 'previously' link but didn't see any repugnant beliefs.
She wrote some VERY transphobic posts after one of her children came out as non-binary. At least one was a poem and it was really chaotic.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:16 AM on May 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
She wrote some VERY transphobic posts after one of her children came out as non-binary. At least one was a poem and it was really chaotic.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:16 AM on May 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
Wow, that comes as a shock--but also a bit of a shock that she'd sort of totally dropped out of my consciousness, along I guess with all the other parent-bloggers I read so much of back when my kids were very small. It really is sad!
posted by mittens at 10:18 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 10:18 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
That post has been taken down but there are some quotes and screenshots here. Legitimately awful and transphobic, but also, like, 30 screens long, and difficult to follow in places. Reading it, I was genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of her apparently gender-nonconforming kid, but I also...well, if the news is true and it's not either a mistake or a fraud, let's say it doesn't surprise me.
posted by praemunire at 10:19 AM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 10:19 AM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
Yeah, looking this person up just seeing some transphobic screeds. Maybe they did other things that weren't so shitty, but that's enough to make me want to forget them forever.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:19 AM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:19 AM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
Oh wow, this is a shock.
posted by PussKillian at 10:22 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by PussKillian at 10:22 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Her partner is one of MeFi’s own. My sympathies to him and her kids.
posted by armeowda at 10:25 AM on May 10, 2023 [52 favorites]
posted by armeowda at 10:25 AM on May 10, 2023 [52 favorites]
I saw this news and said "Oh no" aloud. I remember her as a writer who made me laugh.
posted by brainwane at 10:30 AM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by brainwane at 10:30 AM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
I was never a fan of Heather, she got worse and worse. But this is sad, she was a mother of two girls, seemed to having a loving relationship with her mom, so I'm sympathetic.
She was a premier mommy blogger for a few years. She had a humorous, profane outlook. She experienced postpartum depression and had a lot of mental health struggles. She was raised Mormon, which to me explains quite a bit. She stated she had stopped alcohol a while back, reporting many years of addiction.
To me, she was unlikeable. The last years, but she seemed to be a train wreck-- photos of her, severely underweight, almost like starvation porn (to the point I am not shocked that she had passed.) All l this displayed on Instagram made me uncomfortable.
She did get a rightful amount of flack for her postings about her trans kid.
I will say, in later posts, she said something along the lines of "I will use my kid's preferred pronouns, I respect and love my kid."
Sad for her family.
posted by rhonzo at 10:33 AM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
She was a premier mommy blogger for a few years. She had a humorous, profane outlook. She experienced postpartum depression and had a lot of mental health struggles. She was raised Mormon, which to me explains quite a bit. She stated she had stopped alcohol a while back, reporting many years of addiction.
To me, she was unlikeable. The last years, but she seemed to be a train wreck-- photos of her, severely underweight, almost like starvation porn (to the point I am not shocked that she had passed.) All l this displayed on Instagram made me uncomfortable.
She did get a rightful amount of flack for her postings about her trans kid.
I will say, in later posts, she said something along the lines of "I will use my kid's preferred pronouns, I respect and love my kid."
Sad for her family.
posted by rhonzo at 10:33 AM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
Heather and I went to high school together, even dated once (zero chemistry, but stayed friends). We stayed in touch for years, as we were both OG bloggers, though I bugged out early.
We would check in every few years but even that died out around eight or ten years ago. I saw her heel turn into TERFdom a while back and wrote her off, but hoped maybe one day she'd come around. 25 years is a long time to be friends. She was a reflective and funny person.
I don’t know how I feel about all these posts I’m seeing now saying that Dooce’s death feels like the end of an era.
I mean, she essentially ran herself into the ground juggling that voice of a microgeneration thing. Maybe don't shovel that into her open grave.
Rest in peace, Heather.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:33 AM on May 10, 2023 [168 favorites]
We would check in every few years but even that died out around eight or ten years ago. I saw her heel turn into TERFdom a while back and wrote her off, but hoped maybe one day she'd come around. 25 years is a long time to be friends. She was a reflective and funny person.
I don’t know how I feel about all these posts I’m seeing now saying that Dooce’s death feels like the end of an era.
I mean, she essentially ran herself into the ground juggling that voice of a microgeneration thing. Maybe don't shovel that into her open grave.
Rest in peace, Heather.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:33 AM on May 10, 2023 [168 favorites]
That kind of Internet fame can kill you if you can't keep it up. (Why was she blasting her feelings about her CHILD on Insta? What did she think was going to happen?)
posted by kingdead at 10:34 AM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by kingdead at 10:34 AM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Internet fame was some real monkey's paw shit for Heather. But the way she was raised, she couldn't not be number one. Were she a surgeon, she'd have been chief of staff. Were she a lawyer, she'd have been partner.
In the end, I don't think succeeding in that sphere did her any favors.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:38 AM on May 10, 2023 [59 favorites]
In the end, I don't think succeeding in that sphere did her any favors.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:38 AM on May 10, 2023 [59 favorites]
.
posted by kensington314 at 10:41 AM on May 10, 2023
posted by kensington314 at 10:41 AM on May 10, 2023
she was a mother of two girls
(one girl)
posted by babelfish at 10:44 AM on May 10, 2023 [44 favorites]
(one girl)
posted by babelfish at 10:44 AM on May 10, 2023 [44 favorites]
She was a mother of two children, who are presumably grieving.
posted by Bluecoat93 at 10:48 AM on May 10, 2023 [50 favorites]
posted by Bluecoat93 at 10:48 AM on May 10, 2023 [50 favorites]
.
posted by mygothlaundry at 10:49 AM on May 10, 2023
posted by mygothlaundry at 10:49 AM on May 10, 2023
I didn't particularly follow her even in the early days of blogging, but I remembered her immediately on seeing this post. She was so influential and I did like the posts of hers that really made the rounds way back in the day. I'm sad to learn that her path became so difficult and problematic. And I'm sorry for her family and friends.
posted by EvaDestruction at 10:51 AM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by EvaDestruction at 10:51 AM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
This is shocking and terrible, I'm so sorry for her family.
.
posted by gwint at 10:52 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
.
posted by gwint at 10:52 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Has this actually been confirmed?
posted by haptic_avenger at 10:54 AM on May 10, 2023
posted by haptic_avenger at 10:54 AM on May 10, 2023
Here's the AP story which confirms it and also states it was by suicide. CW: I think the AP story misgenders one child, although I have no personal knowledge of that, just going on earlier information.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:55 AM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by warriorqueen at 10:55 AM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Oh, shit. Dooce was one of the first blogs I read every day. I was checking in every so often to see how Chuck was doing and was sad to watch Heather's decline and her struggle with her addiction and ED. I hope her kids have lots of support around them.
posted by fight or flight at 10:55 AM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by fight or flight at 10:55 AM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
Please understand as I say this that I was a friend, that Heather was exactly as snarky and cutting in real life, and that it was rare that I had a conversation with her as a friend that did not include some degree of ball-busting, but...
I didn't need the confirmation from Jon to know that Insta post was true, because Heather would have never posted a picture that was unflattering.
She was really a singular person. I hate that her decline included her going TERF, because now she'll have to wear that stain for eternity, when really, she was pretty great for most of those 48 years. A real piece of fucking work, to be sure. But big-hearted and funny.
Damn. This is going to take a bit to sit with. I didn't keep many friends after high school.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:56 AM on May 10, 2023 [87 favorites]
I didn't need the confirmation from Jon to know that Insta post was true, because Heather would have never posted a picture that was unflattering.
She was really a singular person. I hate that her decline included her going TERF, because now she'll have to wear that stain for eternity, when really, she was pretty great for most of those 48 years. A real piece of fucking work, to be sure. But big-hearted and funny.
Damn. This is going to take a bit to sit with. I didn't keep many friends after high school.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:56 AM on May 10, 2023 [87 favorites]
.
Mrs. gauche and I bonded over her blog early in our courtship, sometime in the mid-2000s, and I'd been aware of her and enjoyed her writing for a while before that, but I stopped checking her blog probably ten years ago. Right now I'm praying comfort to her family and her friends, including DirtyOldTown and others here who knew her.
posted by gauche at 10:59 AM on May 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
Mrs. gauche and I bonded over her blog early in our courtship, sometime in the mid-2000s, and I'd been aware of her and enjoyed her writing for a while before that, but I stopped checking her blog probably ten years ago. Right now I'm praying comfort to her family and her friends, including DirtyOldTown and others here who knew her.
posted by gauche at 10:59 AM on May 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think she followed in the long tradition of literary diarists who bring their inner monologues and private feelings to their audience. Of course she shared stuff about her co-workers, her job, her life struggles, kids and relationships that probably made them uncomfortable and makes me cringe at times. At the same time I think that in sharing these things she allowed a lot of people to feel less alone in their struggles and perhaps it served to break the ice on these topics. Consider how some of David Sedaris’ family members have reacted to his work as an example.
posted by interogative mood at 11:01 AM on May 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 11:01 AM on May 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 11:02 AM on May 10, 2023
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 11:02 AM on May 10, 2023
She also plunged into ADHD denialism, which is tremendously harmful to those of us living with it, and still jaw-droppingly well-tolerated in many “enlightened” circles.
An ex-Mormon friend of mine also died unexpectedly in his 40s, a couple weeks ago — no one has confirmed what happened, but given his demographics I’m going with Occam’s Razor. He’d also been posting angrier and angrier things on Facebook about having been raised in a cult and how he was not OK (his words).
I’m not here to drag on any particular faith — I’m a religious person myself, albeit very lapsed at this point. But I’ve sure as hell seen some damage done by certain kinds of dogma. Being married to an ex-Mormon, I’ve seen the hurt, and I’ve seen the desperation to hang onto the sense of being RIGHT about stuff and KNOWING what is TRUE. You get a lot of people who get fed up with the exclusion and the evangelism, and yet they end up pivoting to something new and exclusionary to evangelize for.
“Hurt people hurt people,” they say.
Dooce hurt a lot of people in her lifetime. She and my friend both mortally wounded themselves, which will also leave a lot of hurt people in their wake.
To anyone who is struggling or has lost someone this way, please know this Internet stranger is holding you in their heart.
posted by armeowda at 11:14 AM on May 10, 2023 [48 favorites]
An ex-Mormon friend of mine also died unexpectedly in his 40s, a couple weeks ago — no one has confirmed what happened, but given his demographics I’m going with Occam’s Razor. He’d also been posting angrier and angrier things on Facebook about having been raised in a cult and how he was not OK (his words).
