Dooced and Bouncing Back

May 3, 2019 2:37 PM

She was the “queen of the mommy bloggers.” Then her life fell apart. Where Dooce.com founder Heather Armstrong is today.
posted by nevercalm (49 comments total)

FPP from 2002 when she got fired for blogging

FPP from 2004 when she gave birth to her first daughter
posted by gwint at 2:59 PM on May 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

I remember lingering over lunch and reading about baby Leta on my laptop. Then, not long afterward, I was lingering over blogs talking about how horrible she was for this, that, and the other thing. Where did that time go? Down the drain. Down the god damn drain. The only thing I remember about that was someone complaining that Leta was obviously autistic and she was ignoring it. Madness.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:07 PM on May 3, 2019 [3 favorites]

I remember Mathowie praising Heather many years ago. She was, or is, a good writer. I wouldn't want to be one of her kids, though.
posted by 41swans at 3:10 PM on May 3, 2019 [5 favorites]

What I took away from this is that the University of Utah has a method of treating resistant depression that involves putting you in a medically induced coma for 15 minutes, on ten different occasions, and that apparently it works.

I remember where I was (grad school, English computer lab basement in Louisville) when Dooce got fired. Those were simpler times.
posted by mecran01 at 3:27 PM on May 3, 2019 [12 favorites]

Armstrong’s life has changed. She’s still blogging to about 500,000 readers; it’s nowhere near her old audience, but it’s where she leverages conversation about mental health and is promoting her book.

Amazing that commanding attention on the scale of halfway to a million readers is blogging being "dead". I believe it, I guess I just don't have a good feeling for the relative scaling of the attention economy.
posted by XMLicious at 3:30 PM on May 3, 2019 [30 favorites]

What I took away from this is that the Vox caption writer doesn't know what a chair is.
posted by Don Pepino at 3:34 PM on May 3, 2019 [45 favorites]

It's still crazy to me sometimes when I see Leta featured in her instagram posts that I've watched this girl grew up, thousands of miles away, who will probably never know me. It's both weirdly voyeuristic and helpful in making me think about how I would raise my eventual children. In some sense that's what mommy-blogging does, right? They tell stories that you may or may not find entertaining, but also informs you that, yes, parenting is something that is different for everyone and you just gotta figure it out for your own kid.
posted by numaner at 4:17 PM on May 3, 2019 [3 favorites]

What I took away from this is that the University of Utah has a method of treating resistant depression that involves putting you in a medically induced coma for 15 minutes, on ten different occasions, and that apparently it works.

Huh.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:32 PM on May 3, 2019 [10 favorites]

Heather Armstrong has been through some difficult stuff, magnified by her visibility. I hope she reaches a better place in her own mental and emotional health.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:34 PM on May 3, 2019 [6 favorites]

The full little of her book is The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live.
Needless to say, a fifteen minute medically induced nap is not a near death experience. Neither it's it a medically induced coma.
It's good that it worked for her but, you know, *turns to camera, toothy smile, twinkle in eye* Thaaaaaaat's Dooce!
*canned laughter and scattered applause*
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:08 PM on May 3, 2019 [16 favorites]

I'm in agreement with internet fraud detective squad here. GOMI was really awful, but I don't feel great about the idea of "mom blogging" in general. Whether it's a blog or a reality TV show, I'm not sure it's ethical to put your kid in the public eye like that.
posted by noxperpetua at 5:10 PM on May 3, 2019 [6 favorites]

She's a cautionary tale of the collision of intimacy, immediacy and privacy. Of her and her audience's inability to understand the intersection of a confessional, intimate blog of a friend or near friend, with the tabloid-style deconstruction and dissection that happens with celebrities. I don't think either she nor her audience(s) understood how that feedback would work, how immediate it could be, especially when magnified by a factor of millions. It's ok to dissect the behaviour of Lorelai and Rory and Luke after an episode of the Gilmore Girls on TWOP, its a lot different to have done that with the latest Dooce post on GOMI. But people treated both exactly the same in many ways. Turns out fictional characters don't react to hot takes, snark and intensive judgment the same way real people who read those comments about themselves might do.
posted by bonehead at 5:15 PM on May 3, 2019 [22 favorites]

I was friends with Heather in high school and stayed in touch sporadically for the next twentyish years, though it's been a while since we spoke.