I’m not here to drag on any particular faith — I’m a religious person myself, albeit very lapsed at this point. But I’ve sure as hell seen some damage done by certain kinds of dogma. Being married to an ex-Mormon, I’ve seen the hurt, and I’ve seen the desperation to hang onto the sense of being RIGHT about stuff and KNOWING what is TRUE. You get a lot of people who get fed up with the exclusion and the evangelism, and yet they end up pivoting to something new and exclusionary to evangelize for.
“Hurt people hurt people,” they say.
Dooce hurt a lot of people in her lifetime. She and my friend both mortally wounded themselves, which will also leave a lot of hurt people in their wake.
To anyone who is struggling or has lost someone this way, please know this Internet stranger is holding you in their heart.
posted by armeowda at 11:14 AM on May 10, 2023 [48 favorites]
One more thought on the TERF thing, because it does matter. If I could tell any of our trans friends one thing about Heather it's that she had a tendency to make sudden big decisions and run right at them with her head down to mixed results. But she also wouldn't shy away from copping to it later if time showed her she was wrong.
In high school, she was our valedictorian and she asked if as part of her speeech, she could lead a prayer. They told her that as a public school event, our graduation couldn't have prayer. Heather still being extremely Mormon back then, she led a prayer from her seat instead of while she was at the podium. Being seated in alphabetical order, I was seated in the back row. When I remained seated while the other kids stood and prayed with Heather, people literally booed me. I wasn't the only one who didn't stand and pray , but I was the only one you could see from where the families and friends were sitting. Later, Heather made a point of telling me she was sorry that she caused that.
I really believe that within a few years, were she still with us, she'd have come around on her transphobia, she'd have been a fierce advocate for her kid and she would have worn a hairshirt if she had to do it to make it up to her kid.
I mean, she'd probably be pissing somebody else off by then. But she'd have gotten to them later, too.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:15 AM on May 10, 2023 [41 favorites]
In high school, she was our valedictorian and she asked if as part of her speeech, she could lead a prayer. They told her that as a public school event, our graduation couldn't have prayer. Heather still being extremely Mormon back then, she led a prayer from her seat instead of while she was at the podium. Being seated in alphabetical order, I was seated in the back row. When I remained seated while the other kids stood and prayed with Heather, people literally booed me. I wasn't the only one who didn't stand and pray , but I was the only one you could see from where the families and friends were sitting. Later, Heather made a point of telling me she was sorry that she caused that.
I really believe that within a few years, were she still with us, she'd have come around on her transphobia, she'd have been a fierce advocate for her kid and she would have worn a hairshirt if she had to do it to make it up to her kid.
I mean, she'd probably be pissing somebody else off by then. But she'd have gotten to them later, too.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:15 AM on May 10, 2023 [41 favorites]
My condolences to those on Mefi who knew her. At least from the public perspective, she was very troubled but not vile for a long time. It's very challenging to have loved ones like that.
posted by praemunire at 11:15 AM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 11:15 AM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
She was really a singular person. I hate that her decline included her going TERF, because now she'll have to wear that stain for eternity,
Not if we don’t let it. Life has terrible stretches and for most of us there is some place in that stretch where the state of our biology intersects with externalities too big or too protracted to hold without our own chins being sucked under the waves of some of the dark patterns in our head.
Good people say and believe bad things when all of their internal balance has left them.
Understanding and forgiving does not make the bad comments right. It only gives the other person enough breathing space to actually, solidly get their feet back underneath them again; gives them a chance to right themselves and then make right their prior words.
I wish that same grace on you, and everyone you are worried about in your lives right now.
To Heather’s friends and family who are here or may read this: My heart is with you today. May you love and help each other through these dark moments. May her memory be always a blessing.
posted by Silvery Fish at 11:16 AM on May 10, 2023 [42 favorites]
Not if we don’t let it. Life has terrible stretches and for most of us there is some place in that stretch where the state of our biology intersects with externalities too big or too protracted to hold without our own chins being sucked under the waves of some of the dark patterns in our head.
Good people say and believe bad things when all of their internal balance has left them.
Understanding and forgiving does not make the bad comments right. It only gives the other person enough breathing space to actually, solidly get their feet back underneath them again; gives them a chance to right themselves and then make right their prior words.
I wish that same grace on you, and everyone you are worried about in your lives right now.
To Heather’s friends and family who are here or may read this: My heart is with you today. May you love and help each other through these dark moments. May her memory be always a blessing.
posted by Silvery Fish at 11:16 AM on May 10, 2023 [42 favorites]
Ah, hell. I met her when Matt invited me to MaxFunCon and while I can't say I got to know her, I definitely got the impression that she was a very smart woman who was wound a couple turns too tight and that internal pressure wasn't enough to keep her out of reach of her demons. May peace find her in the end.
And may her loved ones get the space they need to mourn. Notoriety is a hell of a burden.
posted by restless_nomad at 11:22 AM on May 10, 2023 [19 favorites]
And may her loved ones get the space they need to mourn. Notoriety is a hell of a burden.
posted by restless_nomad at 11:22 AM on May 10, 2023 [19 favorites]
Dooce was writing painfully real things about the struggles of new motherhood at a time when I was also experiencing new motherhood, and her openness about her mental health and post partum depression played a significant role in helping me, and probably thousands of other women, name what we were going through and get help for it.
And also -- people HATED her. Truly hated her. (this is way, way before the TERF stuff. Way before.) Death threats, internet harassment, the whole thing. How dare she do things like have sponsored posts, talk about her children, not talk about her children, get medical care for her dog, not get medical care for her dog, make money, be successful, get a book deal, be white, be thin, not be mormon, be former mormon .... you name it, people on the early internet hated her for it. GOMI (Get off My Internet, a site dedicated to making fun of bloggers) had an entire section dedicated just to people being critical of whatever her current post was.
She was so famous that she became a verb .. to "get Dooced" was to get fired from your job because of what you wrote on the internet. She was a Jeopardy clue. For good or ill, she was one of the very small group of women whose online writing sparked what became known as mommy-blogging, and what is now called "being an influencer". For a while, she even made it seem fun, before it became clear the level of absolute vitriol that "the internet" could throw at you for simply being a woman with opinions and a cutting sense of humor.
I'm not a slavish Dooce fan (I stopped reading her around the time she took her big break, partly because I just wasn't reading blogs anymore), and I don't at all defend the offensive statements she made. But when I think of people who changed the web, I think of her. Her writing about her depression saved lives. Whatever her demons were, I'm sorry she could not escape them in the end.
posted by anastasiav at 11:28 AM on May 10, 2023 [114 favorites]
And also -- people HATED her. Truly hated her. (this is way, way before the TERF stuff. Way before.) Death threats, internet harassment, the whole thing. How dare she do things like have sponsored posts, talk about her children, not talk about her children, get medical care for her dog, not get medical care for her dog, make money, be successful, get a book deal, be white, be thin, not be mormon, be former mormon .... you name it, people on the early internet hated her for it. GOMI (Get off My Internet, a site dedicated to making fun of bloggers) had an entire section dedicated just to people being critical of whatever her current post was.
She was so famous that she became a verb .. to "get Dooced" was to get fired from your job because of what you wrote on the internet. She was a Jeopardy clue. For good or ill, she was one of the very small group of women whose online writing sparked what became known as mommy-blogging, and what is now called "being an influencer". For a while, she even made it seem fun, before it became clear the level of absolute vitriol that "the internet" could throw at you for simply being a woman with opinions and a cutting sense of humor.
I'm not a slavish Dooce fan (I stopped reading her around the time she took her big break, partly because I just wasn't reading blogs anymore), and I don't at all defend the offensive statements she made. But when I think of people who changed the web, I think of her. Her writing about her depression saved lives. Whatever her demons were, I'm sorry she could not escape them in the end.
posted by anastasiav at 11:28 AM on May 10, 2023 [114 favorites]
Hi!
Sorry about that, I should have said the mom of two children.
posted by rhonzo at 11:28 AM on May 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
Sorry about that, I should have said the mom of two children.
posted by rhonzo at 11:28 AM on May 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
Not if we don’t let it.
I am in sympathy with your general position, but I don't believe that I, a cis, gender-conforming, woman, am in a position to forgive the harm she did to trans people. (I do think TERF ideology hurts all women, but we are not the primary target.) So I don't feel comfortable talking about extending her grace as much as...being proportional, I guess. Sometimes it can be very easy for the left to focus on criticizing one person who has definitely done something wrong, but is themselves in a vulnerable enough position that they are a lot easier to go after than someone with more power and a less marginalized identity. Armstrong, as a (speaking frankly) effectively has-been mommy-blogger, was an easy person to criticize for reasons far beyond her later turn into repugnant views. I hope that's kept in mind as we think about what we want to say about her.
posted by praemunire at 11:31 AM on May 10, 2023 [20 favorites]
I am in sympathy with your general position, but I don't believe that I, a cis, gender-conforming, woman, am in a position to forgive the harm she did to trans people. (I do think TERF ideology hurts all women, but we are not the primary target.) So I don't feel comfortable talking about extending her grace as much as...being proportional, I guess. Sometimes it can be very easy for the left to focus on criticizing one person who has definitely done something wrong, but is themselves in a vulnerable enough position that they are a lot easier to go after than someone with more power and a less marginalized identity. Armstrong, as a (speaking frankly) effectively has-been mommy-blogger, was an easy person to criticize for reasons far beyond her later turn into repugnant views. I hope that's kept in mind as we think about what we want to say about her.
posted by praemunire at 11:31 AM on May 10, 2023 [20 favorites]
I just saw the post on Instagram, and am sitting here with my jaw dropped. My condolences to her friends and family. DirtyOldTown, thank you for your remembrances.
She was human, and not afraid to write about her life. I started reading her many moons ago - Marlo was just an infant. I followed Dooce for a great many years, but at one point, her blog turned into a mishmash of posts showing the things she bought with sponsored links. Her writing, which I had loved, was lost, and I stopped following her. I checked in occasionally, but admittedly as of today, it's been a long time since I read her blog. I had read a post or two where I deduced that Marlo was non-binary, but didn't see or hear of her TERF posts.
The last post on dooce.com is a wonderful love letter to Leta. I was hoping she'd created a similar one for Marlo, but alas...
I'm so sorry for her children and partner and all those she touched. She was a force.
posted by hydra77 at 11:34 AM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
She was human, and not afraid to write about her life. I started reading her many moons ago - Marlo was just an infant. I followed Dooce for a great many years, but at one point, her blog turned into a mishmash of posts showing the things she bought with sponsored links. Her writing, which I had loved, was lost, and I stopped following her. I checked in occasionally, but admittedly as of today, it's been a long time since I read her blog. I had read a post or two where I deduced that Marlo was non-binary, but didn't see or hear of her TERF posts.
The last post on dooce.com is a wonderful love letter to Leta. I was hoping she'd created a similar one for Marlo, but alas...
I'm so sorry for her children and partner and all those she touched. She was a force.
posted by hydra77 at 11:34 AM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Well, this is just neat. Here I am, spending too much time on the Internet in general, and before this comment thread would have had literally no idea who this person was. And now I know... well, kind of a lot.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 11:36 AM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 11:36 AM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
As a trans person, as someone who has struggled with acceptance from my own mother (a woman who still struggles, and will probably always struggle with reconciling her love for me with her confusion over who I am), I was hurt by Heather's hideous letter. It hit me in an already painful place.
But even as I read it I knew that Heather was in a far, far more painful place. The kind of pain I couldn't even comprehend. I read her blog almost daily for years, I felt like I was being let down by someone I trusted, but more than that I was deeply worried for her and what she was going through. I'm sorry things ended like this for her and honestly, I'd love to avoid the discourse in order to acknowledge that humanity, in general, is a work in progress.
posted by fight or flight at 11:40 AM on May 10, 2023 [105 favorites]
But even as I read it I knew that Heather was in a far, far more painful place. The kind of pain I couldn't even comprehend. I read her blog almost daily for years, I felt like I was being let down by someone I trusted, but more than that I was deeply worried for her and what she was going through. I'm sorry things ended like this for her and honestly, I'd love to avoid the discourse in order to acknowledge that humanity, in general, is a work in progress.
posted by fight or flight at 11:40 AM on May 10, 2023 [105 favorites]
Her partner is also a TERF and probably responsible for the misgendering to the AP, among other things. My deepest condolences to her kids, stepkids, Jon and Liz, and basically everyone but him.
posted by Threeve at 11:48 AM on May 10, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by Threeve at 11:48 AM on May 10, 2023 [19 favorites]
I know many MeFites will be well aware, but for anyone who hasn’t come across it, the ThereIsHelp page has links to suicide and mental-health support lines in 15 countries, plus resources for friends and family of someone in crisis.
I don’t know this writer, but I know what it feels like to wish I weren’t, and it’s awful. (I can see she both helped and harmed with her writing - just want to somehow connect with those hard feelings that so many of us have.)
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:54 AM on May 10, 2023 [27 favorites]
I don’t know this writer, but I know what it feels like to wish I weren’t, and it’s awful. (I can see she both helped and harmed with her writing - just want to somehow connect with those hard feelings that so many of us have.)
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:54 AM on May 10, 2023 [27 favorites]
I read her blog for many years, though I lost track of her at some point years ago. She was someone who made motherhood feel like an approachable thing for me when I was in my early twenties - something I could potentially do while staying true to myself. I loved what a public mess she was sometimes. Just a savagely funny, unapologetically weird person.
I'm now a mom of three and I do think dooce changed motherhood for me, for the better, just a little. I'm sad to see her go, and sad about how it happened. My condolences to her kids, who will presumably be in therapy for their entire lives as a consequence of how their mom lived hers. What a complicated legacy.
.
posted by potrzebie at 11:54 AM on May 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
I'm now a mom of three and I do think dooce changed motherhood for me, for the better, just a little. I'm sad to see her go, and sad about how it happened. My condolences to her kids, who will presumably be in therapy for their entire lives as a consequence of how their mom lived hers. What a complicated legacy.
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posted by potrzebie at 11:54 AM on May 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
I hadn't read her recently but I do remember her writing from 20 years ago and the thrill I felt whenever she published a new post -- she was bold, sharp, raw, and always shockingly funny. No one else on the internet was doing quite what she was doing. It felt stratospheric.
May she and her loved ones find peace.
.
posted by mochapickle at 12:01 PM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
May she and her loved ones find peace.
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posted by mochapickle at 12:01 PM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
I will say, in later posts, she said something along the lines of "I will use my kid's preferred pronouns, I respect and love my kid."
Good for her, and for her kid. Less good for the rest of us trans people, who weren't redeemed by her love and respect.
posted by Dysk at 12:42 PM on May 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
Good for her, and for her kid. Less good for the rest of us trans people, who weren't redeemed by her love and respect.
posted by Dysk at 12:42 PM on May 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
.
I also looked forward to reading her posts over lunch twenty years or so ago during otherwise tiresome days. Her life looked perfect, not in an Instagram way but in a real, achievable way. It was neither. But whose is?
Her brand was Hot Mess and she was bitterly aware of it. I hoped she would find peace. Perhaps she did, in fleeting moments, which is all most of us can hope for.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:45 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
I also looked forward to reading her posts over lunch twenty years or so ago during otherwise tiresome days. Her life looked perfect, not in an Instagram way but in a real, achievable way. It was neither. But whose is?
Her brand was Hot Mess and she was bitterly aware of it. I hoped she would find peace. Perhaps she did, in fleeting moments, which is all most of us can hope for.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:45 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
.
posted by juliplease at 12:49 PM on May 10, 2023
posted by juliplease at 12:49 PM on May 10, 2023
If my life were in lights, if I'd had every step I take, every move I make opened up to others, I would not do well. She walked the tightrope without a net and did it for years. The odds are against a person who does that; they will stumble. Hopefully they'll catch the wire, not go all the way down. She did that, then had the jam to get back up on the wire and walk it again. And again.
She did this while also in the real fight of her life: Depression. And alcoholism.
Who knows which comes first, the depression or the alcoholism? And what does it matter? Once they've got their claws in you, trouble has got you. Imagine if you will that you're fighting an invisible knife-fighter, who knows exactly all of your weak spots, and jabs you in them. You turn to protect that place and they are free now to stab you somewhere else. Rinse, repeat.
You can cry all you want -- and you damn sure will -- but very few people will come to your aid. Very few people even know *how* to help you. People who do know how to help you will want to do so -- will you open to them, to their love?
A good life, seems to me -- she gave what she had, until she couldn't give any more.
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posted by dancestoblue at 12:57 PM on May 10, 2023 [12 favorites]
She did this while also in the real fight of her life: Depression. And alcoholism.
Who knows which comes first, the depression or the alcoholism? And what does it matter? Once they've got their claws in you, trouble has got you. Imagine if you will that you're fighting an invisible knife-fighter, who knows exactly all of your weak spots, and jabs you in them. You turn to protect that place and they are free now to stab you somewhere else. Rinse, repeat.
You can cry all you want -- and you damn sure will -- but very few people will come to your aid. Very few people even know *how* to help you. People who do know how to help you will want to do so -- will you open to them, to their love?
A good life, seems to me -- she gave what she had, until she couldn't give any more.
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posted by dancestoblue at 12:57 PM on May 10, 2023 [12 favorites]
i hadn't thought of her in years, but i used to love reading her back when blogging was new and exciting. she posted about skin cancer once and i emailed her to tell her that her post caused me to make a dermatologist appointment and she emailed me back and i felt so special.
she posted about things that were hard and real and it was so important to see other real people struggling to know you weren't alone. that's what i miss most about blogging.
i am so sorry for her kids and i hope people aren't shitty to them.
i hope she has found peace.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 1:04 PM on May 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
she posted about things that were hard and real and it was so important to see other real people struggling to know you weren't alone. that's what i miss most about blogging.
i am so sorry for her kids and i hope people aren't shitty to them.
i hope she has found peace.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 1:04 PM on May 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
I didn’t follow her and didn’t know about the TERF or mental illness issues - I’m sorry to hear about all of this. What I knew of her tangentially was what anastasiav mentioned - because of her early posts online, she’s one of the reasons the current internet landscape looks like what it does. People hated her for almost everything she did online, even though / because most of what she did online was talk about her life. She basically started the niche of “mommy bloggers.” She was fired for it. When her new washing machine broke and no one would help her, she complained about the company on Twitter and got service immediately, and it made the news - I don’t think anyone had ever done that before, either.
To learn about her passing via a cryptic post on Instagram- it’s almost fitting.
posted by Mchelly at 1:16 PM on May 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
To learn about her passing via a cryptic post on Instagram- it’s almost fitting.
posted by Mchelly at 1:16 PM on May 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
She used to say she wanted "Distortions" by Clinic played at her funeral.
I leave, oh I leave, now I leave cured/Free of distortionsposted by DirtyOldTown at 1:22 PM on May 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
I dug up a circa 2005 blogroll from my site a couple of years ago, and Dooce.com was on it. I stopped reading her a long time ago, but thinking of her will always remind me of those early days of blogs or online journals, or whatever we want to call them. And that will always be a happy memory because I was almost always laughing when reading her blog.
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posted by COD at 1:27 PM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
.
posted by COD at 1:27 PM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
NYT Mini-Obituary (gift link) - note at the end says "A full obituary will appear soon."
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:45 PM on May 10, 2023
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:45 PM on May 10, 2023
For those in this thread asking “who?”, I (gently) suggest searching Metafilter itself, as this is where I discovered her blog in 2002 when she was fired.
https://www.metafilter.com/15133/Heather-Hamilton-got-fired
I hope her memory is a blessing to her friends and family.
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posted by annathea at 1:51 PM on May 10, 2023 [15 favorites]
https://www.metafilter.com/15133/Heather-Hamilton-got-fired
I hope her memory is a blessing to her friends and family.
.
posted by annathea at 1:51 PM on May 10, 2023 [15 favorites]
Oh, like so many others I'm filled with nostalgia for the early years when I was reading her posts about raising her baby while I was home with my baby. It'll be hard for some folks now to understand how revolutionary it was, what she was doing in the time before Facebook, Insta, Twitter and all the rest. Revealing herself, absolutely baring herself, hilariously and seriously and sarcastically. And earning money while doing so -- the dream of so many of us stuck at home with very small children. "Mommy blogger" was such a derogatory term, and belittled what she (and a few other revolutionaries) invented.
I remember laughing uproariously when she created a spinoff website where she only posted hate mail, and monetized that too. What a gas!
And then, like so many others, I eventually stopped reading her, and was only tangentially aware of her mental illness struggles. And not at all aware, until today, of her TERF viewpoints. Having gone back now and glanced at those posts, it does seem clear that she was profoundly unwell. It's sad and disappointing to see. But mostly sad. For her, for her children, for her friends. It does all seem like a loss.
posted by BlahLaLa at 1:58 PM on May 10, 2023 [21 favorites]
I remember laughing uproariously when she created a spinoff website where she only posted hate mail, and monetized that too. What a gas!