I wish people understood that her success isn't from having a manufactured persona, because she is exactly who she says she is. She's a good no bullshit person. Her success came from being raised from birth to be a Machine That Succeeds Because That Is What the Lord Wants. Even after she moved away from religion, she was still hardwired to be a success-seeking missile.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:21 PM on May 3, 2019 [66 favorites]

Heather's husband, Pete Ashdown, is a member of this site.
posted by Brian B. at 5:21 PM on May 3, 2019 [6 favorites]

I had a blog for a bit there that triggered some of the early markers of blowing up: big spikes in traffic, multiple pieces that went viral, agents and TV producers calling, etc. I hit a point where I felt like I was hurting myself, that the sharing I was doing that had been life-saving when I had fifty readers had curdled into something performative and weird when I had fifty thousand, a hundred thousand.

One day, I shut the thing down and walked away. I used to kick myself for not following Heather onto the train and cashing in.

These days, for me--not speaking for anyone else just for me--I think I made the right call. I might have made some money selling my sour attitude and my depression, but becoming a happier and healthier person wasn't something I could have accomplished concurrently.

I wish I'd found another outlet for my writing though. Closing the blog may have saved my mental health, but giving up writing is something I still regret.

(Not that I'm kidding myself that success at her level was ever an option for me. But trying for such a thing probably would have caused me to eat myself alive.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:31 PM on May 3, 2019 [24 favorites]

I've always struggled with Heather's Look At Me! Don't Look At Me! trope. This article has gotten some traction on Anne Helen Peterson's FB page and in the CGAS group, and all I keep thinking is "how can we miss you when you won't go away?" While I'm not sure she's deserving of the scorn she's received over the years, she continues to make a conscious choice to live in this performative way. I don't know what she actually wants, other than attention.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 5:40 PM on May 3, 2019 [18 favorites]

Same. Had a slice of internet fame for a bit, in a niche sort of way. It was weird to have to think about how I had to choose a particular voice/persona that reflected “my brand”. It’s also a pretty interesting experience, in an anthropological sort of way, to see how people react to a strong personality. It’s very polarizing, people either worship you or loathe you, and neither extreme can seemingly resist from having tons of opinions on every aspect of you.

And yeah, it takes a lot of work to keep people engaged with your content, and getting out of the spotlight is as simple as not updating for a couple months. No more audience. Done. Although people will still google you and speculate about you and look for you, even years down the road, so I’ve discovered.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:44 PM on May 3, 2019 [6 favorites]

Tl;dr: a lot of people are looking for a personality around whom to develop their preferred cult. Sometimes it’s tempting to fill that role.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:45 PM on May 3, 2019 [9 favorites]

I had such a huge crush on Heather in my early 20s; she was so vivacious and strong and vulnerable and unafraid. I've always liked women like that and have usually been into older women, especially then (six years feels a lot different when it's 22 and 28; now we feel like basically the same age). I vividly remember when Leta was born and I was feeling like I missed some kind of shot that I never really had, a bozo in a college computer lab on a blueberry iMac. The internet felt a lot smaller back then. I haven't kept up with her in a decade at least; thanks for the memory!
posted by Kwine at 8:25 PM on May 3, 2019 [7 favorites]

I don't know what she actually wants, other than attention.

I have to tell you, when I find myself being irritated at a woman for "attention-seeking," I consciously step back and check my work. The misogynist connotations are too strong.

I am not a fan of the genre of mommyblogging period (give a side-eye to any woman who calls herself "mommy" to anyone but her own kids, and I suppose anyone who's consensually into that), but I think some tolerance is probably owed to the pioneers. They didn't know how it would play out. There was very little experience to guide them.
posted by praemunire at 8:37 PM on May 3, 2019 [101 favorites]

I don't know what she actually wants, other than attention.


writing an immensely popular lifestyle blog with sponsored content is a source of income. "attention," meaning views & clicks and all that, is a way to measure how much money an advertiser or sponsor may be induced to give you. women do not live on "attention," like some even more rarified species of breatharians, but on money. just like other people.
posted by queenofbithynia at 9:16 PM on May 3, 2019 [104 favorites]

I don't know what she actually wants, other than attention.

This phrase makes sense when a child interrupts an important moment, when as adults are busy concentrating on something and a toddler cries out. It doesn't make sense when someone logs on, then clicks a link or two, and reads until they oddly disagree with a blogger who is addressing like-minded people. Those who disagree with her are the ones who want attention, and in the worst possible way through being repressed. They want to correct someone who is walking away from religious fundamentalism, because they can't walk away themselves. They never admit it in their hate, because they would tip their hand and expose their motives.
posted by Brian B. at 9:43 PM on May 3, 2019 [5 favorites]

Wow, I clearly hit a nerve there, but I still am not really getting an answer to the first part: what (do you think) she actually wants from all this?
posted by Sweetie Darling at 9:49 PM on May 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

A way to express herself and be witnessed?
posted by divabat at 9:57 PM on May 3, 2019 [31 favorites]

And money. Doesn't seem all that complicated.
posted by praemunire at 10:10 PM on May 3, 2019 [25 favorites]

I hear you, XMLicious - 500,000 readers seems like a lot to me, too. Per Wikipedia, only three newspapers in the country (NY Times, Wall St Journal, and USA Today) have larger circulations. She has more readers than the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, NY Post, or Washington Post.
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 10:42 PM on May 3, 2019 [4 favorites]

I'd take those readership numbers with a grain of salt, if her websites are anything like mine it's pretty easy to for them to be inflated with bots, etc. - it's not the same as 500,000 people actually buying newspapers.

I've only met Heather Armstrong a couple of times, and never read her blog -- not my thing -- but she seemed nice. I probably would have made some different decisions than her in many cases, but she was brave enough to be a Woman on the Internet back when it was even less safe than it is now.

BTW, Her boyfriend Pete Ashdown is a Utah geek hero who brought independent Internet service to Utah in the 90s and Ran for senate against Orrin Hatch. If Pete approves of her then she's OK in my book.
posted by mmoncur at 11:10 PM on May 3, 2019 [10 favorites]

Seems we’re a long way from Erma Bombeck.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 11:10 PM on May 3, 2019 [6 favorites]

Wow. Quite a read. Amazing to see references to - and recall so many things about - the good ol' days of blogging culture. Even if some of them weren't good. Falling into a small time warp. I wish Heather the best.
posted by davidmsc at 11:10 PM on May 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

Erma Bombeck was a staunch feminist. On the ERA:

'Look, ladies, those 16 little words simply mean one size fits all.' '
posted by brujita at 11:23 PM on May 3, 2019 [13 favorites]

Oh, I loved Erma Bombeck. I think she managed to convey what it was to be a mom while keeping the audience at arms length from her actual family.

Which isn’t meant as a jab at Heather. I think that if she could have maintained boundaries around herself and her family, she would probably be in a better place. But I also think the audience wouldn’t have flocked to her if she wasn’t so on display.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 11:36 PM on May 3, 2019 [5 favorites]

I don't know what she actually wants, other than attention.

*Everybody* wants attention. Positive human attention is likely one of the most valuable things a human being can have, right up there with essential life sustaining resources. It's a necessary component of affection, influence, and status. Of course people want attention, that's a given.

Some people hit a personal point of diminishing returns sooner than others, and there is such a thing as attention that's a wash or a net loss, that's also a precursor to distraction or disdain or even attacks, but even *that* can be useful, or even just be a sign that you're drawing positive attention and with it some degree of competition.
posted by wildblueyonder at 11:49 PM on May 3, 2019 [21 favorites]

Metafilter: how can we miss you when you won't go away?
posted by Barack Spinoza at 4:36 AM on May 4, 2019 [1 favorite]

Wow, I clearly hit a nerve there, but I still am not really getting an answer to the first part: what (do you think) she actually wants from all this?

The same thing any writer wants. The same thing that anyone wants when they tell a story about "here is what my life is like, this is my experience, these are the burdens that I have to bear as I move through the world."