And then, like so many others, I eventually stopped reading her, and was only tangentially aware of her mental illness struggles. And not at all aware, until today, of her TERF viewpoints. Having gone back now and glanced at those posts, it does seem clear that she was profoundly unwell. It's sad and disappointing to see. But mostly sad. For her, for her children, for her friends. It does all seem like a loss.
posted by BlahLaLa at 1:58 PM on May 10, 2023 [21 favorites]
.
posted by sillygwailo at 2:11 PM on May 10, 2023
posted by sillygwailo at 2:11 PM on May 10, 2023
I seen to recall for a minute someone was trying to make "dooce" happen as a verb meaning "got fired for Posting". I guess we now call that "cancelled"? But I always liked the ring of "dooced".
posted by potrzebie at 2:16 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 2:16 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
.
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 2:21 PM on May 10, 2023
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 2:21 PM on May 10, 2023
to "get Dooced" was to get fired from your job because of what you wrote on the internet
it's even more zingy and internetty when "what you wrote" was racist and then you make a wildly overvalued career out of it that ultimately culminates in a difficult and then tragic ending.
My heart breaks for the kids, who at least had a hope of some kind of repair for as long as she was alive. I hope there has been someone in the background the past few years (at least) to quietly and repeatedly tell them "your mom is sick and she's not thinking right". There was still a lot of exploitation and inappropriateness before the truly gruesome things she said in her decline; I think there was a lot more reckoning that the kids deserved.
(I don't even know what you say to "your mom updated the extensive existing public narrative of her life with you to include how she was drinking all day around those funny stories about driving you to and from school", which I think didn't get a chance to fully register on anyone's radar before things started escalating so wildly.)
Nobody deserves this kind of end, though, and I am sorry for the hell that she and those around her have been/are going through.
One of the things Heather was quite good at though, for a long time and I guess sometimes up until nearly the end, was using the platform she had to flag the kind of concerns that are often handwaved off because of the "mommyblogger" demographic, including a number of physical and mental health issues. There were a LOT of women who learned from her what postpartum depression even was and that yes, actually, you can go to the hospital if it is scaring you and you should tell your doctor and expect to be taken seriously if you are worried, and she described the experience vividly enough that someone could relate even if they didn't know it had a name.
Maybe there is or has been or will be someone who is just reaching the "keep vodka in the hair product bottle in the bathroom for mornings" stage, and they're going to stop and think I can't convince myself this is normal and okay because I already knew it wasn't when I read about it. If there's someone reading this right now that didn't know about all that but is hovering in that place: reaching out for help now, as scary and maybe consequential as it might be? The spiritual rock bottom in your bathroom this year is a far preferable arena to when your body starts to fail from it years from now. Because you can't always undo that damage, and it might turn you into someone you don't want to be along the way, and it might rewrite your legacy into something you likely wouldn't want. Don't let anybody blow off your request for help because you seem fine and privileged and maybe thin and fashionable and affluent-appearing. Insist you be heard and helped even if you "seem" fine.
I only met her once though we had mutuals for I guess nearly two decades, but I think she was mean enough to appreciate someone saying "may her memory be a lesson" for both the accuracy and the shade of it.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:32 PM on May 10, 2023 [56 favorites]
it's even more zingy and internetty when "what you wrote" was racist and then you make a wildly overvalued career out of it that ultimately culminates in a difficult and then tragic ending.
My heart breaks for the kids, who at least had a hope of some kind of repair for as long as she was alive. I hope there has been someone in the background the past few years (at least) to quietly and repeatedly tell them "your mom is sick and she's not thinking right". There was still a lot of exploitation and inappropriateness before the truly gruesome things she said in her decline; I think there was a lot more reckoning that the kids deserved.
(I don't even know what you say to "your mom updated the extensive existing public narrative of her life with you to include how she was drinking all day around those funny stories about driving you to and from school", which I think didn't get a chance to fully register on anyone's radar before things started escalating so wildly.)
Nobody deserves this kind of end, though, and I am sorry for the hell that she and those around her have been/are going through.
One of the things Heather was quite good at though, for a long time and I guess sometimes up until nearly the end, was using the platform she had to flag the kind of concerns that are often handwaved off because of the "mommyblogger" demographic, including a number of physical and mental health issues. There were a LOT of women who learned from her what postpartum depression even was and that yes, actually, you can go to the hospital if it is scaring you and you should tell your doctor and expect to be taken seriously if you are worried, and she described the experience vividly enough that someone could relate even if they didn't know it had a name.
Maybe there is or has been or will be someone who is just reaching the "keep vodka in the hair product bottle in the bathroom for mornings" stage, and they're going to stop and think I can't convince myself this is normal and okay because I already knew it wasn't when I read about it. If there's someone reading this right now that didn't know about all that but is hovering in that place: reaching out for help now, as scary and maybe consequential as it might be? The spiritual rock bottom in your bathroom this year is a far preferable arena to when your body starts to fail from it years from now. Because you can't always undo that damage, and it might turn you into someone you don't want to be along the way, and it might rewrite your legacy into something you likely wouldn't want. Don't let anybody blow off your request for help because you seem fine and privileged and maybe thin and fashionable and affluent-appearing. Insist you be heard and helped even if you "seem" fine.
I only met her once though we had mutuals for I guess nearly two decades, but I think she was mean enough to appreciate someone saying "may her memory be a lesson" for both the accuracy and the shade of it.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:32 PM on May 10, 2023 [56 favorites]
To those that loved her, I'm sorry for your loss.
(There's some sort of kismet in Alex Williams writing the mini-obit, particularly with the emphasis on financial details.)
posted by socky_puppy at 2:35 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
(There's some sort of kismet in Alex Williams writing the mini-obit, particularly with the emphasis on financial details.)
posted by socky_puppy at 2:35 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Link to a 2019 article in the Guardian on Heather's treatment of depression with brief, 15-minute propofol-induced comas. (Important note: her transgender child is misgendered in the article.) The treatment, a possible replacement for electroshock therapy, affects Gaba and glutamate levels in the brain, and seems to have shown positive results for Heather initially.
posted by Gordion Knott at 2:37 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Gordion Knott at 2:37 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
How things have changed here in the blue.
2011 post
This post was deleted for the following reason: This kinda seems like blog drama for blog drama's sake. --
posted by Ideefixe at 2:38 PM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
2011 post
This post was deleted for the following reason: This kinda seems like blog drama for blog drama's sake. --
posted by Ideefixe at 2:38 PM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
Well at least you haven't been carrying a grudge over a deleted FPP for 12 years
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 2:49 PM on May 10, 2023 [70 favorites]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 2:49 PM on May 10, 2023 [70 favorites]
This is sad and I feel for the children.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 2:51 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 2:51 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
I appreciate that the first comment in that deleted post says, "mommybloggers are...easy to ignore." Heather made herself hard to ignore, that's for sure.
posted by BlahLaLa at 3:03 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by BlahLaLa at 3:03 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Clicked on the "previously" links from 2002 and 2004 and hoo boy, the tone of these old MF comment threads suuuucks.
posted by kensington314 at 3:51 PM on May 10, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by kensington314 at 3:51 PM on May 10, 2023 [15 favorites]
I was in the room for her talk at XOXO in 2015, an event which itself felt like it marked the end of an era.
I understand the ambivalence to her blogging career, and she caused a lot of pain in recent years, but like anastasiav I also think about the number of absolutely obsessive haters she attracted, especially during the height of her minicelebrity a decade ago. Nobody deserves that.
.
posted by holgate at 3:59 PM on May 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
I understand the ambivalence to her blogging career, and she caused a lot of pain in recent years, but like anastasiav I also think about the number of absolutely obsessive haters she attracted, especially during the height of her minicelebrity a decade ago. Nobody deserves that.
.
posted by holgate at 3:59 PM on May 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
Count me amoung those who read Dooce years and years ago, and felt a real connection to Heather. I'm feeling this loss.
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posted by Frayed Knot at 4:06 PM on May 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
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posted by Frayed Knot at 4:06 PM on May 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
This is so sad. My heart breaks for Leta and Marlo; what a hard road to have such public lives - without their consent - and so much public family turmoil. And most of all because suicide is so incredibly damaging to the people it leaves behind. Please, everyone reading this: you matter. People care. Even if you fucked stuff up, it can be mended. If you're having urges to self-harm, please seek help.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 4:33 PM on May 10, 2023 [24 favorites]
posted by nouvelle-personne at 4:33 PM on May 10, 2023 [24 favorites]
I read her blog back in the day and was amazed by her openness. I had never read anything like what she wrote. And now I hear she suffered more and then committed suicide, and I marvel at all the tragedy this world can hold.
posted by Vatnesine at 5:25 PM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Vatnesine at 5:25 PM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
I cosign most of the "aware of her" posts here.
Additionally, wow, I'm sure it should have come earlier, but as a Jew, I can't decide if I'm flattered/welcomed to the mainstream/irritated/asking you all to stop re "may [blank] memory be for a blessing."
Not a judgement of anyone, I'm still working out my own feelings, but I DO NOT LIKE the weird mainstreaming of זכרונו לברכה to everyone.
posted by atomicstone at 5:44 PM on May 10, 2023 [16 favorites]
Additionally, wow, I'm sure it should have come earlier, but as a Jew, I can't decide if I'm flattered/welcomed to the mainstream/irritated/asking you all to stop re "may [blank] memory be for a blessing."
Not a judgement of anyone, I'm still working out my own feelings, but I DO NOT LIKE the weird mainstreaming of זכרונו לברכה to everyone.
posted by atomicstone at 5:44 PM on May 10, 2023 [16 favorites]
She was a brilliant satirist and brave social critic, and never a perfect person, which was a belief she rejected.
posted by Brian B. at 5:54 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Brian B. at 5:54 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Perhaps discussion of decade old deletions would be better suited to Meta?
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 6:19 PM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by not just everyday big moggies at 6:19 PM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
.
Peace to her children and family.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 6:37 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Peace to her children and family.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 6:37 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
It takes great pain to take your own life, to leave your children, family, partner, friends. Heather had a really active discussion space. 'Mommy blogger' always annoys me; it seems so trivial, but her site was a home for a lot of women coping with parenting and preserving their identity. I'm so sorry she felt so much pain; I hope her children get tons of help and support.