I can't remember when or who, but someone in an AskMe once said that the biggest blessing they got from being part of a couple was that someone was there as a witness to their life. Everyone in the world needs to feel like they matter, that they are seen and acknowledged by a community of other people. For some, they seek this looking-for-belonging in their friends or family and talking to them about what's been going on with them; many writers also seek this belonging in the things they write.

Hell, I have a blog and that's what I'm doing it for - to chronicle the moments that made up one small life in the midst of everything. I'm not especially fussed about how many people read it, but I'd feel its loss not to do it.

In Walt Whitman's poem "O Me! O Life", he wonders aloud about what's the point of living amid "the struggle ever renew’d, the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me, the empty and useless years of the rest," and then answers himself:

That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Her blog is her verse.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:57 AM on May 4, 2019 [71 favorites]

Tons of people seek fame, and becoming a prominent blogger is no more an “attention-seeking” avenue than moving to Hollywood to try to get discovered, or getting involved in politics or music. How many people form bands in their garage because they want to become rock stars? A jillion? But basically like all those things, tons of people try it, but few people actually succeed.
posted by Autumnheart at 6:34 AM on May 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

Wow, I clearly hit a nerve there,

Heather has MANY friends in the web 1.0 world that MetaFilter grew up in. This site is probably where she'll get the gentlest handling of her book and resulting press.

but I still am not really getting an answer to the first part: what (do you think) she actually wants from all this?

A return to relevancy in an internet world where the next gen of mommybloggers took her formula, refined it, delivered it to multiple platforms, and soared even higher.
posted by kimberussell at 8:00 AM on May 4, 2019 [15 favorites]

Dooce was a lifesaver in the early aughts, when I was a new mother with increasing difficult mental health issues. Compared to the self-righteous members of the Babycenter discussion boards (the only other resource I remember finding at that time), who compared formula to Red Bull, claimed you should suspect vaccines, chided you for ever taking off your baby sling, said nursing and sleep problems were always because you were doing something wrong, and basically implied that you were a horrible person who was quite possibly going to kill your baby, Armstrong was such a much needed relief. She was a mom, she was depressed, she didn’t know what she was doing, and she was tired of all the unsolicited parenting advice people feel compelled to fling your way once you have a child.

In my experience, she was the opposite of the “mommy blogger,” with their smug veneer and their carefully shot mugs of quinoa smoothies that even DH loves or some such crap, but I also haven’t read any parenting blogs for over 10 years or so, because while I’m ever less certain that I’m doing anything right, I’m also less convinced that I can get good advice from carefully curated internet content. But Armstrong’s experiences were exactly what I needed to read at the time.
posted by bibliowench at 8:13 AM on May 4, 2019 [24 favorites]

Heather has MANY friends in the web 1.0 world that MetaFilter grew up in

Wasn't she friends with Pamie and Stee and others of the TWOP crew? They all left such a bad taste in my mouth by the end of TWOP that I don't have a ton of patience for this soft-pedaled promotion now (love the one-sentence throwaway about how long she'd been completely mute on issues of race/privilege).
posted by TwoStride at 9:53 AM on May 4, 2019 [9 favorites]

Wow, I clearly hit a nerve there, but I still am not really getting an answer to the first part: what (do you think) she actually wants from all this?

I think there is also an element of if you found a way to support yourself it's natural to want to just keep doing that. It used to be that a person only had to find one way to support themselves for their entire life. Now it's like you're expected to just completely change course every time the wind blows, but this is like the hardest way to live that humans have ever invented for themselves. Wanting to keep doing what was working before is natural especially if it's still working and you're trying to fix the things that were breaking it before.
posted by bleep at 10:34 AM on May 4, 2019 [11 favorites]

I think she's a lovely and funny writer. If not for the pressures of generating so.much.content, I think she'd absolutely be an Erma Bombeck type. It seems like she'd be benefited (personally and artistically) from a little more temporal distance between her experience and her writing, but I guess that's not really possible anymore these days for people who write about their lives.
posted by schwinggg! at 12:43 PM on May 4, 2019 [1 favorite]

I've never been into Dooce in general, but back when she started, things were not nearly this heinous for a public Internet woman except for when she got fired. It was pretty shocking that becoming a famous Internet writer turned out to be something one could do as a job. If she was starting now it'd be a whole lot worse. And the thing about being a creative person is that getting famous is the ONLY way to get paid enough to not have to do your crappy day job. I have no recollection of what Dooce's previous career that she got doxxed out of was, but I highly doubt she could get back into working a "regular day job" any more as an option anyway. Who's going to hire her to be a software engineer or whatever now?