If you think about taking your life, there really is help. It can really get better. Peace, everybody.
posted by theora55 at 6:46 PM on May 10, 2023 [12 favorites]
If you think about taking your life, there really is help. It can really get better. Peace, everybody.
posted by theora55 at 6:46 PM on May 10, 2023 [12 favorites]
Mod note: One deleted. Please pause all discussion of other threads here.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 7:50 PM on May 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 7:50 PM on May 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
What a fucking tragedy, on so many levels.
I remember reading her some 20 years ago when she first appeared on the blue (for getting fired), and she was funny. I vaguely followed her for a few more years after that.
She talked honestly about her serious struggles with mental health, and I appreciate that. But she also chose, or fell into, a profession that opened her up to exactly the kinds of toxic comments and criticisms that exacerbated her depression and anxiety. I can only imagine what that must have been like: she opens herself up to the world, and she gets back a blast furnace of white-hot hatred. Rinse and repeat every week.
She had tried to kill herself in 2021 and then wrote about it in that 30-page anti-trans post from 2022 (you can find it on the Wayback Machine if you look hard enough). It's clear as daylight that she was suffering tremendously and that she was lashing out without making much sense.
But then to kill yourself, leaving behind your two teenagers without a mom? I don't know how to process that. I know that people suffer tremendous pain and I know that people do terrible things, but to quote Heather herself: suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
On preview, I see that theora55 has said the same thing.
My lovely internet friends, I've been through dark and terrifying times, and I've watched my world fall apart around me, and I've seen my dreams crumble like rotten wood. I've also held my wife's hand this evening, and I saw the mist rise above the river this morning, and I've joyfully wasted a happy hour or two clicking around the internet. I watched the first episode of Schmigadoon tonight, and that was pretty good.
It never gets perfect, but it can get better.
The suicide hotline number here in the US is 988. The Trevor Project here in the US is also wonderful for anyone in the LGBTQ family and for those who love them. They're both great. They help. Don't ask me how I know.
When there's life, there's hope.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 8:15 PM on May 10, 2023 [32 favorites]
I remember reading her some 20 years ago when she first appeared on the blue (for getting fired), and she was funny. I vaguely followed her for a few more years after that.
She talked honestly about her serious struggles with mental health, and I appreciate that. But she also chose, or fell into, a profession that opened her up to exactly the kinds of toxic comments and criticisms that exacerbated her depression and anxiety. I can only imagine what that must have been like: she opens herself up to the world, and she gets back a blast furnace of white-hot hatred. Rinse and repeat every week.
She had tried to kill herself in 2021 and then wrote about it in that 30-page anti-trans post from 2022 (you can find it on the Wayback Machine if you look hard enough). It's clear as daylight that she was suffering tremendously and that she was lashing out without making much sense.
But then to kill yourself, leaving behind your two teenagers without a mom? I don't know how to process that. I know that people suffer tremendous pain and I know that people do terrible things, but to quote Heather herself: suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
On preview, I see that theora55 has said the same thing.
My lovely internet friends, I've been through dark and terrifying times, and I've watched my world fall apart around me, and I've seen my dreams crumble like rotten wood. I've also held my wife's hand this evening, and I saw the mist rise above the river this morning, and I've joyfully wasted a happy hour or two clicking around the internet. I watched the first episode of Schmigadoon tonight, and that was pretty good.
It never gets perfect, but it can get better.
The suicide hotline number here in the US is 988. The Trevor Project here in the US is also wonderful for anyone in the LGBTQ family and for those who love them. They're both great. They help. Don't ask me how I know.
When there's life, there's hope.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 8:15 PM on May 10, 2023 [32 favorites]
I seen to recall for a minute someone was trying to make "dooce" happen as a verb meaning "got fired for Posting". I
Happened to me in 2002. I was never famous at all. But I had a personal blog my work took offense to. I remember my sis saying I was "dooced." I never knew her writing well but it is an internet throw back for some of us.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:41 PM on May 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
Happened to me in 2002. I was never famous at all. But I had a personal blog my work took offense to. I remember my sis saying I was "dooced." I never knew her writing well but it is an internet throw back for some of us.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:41 PM on May 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
We don’t know what kind of reparations she did or did not make with her kids. It’s ok to make pronouncements about the right to die, but maybe for a profoundly depressed relapsed addict with a lot changing in her life, it’s not an enlightened monk’s walk into a forest to meet the beyond.
I think there are some issues about perimenopausal and menopausal issues with mental health that are unaddressed is our society.
posted by vunder at 9:33 PM on May 10, 2023 [20 favorites]
I think there are some issues about perimenopausal and menopausal issues with mental health that are unaddressed is our society.
posted by vunder at 9:33 PM on May 10, 2023 [20 favorites]
[I wrote several paragraphs, but what's the use]
.
posted by jragon at 1:31 AM on May 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
.
posted by jragon at 1:31 AM on May 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
>we're talking about someone who was a very early early internet blogger in MeFi's own historical cohort and peer.
I feel this very keenly. Heather's impact is everywhere on today's social media. I haven't followed her in years, but my entry into the internet was through her blog and then MetaFilter. An internet OG.
It sounds like her later years were marred with instability and terrible views. Alcoholism and depression are hard diseases to crack, but that isn't an excuse for terfs. I hope her family finds peace.
.
posted by bluefly at 2:55 AM on May 11, 2023 [10 favorites]
I feel this very keenly. Heather's impact is everywhere on today's social media. I haven't followed her in years, but my entry into the internet was through her blog and then MetaFilter. An internet OG.
It sounds like her later years were marred with instability and terrible views. Alcoholism and depression are hard diseases to crack, but that isn't an excuse for terfs. I hope her family finds peace.
.
posted by bluefly at 2:55 AM on May 11, 2023 [10 favorites]
Andy Baio put up a pretty thoughtful piece over at Waxy.
posted by Devils Rancher at 3:33 AM on May 11, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by Devils Rancher at 3:33 AM on May 11, 2023 [12 favorites]
I put in my ".", but I'm honestly sad at the news. It Sucked and Then I Cried was such a huge comfort to me after Kid theBRKP came along. It made a very lonely period less lonely.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 4:37 AM on May 11, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 4:37 AM on May 11, 2023 [12 favorites]
Mod note: Several comments removed. This is not the thread to start philosophical discussions about the right to die or how you personally would like your "ideal" death to go.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:20 AM on May 11, 2023 [29 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:20 AM on May 11, 2023 [29 favorites]
I was in the room for her talk at XOXO in 2015 , an event which itself felt like it marked the end of an era […]
posted by holgate at 6:59 PM on May 10
[7 favorites +] [!]
I really recommend watching this. It’s another great window into who she was and how she changed the internet - and saw where things were going first.
posted by Mchelly at 5:22 AM on May 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by holgate at 6:59 PM on May 10
[7 favorites +] [!]
I really recommend watching this. It’s another great window into who she was and how she changed the internet - and saw where things were going first.
posted by Mchelly at 5:22 AM on May 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
We've lived through a stage in time when the ability to write about parenting and personal challenges in real time and publish to a broad audience went from a privileged few (newspaper columnists, usually with a lot of editorial oversight) to anyone who wanted to give it a shot (blogging, and then social media). I think as a society we've largely come around to thinking that this is generally not good for the kids of those involved, and keeping a lot of stuff private is better than making everything public. But there are definite positives (at least for the audience) to someone putting it all out there, pretty much unfiltered, and dealing with the consequences as they come. We've learned a lot about how to redefine "normal" from people posting about what's normally kept private. Still, I see social media and the internet in general as a mostly failed experiment, and I feel bad for everyone who's become collateral damage for what it was trying to be and for what it's ended up as.
posted by rikschell at 5:28 AM on May 11, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by rikschell at 5:28 AM on May 11, 2023 [11 favorites]
I thought of her as the edgier online Irma Bombeck.
I’m not sure I have my media history right, but it seems to me that she pioneered the over-the-top female snark register that became mainstream in the 2000s with Gawker, Jezebel etc. Except her voice was authentic.
posted by haptic_avenger at 5:39 AM on May 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
I’m not sure I have my media history right, but it seems to me that she pioneered the over-the-top female snark register that became mainstream in the 2000s with Gawker, Jezebel etc. Except her voice was authentic.
posted by haptic_avenger at 5:39 AM on May 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
There is something seemingly inherent in humans that causes us to focus in on negative feedback and perseverate on the one person who’s being critical or hostile or just not into you. She had hundreds of thousands (millions?) of fans, admirers, and supporters. But she seemed haunted by the critic. And I do not doubt and am fairly sure that she has received the worst of the worst in terms of being a woman online. But she was a vanguard. She inadvertently invented influencing. She brought up the house lights on blogging and online journaling by moms. Which was indeed being done before but of course it takes a real character and a talent to bring attention to something. But honestly, it looked from my vantage to have become a trap. During the pandemic, I started checking in on her work again and… it unsettled me. And actually many people were unsettled and many were, in a kind and supportive way, concerned. It’s so very sad that she is gone this way. I read her from the very beginning as I also was writing online and am the same age and there was a kind of community of online journal writers, many of whom identified as women, of all ages. Was it her job? Was it her calling, her compulsion, her obligation to share it all online? My heart goes out to those closest to her who know her best and are hurting so much right now. Way too young. Way too bright.
posted by amanda at 7:18 AM on May 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by amanda at 7:18 AM on May 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
We've learned a lot about how to redefine "normal" from people posting about what's normally kept private. Still, I see social media and the internet in general as a mostly failed experiment, and I feel bad for everyone who's become collateral damage for what it was trying to be and for what it's ended up as.
This sums it up nicely. It might be that targets like Dooce discovered a crazed zombie society by venturing out there in full confidence.
posted by Brian B. at 7:21 AM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
This sums it up nicely. It might be that targets like Dooce discovered a crazed zombie society by venturing out there in full confidence.
posted by Brian B. at 7:21 AM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Few of us can be verbs, but Heather most certainly is.
.
posted by artlung at 9:01 AM on May 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
.
posted by artlung at 9:01 AM on May 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
WaPo: Heather Armstrong, a.k.a. Dooce, was real and raw. And we loved her.
WaPo: Heather Armstrong, who made it okay to say motherhood was hard, dead at 47
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:31 AM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
WaPo: Heather Armstrong, who made it okay to say motherhood was hard, dead at 47
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:31 AM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
From the first link, by Lyz Lenz: If she’d been a man, she’d be a humorist and memoirist. But she was a woman, so she was a mommy blogger.
A lot to think about there. At first I thought: what about Fran Leibowitz, Dorothy Parker -- ? But you can see the difference there. The world won't let you be them if you're an ex-Mormon with a baby on your hip and no publishing connections. She did an amazing job from where she was, in the teeth of the wider world's refusal to take her seriously.
But being that driven can drive you off cliffs.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:35 AM on May 11, 2023 [17 favorites]
A lot to think about there. At first I thought: what about Fran Leibowitz, Dorothy Parker -- ? But you can see the difference there. The world won't let you be them if you're an ex-Mormon with a baby on your hip and no publishing connections. She did an amazing job from where she was, in the teeth of the wider world's refusal to take her seriously.
But being that driven can drive you off cliffs.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:35 AM on May 11, 2023 [17 favorites]
.
Everyone else has said everything I would have said. But I am so, so sorry to hear this. My heart breaks for her 2 kids, who I can picture perfectly, frozen at the age they were whenever I stopped reading Dooce.
.
posted by widdershins at 10:41 AM on May 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
Everyone else has said everything I would have said. But I am so, so sorry to hear this. My heart breaks for her 2 kids, who I can picture perfectly, frozen at the age they were whenever I stopped reading Dooce.
.
posted by widdershins at 10:41 AM on May 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
I will note that Fran and Dorothy wrote for professional publications, Heather literally created her own publication. Hence why "humorist and memorist" vs. "mommy blogger," I suspect.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:41 AM on May 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:41 AM on May 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
Around 2001, we were briefly and very loosely acquainted (blogging was a much smaller world at that point). I didn't read her site because I thought it was unethical for her to make use of her non-consenting children for the sake of drawing readers, and more so when she began working with advertisers. (Non-consenting seems the mildest way to put it; she exploited them, and started an entire online genre of other parents doing the same.) But she was there at the start, and I'm devastated that this is how it ends, in particular for the sake of the children, who have been betrayed in a terrible way. I hope they can both live their lives away from toxic public attention; and I'm so sorry that Heather never found the peace she was searching for.
posted by jokeefe at 10:44 AM on May 11, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by jokeefe at 10:44 AM on May 11, 2023 [11 favorites]
Her obit at the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65553608
Made the top 10 stories internationally today.
posted by bonehead at 10:46 AM on May 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Made the top 10 stories internationally today.
posted by bonehead at 10:46 AM on May 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
[WaPo: Heather Armstrong, who made it okay to say motherhood was hard, dead at 47-- may I just note that women have been saying loudly and publicly that motherhood is hard since the early 60s? It was a big part of the Second Wave.]
posted by jokeefe at 10:51 AM on May 11, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by jokeefe at 10:51 AM on May 11, 2023 [11 favorites]
At first I thought: what about Fran Leibowitz, Dorothy Parker -- ?
They didn't make their domestic life their subject, especially in such an...unsparing way. Erma Bombeck is the more obvious comparison, but move it forward to the 2000s, and, like, no one called any of those male political writers "varsity-debate-club-bloggers," though maybe they should have.
posted by praemunire at 10:53 AM on May 11, 2023 [10 favorites]
They didn't make their domestic life their subject, especially in such an...unsparing way. Erma Bombeck is the more obvious comparison, but move it forward to the 2000s, and, like, no one called any of those male political writers "varsity-debate-club-bloggers," though maybe they should have.
posted by praemunire at 10:53 AM on May 11, 2023 [10 favorites]
I am sorry for her children that after years of living with a very complicated parent, they will have to experience/remember/live this tragedy right around Mother's Day every single year for the rest of their lives.
posted by kimberussell at 10:57 AM on May 11, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by kimberussell at 10:57 AM on May 11, 2023 [15 favorites]
Well at least you haven't been carrying a grudge over a deleted FPP for 12 years
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 2:49 PM on May 10 [52 favorites +] [!]
I can still remember every time I got piled-on over the years.
posted by ovvl at 11:04 AM on May 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 2:49 PM on May 10 [52 favorites +] [!]
I can still remember every time I got piled-on over the years.
posted by ovvl at 11:04 AM on May 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
[WaPo: Heather Armstrong, who made it okay to say motherhood was hard, dead at 47-- may I just note that women have been saying loudly and publicly that motherhood is hard since the early 60s? It was a big part of the Second Wave.]
Not without heavy societal policing. I think -- hope -- the headline is pointing out that Armstrong normalized it. (To an admittedly insufficient extent, but even so.)
posted by humbug at 11:40 AM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Not without heavy societal policing. I think -- hope -- the headline is pointing out that Armstrong normalized it. (To an admittedly insufficient extent, but even so.)
posted by humbug at 11:40 AM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
To quote kimberussel above:
I am sorry for her children that after years of living with a very complicated parent, they will have to experience/remember/live this tragedy right around Mother's Day every single year for the rest of their lives.
Heather leaves behind a complicated legacy. For all the good that she did for her readers, she also did incalculable harm to her two children.
Heather wasn't the first person to whore out her children for likes and lucre, and she won't be the last. And to her credit, she gained some awareness later on (as seen in that XOXO video) and decided to step back. None the less, her children will carry these multiple massive traumas for the rest of their lives.
And for what, Heather? For what? An appearance on Oprah?
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 12:05 PM on May 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
I am sorry for her children that after years of living with a very complicated parent, they will have to experience/remember/live this tragedy right around Mother's Day every single year for the rest of their lives.
Heather leaves behind a complicated legacy. For all the good that she did for her readers, she also did incalculable harm to her two children.
Heather wasn't the first person to whore out her children for likes and lucre, and she won't be the last. And to her credit, she gained some awareness later on (as seen in that XOXO video) and decided to step back. None the less, her children will carry these multiple massive traumas for the rest of their lives.
And for what, Heather? For what? An appearance on Oprah?
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 12:05 PM on May 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Heather wasn't the first person to whore out her children
This is figurative language, I know, but still I'd hesitate to use it in this context.
I think one thing we need to remember is that the uncontrollable and unhinged nature of Internet attention was not as obvious back in the early aughts as it is now, where just happening to exist as yourself and catch a minor ray of attention may well scramble 79 deranged sociopaths to organize to make your life miserable. This is not to say that there weren't privacy concerns back then, or that she shouldn't have been more mindful of them, but...it really was a different world and we really didn't know. Some of us stayed out of trouble only because we had come to the Internet via slightly disreputable activities to begin with and so already had at least some rudimentary firewall between our family/professional lives and our Internet personas. Some ex-Mormon from Utah? Not a chance.
posted by praemunire at 12:45 PM on May 11, 2023 [39 favorites]
This is figurative language, I know, but still I'd hesitate to use it in this context.
I think one thing we need to remember is that the uncontrollable and unhinged nature of Internet attention was not as obvious back in the early aughts as it is now, where just happening to exist as yourself and catch a minor ray of attention may well scramble 79 deranged sociopaths to organize to make your life miserable. This is not to say that there weren't privacy concerns back then, or that she shouldn't have been more mindful of them, but...it really was a different world and we really didn't know. Some of us stayed out of trouble only because we had come to the Internet via slightly disreputable activities to begin with and so already had at least some rudimentary firewall between our family/professional lives and our Internet personas. Some ex-Mormon from Utah? Not a chance.
posted by praemunire at 12:45 PM on May 11, 2023 [39 favorites]
I remember in graduate school in Louisville reading about her getting fired on Kottke or Evan William's blog or one of those folks, and reading her amusing posts for a few years. One of her early posts linked to Mason Jenning's song One True Love which I stuck on repeat while fixing problems with our English department computer lab late into the evening, probably around 1999. I later recall feeling relief that her coma therapy seemed to have helped with her depression, and it is heartbreaking to learn that she never got better. I pray that I am never called to stand before the judgement bar of Metafilter.
posted by mecran01 at 1:44 PM on May 11, 2023 [21 favorites]
posted by mecran01 at 1:44 PM on May 11, 2023 [21 favorites]
A woman I'm friends with, who has a fraction of the audience that Dooce did and a sliver of the hate, has suffered so much from the mental health damage of her most deranged stalkers that she literally had to switch up her meds over it. She's been repeatedly driven to suicidal ideation over the hatred she receives. And this is a decade or two after Dooce's heyday, when the online hate is far better understood and resources exist that used to didn't, in part because Dooce went there first.
Everyone gets to have their own perspective on this, and here's mine: I struggle to judge, or to pretend to understand, the behaviors Heather exhibited in the light of what she suffered for her line of work. She went in blind and innocent, faced things nobody had quite faced before, and I have to imagine was damaged by it to an extent none of us fully understand. It's a harrowing line of work, all the more harrowing for how dismissively people shrug off that risk and danger. I'm sorry it ended like this, and can't opine much further.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 2:04 PM on May 11, 2023 [19 favorites]
Everyone gets to have their own perspective on this, and here's mine: I struggle to judge, or to pretend to understand, the behaviors Heather exhibited in the light of what she suffered for her line of work. She went in blind and innocent, faced things nobody had quite faced before, and I have to imagine was damaged by it to an extent none of us fully understand. It's a harrowing line of work, all the more harrowing for how dismissively people shrug off that risk and danger. I'm sorry it ended like this, and can't opine much further.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 2:04 PM on May 11, 2023 [19 favorites]
And for what, Heather? For what? An appearance on Oprah?
I mean, I suppose to make a living? And one that meant she could be at home spending time with her kids? Even if you're a person who is and has always been completely certain that work of this kind is exploiting the children, it's not a given that they are irreparably damaged by it. This Romper piece talks to the now-teenaged children of some of these mom bloggers (not Heather's children) and those kids seem pretty ok. I think the flavor of what went awry for Dooce is her own, the blog is a symptom but I don't think it's a cause. I'm so sorry for those kids, but I don't think it's for us to say what their childhood was like as a whole.
posted by vunder at 2:07 PM on May 11, 2023 [11 favorites]
I mean, I suppose to make a living? And one that meant she could be at home spending time with her kids? Even if you're a person who is and has always been completely certain that work of this kind is exploiting the children, it's not a given that they are irreparably damaged by it. This Romper piece talks to the now-teenaged children of some of these mom bloggers (not Heather's children) and those kids seem pretty ok. I think the flavor of what went awry for Dooce is her own, the blog is a symptom but I don't think it's a cause. I'm so sorry for those kids, but I don't think it's for us to say what their childhood was like as a whole.
posted by vunder at 2:07 PM on May 11, 2023 [11 favorites]
Another NYT article: Heather Armstrong Was the Original Influencer
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:20 PM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
In earlier times, he said, she might have written her way out and found support in her readers — but the internet had changed. TikTok and Instagram are filled with influencers describing their mental health journeys now, and Armstrong’s long poetic discourses did not fit on those new condensed spaces.I don't remember what thread we were discussing about how blogs are now out of style, but that sums up why.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:20 PM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
women have been saying loudly and publicly that motherhood is hard since the early 60s? It was a big part of the Second Wave.