So, continuing with the fame, despite the issues, is probably her best bet to continue living and having an income at this point. And if you are a writer or other creative person, you're probably still gonna keep doing it one way or another.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:46 PM on May 4, 2019 [7 favorites]

what (do you think) she actually wants from all this?

Esteem. It is the One True Cultural Universal. Anywhere, any place, any time in human history, it is the one thing always desired, but always finite, limited, in short supply. And like Wolfe's The Right Stuff, it can just blow up and be lost in an instant.
posted by Chitownfats at 7:14 PM on May 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

It was weird to have to think about how I had to choose a particular voice/persona that reflected “my brand”.

I have enough trouble with this just going to the store, I can't imagine. I feel overly exposed being on MF.

It's an interesting aspect of our splintered culture that I've never even heard of anyone or any of the blogs mentioned, but they have millions of fans. Has there ever been anything like this, being wildly famous without most people knowing who you are? Or are the numbers skewed, for ad reporting purposes? I sometimes look at numbers for a site I have and they're crazy, but they're mostly not real people and I don't really know for sure what I'm looking at.
posted by bongo_x at 3:00 AM on May 6, 2019

Has there ever been anything like this, being wildly famous without most people knowing who you are?

That's pretty much every subculture that's ever existed.
posted by divabat at 5:08 AM on May 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

It seems very different when you're talking that many people.
I don't know when anything with hundreds or thousands of people involved was called a subculture in the past, but now it's common.
posted by bongo_x at 2:17 AM on May 7, 2019

Some middle-aged people have never heard of Queensryche. Some have never heard of Ricky Skaggs. Some have never heard of the Statler Brothers, or Sandi Patti, or Al Jarreau. If you went to the DMV and polled everyone waiting in line who looked over 50, I would be surprised if you found someone who was familiar with all five of them; I daresay most would not know even three out of the five. Yet each of these musicians released albums in 1984 that were certified gold by the RIAA, meaning that they sold at least 500,000 copies. And that was 35 years ago.

Subcultures have always existed. It is their nature as subcultures that most people, including you, are unaware of their internal details and prominent voices; if everyone knew about them, then they'd be part of mainstream culture, not just a subculture.
posted by skoosh at 11:16 AM on May 9, 2019 [9 favorites]

but I still am not really getting an answer to the first part: what (do you think) she actually wants from all this?

I read the book, and I saw her at a reading last night (and I would consider her a friend so maybe by default I looked at this from behind rose-colored glasses).

To me from page one of the book it's clear she wanted to share the story of a new experimental treatment that might help people like her. At her book reading she went on and on about how the study she was in from two years ago is in FDA trials right now, and that her editors made sure she wrote the most accessible book possible because they want it to reach the widest audience possible to help anyone with severe mental health issues.

I get the feeling seeking fame is pretty minor this go around, it was really that she had an experience that changed her life in a highly positive way and she wanted to tell that story and give hope to people struggling like her.
posted by mathowie at 4:34 PM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

I think many people look askance at Heather Armstrong because she has a blog and we had blogs and hers made millions and ours didn't. So people try to find the stink, the sellout, the moral compromise that got her to that point.

And I'm telling you the answer is so much simpler than that. She was literally our school's valedictorian. She was literally voted Most Likely to Succeed. If she hadn't been one of the most successful bloggers, she'd have been the youngest partner in a law firm, or the youngest chief resident in a hospital.

There was some fortuitous timing in there, sure. But if you look at this as Overachiever from Birth Continues to Overachieve it's a lot less mystifying.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:46 AM on May 16, 2019 [4 favorites]

FPP from 2002 when she got fired for blogging

I still say "well smack my motherfucking bitch up" when I'm contemplating dealing with something particularly onerous, and now I remember where I picked that up.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:17 AM on May 16, 2019