Indeed. But, speaking as a woman and as a reluctant Utahn: in many ways, I’m not sure the early ‘60s have arrived here yet.
posted by armeowda at 3:39 PM on May 11, 2023 [18 favorites]
Indeed. But, speaking as a woman and as a reluctant Utahn: in many ways, I’m not sure the early ‘60s have arrived here yet.
posted by armeowda at 3:39 PM on May 11, 2023 [18 favorites]
She used to say she wanted "Distortions" by Clinic played at her funeral.
I have no idea if this has any significance at all, but for anyone not familiar with the song and/or The Velvet Underground, the song is an explicit callback to Candy Says, by the Velvet Underground, which is about a transgender woman struggling with body dysmorphia (and quite possibly suicide).
posted by Candleman at 8:42 PM on May 11, 2023
I have no idea if this has any significance at all, but for anyone not familiar with the song and/or The Velvet Underground, the song is an explicit callback to Candy Says, by the Velvet Underground, which is about a transgender woman struggling with body dysmorphia (and quite possibly suicide).
posted by Candleman at 8:42 PM on May 11, 2023
The world was a better and bigger place because she existed and it's a smaller and worse place now that she's gone.
.
posted by longdaysjourney at 4:05 AM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
.
posted by longdaysjourney at 4:05 AM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
So...this is where we could think a little about how we want to react to people who are expressing repugnant beliefs in a context that makes it independently clear that they are seriously mentally ill.
This is a real dilemma, to me. It has hit me in my personal life a few times with people who became unrecognizable thanks to drugs and alcohol. Was the person I knew actually in there somewhere? Or had a combination of disorders completely detroyed their personality?
And then also myself. I have experienced eating disorders and abused substances, and have had whole relationships that would not have existed without those things, and I still don't know. If I had been allowed to glamorize this stuff in a forum with a million readers-- and depended on it for my livelihood, to boot-- I hate to think. I have to believe I would have stopped short of the racism and the TERF stuff. But people do such horrible shit under the influence. And then keep using to avoid facing it.
posted by BibiRose at 4:44 AM on May 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
This is a real dilemma, to me. It has hit me in my personal life a few times with people who became unrecognizable thanks to drugs and alcohol. Was the person I knew actually in there somewhere? Or had a combination of disorders completely detroyed their personality?
And then also myself. I have experienced eating disorders and abused substances, and have had whole relationships that would not have existed without those things, and I still don't know. If I had been allowed to glamorize this stuff in a forum with a million readers-- and depended on it for my livelihood, to boot-- I hate to think. I have to believe I would have stopped short of the racism and the TERF stuff. But people do such horrible shit under the influence. And then keep using to avoid facing it.
posted by BibiRose at 4:44 AM on May 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
If anyone wants to rain down fire and brimstone on this shitty article, I'd be all for that. (I even linked the archive so as not to add a single click.) Maybe people who didn't know her and didn't even read her blog or books ought not try to make sweeping points of the efficacy of what psychiatric care did or didn't do for her.
I've already said enough and as I have specified, Heather and I were years out of touch at the end. It's not my place to try and set myself up as some kind of Dooce interpreter. But even just as another person who struggles with mental health, this was egregious.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:22 AM on May 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
I've already said enough and as I have specified, Heather and I were years out of touch at the end. It's not my place to try and set myself up as some kind of Dooce interpreter. But even just as another person who struggles with mental health, this was egregious.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:22 AM on May 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
"Truthfully, I never read her blog"
Didn't stop her from writing 2000 words and diagnosing the cause of her suicide though.
posted by COD at 10:30 AM on May 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
Didn't stop her from writing 2000 words and diagnosing the cause of her suicide though.
posted by COD at 10:30 AM on May 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
I think one thing we need to remember is that the uncontrollable and unhinged nature of Internet attention was not as obvious back in the early aughts as it is now, where just happening to exist as yourself and catch a minor ray of attention may well scramble 79 deranged sociopaths to organize to make your life miserable.
I agree, and would also point out that the internet joined two cultures that once lived blissfully apart with a lot of cows between them: the worldly informed, and those who got their information from AM hate radio (some might ponder why they didn't listen to music while they worked). Many of the latter joined the internet before they had cable or broadcast television, and culture shock awaited them. If they encountered Heather's blog while trying to save Utah souls online (because that's why God gave them computers) they would have been deeply offended, because she was parenting with an attitude and didn't bully her kids to obey religious doctrine. It may seem weird now, but that's what parenting meant to most parents, and why they were curious, hence the over-emphasis by some towards her kids' well-being (secretly starving for values). When she described the creepy note slipped under her hotel door with her children inside, it signaled that she was a physical danger to them. Whoever said this was the end of an era was right because she was relatively guilt-free from fundamentalist beliefs by recovering from her own childhood thought control, but openly guilt-free is out of fashion and only exists under safe conditions.
posted by Brian B. at 10:45 AM on May 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
I agree, and would also point out that the internet joined two cultures that once lived blissfully apart with a lot of cows between them: the worldly informed, and those who got their information from AM hate radio (some might ponder why they didn't listen to music while they worked). Many of the latter joined the internet before they had cable or broadcast television, and culture shock awaited them. If they encountered Heather's blog while trying to save Utah souls online (because that's why God gave them computers) they would have been deeply offended, because she was parenting with an attitude and didn't bully her kids to obey religious doctrine. It may seem weird now, but that's what parenting meant to most parents, and why they were curious, hence the over-emphasis by some towards her kids' well-being (secretly starving for values). When she described the creepy note slipped under her hotel door with her children inside, it signaled that she was a physical danger to them. Whoever said this was the end of an era was right because she was relatively guilt-free from fundamentalist beliefs by recovering from her own childhood thought control, but openly guilt-free is out of fashion and only exists under safe conditions.
posted by Brian B. at 10:45 AM on May 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
I will politely say regarding that article that medication may not have killed her. (I say this as someone who is personally terrified of taking medication myself, not that it's been offered to me, I do not judge others for doing so, it's my own issues.) I'm not sure who the heck this author is or if she can judge on this topic, though being ex-Mormon certainly seems to have influenced her thoughts, and also bad experiences with medication.
I read way too much on everything and frankly, medication sounds like a pig in a poke. Nobody really knows what works or doesn't work or stops working or makes you worse or why, at all, and it's taste testing and hoping something works. I clicked through this article for days (NYT simulator) trying to get EVERY possible result on the topic and the article over and over again was "well, we don't really have great options, take these pills, mostly they work at some point, except for a few people." Some people, such as one of my relatives, Carrie Fisher, and dooce, have had to resort to more and more extreme methods in trying something, ANYTHING, to get ANYTHING to maybe work. Those people, well...frankly, we may not have anything that works (or works well, or works for long) with them. Hence why they have addictions--it's what "worked" better for them to treat their issues, and then that causes more problems.
I wouldn't say medication killed her, but perhaps her medical issues were just so severe and treatment-resistant that, well... we just aren't equipped to solve that level of problem in 2023. And may not be for a long time.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:58 AM on May 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
I read way too much on everything and frankly, medication sounds like a pig in a poke. Nobody really knows what works or doesn't work or stops working or makes you worse or why, at all, and it's taste testing and hoping something works. I clicked through this article for days (NYT simulator) trying to get EVERY possible result on the topic and the article over and over again was "well, we don't really have great options, take these pills, mostly they work at some point, except for a few people." Some people, such as one of my relatives, Carrie Fisher, and dooce, have had to resort to more and more extreme methods in trying something, ANYTHING, to get ANYTHING to maybe work. Those people, well...frankly, we may not have anything that works (or works well, or works for long) with them. Hence why they have addictions--it's what "worked" better for them to treat their issues, and then that causes more problems.
I wouldn't say medication killed her, but perhaps her medical issues were just so severe and treatment-resistant that, well... we just aren't equipped to solve that level of problem in 2023. And may not be for a long time.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:58 AM on May 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
That article is obviously trash. However, I do wonder about the impact of the experimental treatment she got.
posted by haptic_avenger at 11:25 AM on May 12, 2023
posted by haptic_avenger at 11:25 AM on May 12, 2023
I think one thing we need to remember is that the uncontrollable and unhinged nature of Internet attention was not as obvious back in the early aughts as it is now, where just happening to exist as yourself and catch a minor ray of attention may well scramble 79 deranged sociopaths to organize to make your life miserable.
I agree in general, but not in specific.
For most of us, the interwebs and the blogs at the turn of the century were new and exciting and adventurous. But one person, back in 2002, definitely knew how scary and toxic the internet hate machine could be. This young woman was an IT professional, working for an internet start-up company until her personal blog was discovered by her employees which then led to her being fired from her company and being temporarily estranged from her family. She suffered a lot of blowback from that (personally and professionally) and her name even became a verb ("get dooced").
It was only after all this that she then got married, had kids, and blogged about it all.
If anyone knew, viscerally and through lived experience and at the very beginning, the risks of living your life online, it was Heather Armstrong. To say that she was some "ex-Mormon from Utah" who didn't stand a chance is laughable.
I don't know what her two kids will make of their childhood when they look back. I wish them well. To be honest, I hope we never find out, because these children, like all children, deserve privacy as a basic human right.
Metafilter favorite Will Wheaton had some poignant commentary about his own childhood in the spotlight, in reference to It's easier to tell you what my mom didn't post on the blue a few months ago.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 11:52 AM on May 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
I agree in general, but not in specific.
For most of us, the interwebs and the blogs at the turn of the century were new and exciting and adventurous. But one person, back in 2002, definitely knew how scary and toxic the internet hate machine could be. This young woman was an IT professional, working for an internet start-up company until her personal blog was discovered by her employees which then led to her being fired from her company and being temporarily estranged from her family. She suffered a lot of blowback from that (personally and professionally) and her name even became a verb ("get dooced").
It was only after all this that she then got married, had kids, and blogged about it all.
If anyone knew, viscerally and through lived experience and at the very beginning, the risks of living your life online, it was Heather Armstrong. To say that she was some "ex-Mormon from Utah" who didn't stand a chance is laughable.
I don't know what her two kids will make of their childhood when they look back. I wish them well. To be honest, I hope we never find out, because these children, like all children, deserve privacy as a basic human right.
Metafilter favorite Will Wheaton had some poignant commentary about his own childhood in the spotlight, in reference to It's easier to tell you what my mom didn't post on the blue a few months ago.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 11:52 AM on May 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
For most of us, the interwebs and the blogs at the turn of the century were new and exciting and adventurous. But one person, back in 2002, definitely knew how scary and toxic the internet hate machine could be.
I've been online as a woman since 1992. It may have been new to you at that time, but it wasn't to me. In 2002, I would not have thought to advise her, "hey, even relatively anodyne stuff about your kids and your experience of motherhood will turn a tremendous firehose of hate and freakery in your direction, including a bunch of severely damaged people who will come after you in real life because you happen to be the thing their eyes landed on when they logged on, and you won't be able to turn it off, only try to learn how to surf it." (That's very different from getting in trouble for blogging mean and rather personal stuff about her employer and her colleagues under a supposed cloak of anonymity.) Would I disagree with individual choices to publish individual material? Almost certainly (her writing was never ever to my taste so I don't have individual examples handy). But, fuck it, I'm not going to blame her for not having more foresight than me. 2010 was qualitatively different than 2000, and 2020 even more so.
posted by praemunire at 12:14 PM on May 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
I've been online as a woman since 1992. It may have been new to you at that time, but it wasn't to me. In 2002, I would not have thought to advise her, "hey, even relatively anodyne stuff about your kids and your experience of motherhood will turn a tremendous firehose of hate and freakery in your direction, including a bunch of severely damaged people who will come after you in real life because you happen to be the thing their eyes landed on when they logged on, and you won't be able to turn it off, only try to learn how to surf it." (That's very different from getting in trouble for blogging mean and rather personal stuff about her employer and her colleagues under a supposed cloak of anonymity.) Would I disagree with individual choices to publish individual material? Almost certainly (her writing was never ever to my taste so I don't have individual examples handy). But, fuck it, I'm not going to blame her for not having more foresight than me. 2010 was qualitatively different than 2000, and 2020 even more so.
posted by praemunire at 12:14 PM on May 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
Yeah, it's hard to remember, but there was a time in living memory when writing "I like to sit with my husband in the garden drinking coffee" would not have made you the Internet's Main Character for like a week or whatever. There was a time before the internet was a mistake.
posted by gauche at 12:43 PM on May 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by gauche at 12:43 PM on May 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
But then to kill yourself, leaving behind your two teenagers without a mom? I don't know how to process that. I know that people suffer tremendous pain and I know that people do terrible things, but to quote Heather herself: suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
I have had friends dealing with suicidality and ideation, and the way they have gotten very, dangerously close to killing themselves is that their thinking distortions convince them their kids are better off without them. I am grateful that my friends who've dealt with this are still with us today, and I'm really sorry Dooce isn't.
I read her sometimes back in the day. I never loved her work, but there were a few particular posts that have stayed with me all these years. I was also something of a "mommy blogger," and her work helped me figure out my own boundaries about how much I would say about my children on my blog. I went from writing about them pretty openly, to giving them fake names, to, eventually, not posting anything without their explicit permission. She seemed to me to post too much, too openly, and that helped me realize I needed to be more careful with my children's stories, which ultimately belong to them.
That said, I respect her openness. There are so many things that weren't, and still aren't, talked about. I had postpartum depression in 2001, and I was really grateful for writers (including Marie Osmond of all people, who published a book about her PPD in 2002) who were making that conversation public.
I hadn't followed her at all in years, and I'm sorry to learn about the hurtful and damaging turn she took. There are people in my life who have severe mental illness, and separating the human you love from their behavior can be hard. Sometimes you have to distance yourself.
posted by Well I never at 2:09 PM on May 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
I have had friends dealing with suicidality and ideation, and the way they have gotten very, dangerously close to killing themselves is that their thinking distortions convince them their kids are better off without them. I am grateful that my friends who've dealt with this are still with us today, and I'm really sorry Dooce isn't.
I read her sometimes back in the day. I never loved her work, but there were a few particular posts that have stayed with me all these years. I was also something of a "mommy blogger," and her work helped me figure out my own boundaries about how much I would say about my children on my blog. I went from writing about them pretty openly, to giving them fake names, to, eventually, not posting anything without their explicit permission. She seemed to me to post too much, too openly, and that helped me realize I needed to be more careful with my children's stories, which ultimately belong to them.
That said, I respect her openness. There are so many things that weren't, and still aren't, talked about. I had postpartum depression in 2001, and I was really grateful for writers (including Marie Osmond of all people, who published a book about her PPD in 2002) who were making that conversation public.
I hadn't followed her at all in years, and I'm sorry to learn about the hurtful and damaging turn she took. There are people in my life who have severe mental illness, and separating the human you love from their behavior can be hard. Sometimes you have to distance yourself.
posted by Well I never at 2:09 PM on May 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
But one person, back in 2002, definitely knew how scary and toxic the internet hate machine could be.
By 2002, I'd had a hate forum dedicated to me for MUSH-related gaming reasons and I'd also had a guy my work had banned from a forum show up at our workplace after a *6 hour drive* to fight the ban (which was related to a Canadian populist election, *foreshadowing*) in person, fortunately without a weapon.
I'd actually say I probably had more direct experience with online communities than Heather Armstrong did as a graphic designer for a start up at that time. And I still wouldn't have forecast the emergence not just of GOMI, but of the willingness of more people than like, a handful, to hate-track behaviour *across platforms* and also do shit in person.
I also had a guest blog published on the NYT's Motherlode blog in 2010 and got shit in the comments. But it still seemed just like 'well, whatever, don't read them then.' Nobody tracked me across platforms.
I will say that as blogging (and trad media moving online) was increasingly monetized, well, with monetization comes the need for continual growth, and with the need for continual growth comes the need for more exciting/clickable/'meaningful' content, it did become clear to me by about 2008, when my son was three, that I wanted to be careful (my job required some continued mom content but we soft pedalled it a lot; raw and real it was not.) But that was more about impact to the child.
Thinking about all this is making me nostalgic and even more sad. I'm glad we have this community to discuss things in.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:47 PM on May 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
By 2002, I'd had a hate forum dedicated to me for MUSH-related gaming reasons and I'd also had a guy my work had banned from a forum show up at our workplace after a *6 hour drive* to fight the ban (which was related to a Canadian populist election, *foreshadowing*) in person, fortunately without a weapon.
I'd actually say I probably had more direct experience with online communities than Heather Armstrong did as a graphic designer for a start up at that time. And I still wouldn't have forecast the emergence not just of GOMI, but of the willingness of more people than like, a handful, to hate-track behaviour *across platforms* and also do shit in person.
I also had a guest blog published on the NYT's Motherlode blog in 2010 and got shit in the comments. But it still seemed just like 'well, whatever, don't read them then.' Nobody tracked me across platforms.
I will say that as blogging (and trad media moving online) was increasingly monetized, well, with monetization comes the need for continual growth, and with the need for continual growth comes the need for more exciting/clickable/'meaningful' content, it did become clear to me by about 2008, when my son was three, that I wanted to be careful (my job required some continued mom content but we soft pedalled it a lot; raw and real it was not.) But that was more about impact to the child.
Thinking about all this is making me nostalgic and even more sad. I'm glad we have this community to discuss things in.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:47 PM on May 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
Thinking about all this is making me nostalgic and even more sad.
Me, too. I'm thinking about an old acquaintance who confessed (I think it was also in Motherlode) that, while she loved her daughter with Down syndrome very much, if she had had the correct test results while pregnant, she would have aborted the fetus. She took a lot of criticism for that, and some of it probably had a point, but it was a brave thing to say. These days, she would probably have to flee her home.
The way the promise of the Internet went straight to rot is probably the biggest public-sphere disappointment of my life.
posted by praemunire at 3:02 PM on May 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
Me, too. I'm thinking about an old acquaintance who confessed (I think it was also in Motherlode) that, while she loved her daughter with Down syndrome very much, if she had had the correct test results while pregnant, she would have aborted the fetus. She took a lot of criticism for that, and some of it probably had a point, but it was a brave thing to say. These days, she would probably have to flee her home.
The way the promise of the Internet went straight to rot is probably the biggest public-sphere disappointment of my life.
posted by praemunire at 3:02 PM on May 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
Heather started blogging long before people started to put together that - “oh yeah, putting photos and videos on the internet of your kids with ads on them means you’re exploiting your kids” so me and the rest of the internet watched those kids grow up.
So we worry about them.
posted by bendy at 7:57 PM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
So we worry about them.
posted by bendy at 7:57 PM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I’m skeptical the medicine contributed to her death. Most people who try an experimental treatment end up there because nothing else worked. Depression and suicidal ideation are often extremely treatment resistant.
posted by interogative mood at 10:06 PM on May 12, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 10:06 PM on May 12, 2023 [11 favorites]
NYT: Dooce and Other ‘Mommy Blogs’ Deserve Credit for Shaping the Internet
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:42 AM on May 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:42 AM on May 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
If anyone knew, viscerally and through lived experience and at the very beginning, the risks of living your life online, it was Heather Armstrong.
It's good we've moved beyond victim-blaming to hero-blaming. It accidentally gives respect because all we can demand of anyone is the courage they can muster. Everything else is just wishing what we want them to be. It's a form of denial to frame the honest messenger as the antagonist in her own personal drama. The odds are that detractors had their own messy issues to deal with because they were the offended party. Some even double-down by betting on her kids' future troubles and doom, which is another way of stalking them.
posted by Brian B. at 11:36 AM on May 13, 2023
It's good we've moved beyond victim-blaming to hero-blaming. It accidentally gives respect because all we can demand of anyone is the courage they can muster. Everything else is just wishing what we want them to be. It's a form of denial to frame the honest messenger as the antagonist in her own personal drama. The odds are that detractors had their own messy issues to deal with because they were the offended party. Some even double-down by betting on her kids' future troubles and doom, which is another way of stalking them.
posted by Brian B. at 11:36 AM on May 13, 2023
I guess the thing to say when nothing you can say will do, is just to say:
.
posted by Lizard at 6:40 PM on May 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
.
posted by Lizard at 6:40 PM on May 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Mod note: A few deleted. Ideefixe, for the second time, please cease the derailing. If you want to know more about why a Mefi post was deleted 12 years ago, contact us or submit a Metatalk post. Do not continue to complain here about that.
posted by taz (staff) at 10:57 PM on May 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 10:57 PM on May 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
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