Dooce /Heather Armstrong

[Anonymous]

Media posts related to her death are referencing her as the Queen of the Mommy Bloggers.

She did indeed blaze a trail and make a mark.

Having said that, I’ve always felt like mommy bloggers seemed unusually needy and perhaps unequipped to provide guidance given their lack of filter/boundaries and what they espouse.

Hindsight being 20/20: seeking guidance/wisdom from strangers on the internet who seem like they have issues probably isn’t wise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hope GOMI is proud of itself for pursuing and mocking this lady. Remember how mad GOMI was 10 years ago that MOMS were making money off the INTERNET by telling their STORIES about raising their children?! And how awful Alice thought it was that women were asking readers for donations, and then Alice asked her readers for donations (and got them, while also policing their website emails and deleting the accounts of people who wrote bad things about her - I was never a member but that's what I saw on reddit)?

Please don't read GOMI and don't support Alice. Follow or don't follow who you want, but don't subscribe to the culture of women knocking down other women just for sport and some lols.

NP. I think it’s okay to be critical of parents making their living off of sharing every single private moment of their children’s lives on the internet.

"Critical" is rather an understatement of what GOMI did with Dooce. And the level of hypocrisy in criticism coming from the writer at GOMI is ridiculous:
* she made fun of moms making asking their readers for money to read what they wrote, but she asked her own readers for money to read what she wrote.
* she made fun of moms for editing their comments to take out the negative stuff, but she edited her blog to take out the negative comments.
* GOMI went above and beyond by reading webmail her commenters would send to one another and would terminate people's memberships if they were overly critical of her in their messages to one another.

However you feel about discussion sites in general, in this day and age where we are better informed and know that we should do better by one another, I just don't see how you can defend reading and supporting GOMI. This straw in particular -- mocking someone mercilessly for years and then reporting on their death and thus profiting by it -- is a heavy one.

I…don’t? You clearly read it, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hope GOMI is proud of itself for pursuing and mocking this lady. Remember how mad GOMI was 10 years ago that MOMS were making money off the INTERNET by telling their STORIES about raising their children?! And how awful Alice thought it was that women were asking readers for donations, and then Alice asked her readers for donations (and got them, while also policing their website emails and deleting the accounts of people who wrote bad things about her - I was never a member but that's what I saw on reddit)?

Please don't read GOMI and don't support Alice. Follow or don't follow who you want, but don't subscribe to the culture of women knocking down other women just for sport and some lols.

GOMI did not kill Heather. Just because people write things on the internet about you doesn't mean you have to read them. I've never googled my own name, for example.

Justifying the tormenting of a human being is shameful. Shame on you.

I feel no shame, because I bear no responsibility. Firstly, we're all assuming Heather killed herself. For all we know, she got hit by a car or something. Secondly, adults are responsible for themselves. Heather had health insurance, family and friends - she had access to all the resources for blocking any site that talked about her online. Again, if you don't want to read things about yourself, you make a choice to avoid them.

You bear responsibility for saying things that are hurtful, whether anyone knew that it was you who said them or not. Anonymity on the internet doesn't mean it's not absolutely hurtful and toxic to have the attitude that you have. It just means that you don't have to be accountable for your behavior.

I've never said anything directly to her, or in her presence. I've never met or been in the same room as her. If she didn't want to read GOMI or Reddit, she didn't have to.

Would you say it in front of her kids? Because you basically did, and I don't think it's reasonable for anything their age to have enough protective impulses to stay away from potentially hurtful information.

Absolutely. It would have done me a WORLD of good if even one person acknowledged the messed up things my mother did to me, and said about me. She gaslighted the crap out of me. I absolutely would have let her girls know they deserved privacy, and their mom was wrong for exposing their feelings, their medical issues, their interests, etc. to the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hope GOMI is proud of itself for pursuing and mocking this lady. Remember how mad GOMI was 10 years ago that MOMS were making money off the INTERNET by telling their STORIES about raising their children?! And how awful Alice thought it was that women were asking readers for donations, and then Alice asked her readers for donations (and got them, while also policing their website emails and deleting the accounts of people who wrote bad things about her - I was never a member but that's what I saw on reddit)?

Please don't read GOMI and don't support Alice. Follow or don't follow who you want, but don't subscribe to the culture of women knocking down other women just for sport and some lols.

NP. I think it’s okay to be critical of parents making their living off of sharing every single private moment of their children’s lives on the internet.

"Critical" is rather an understatement of what GOMI did with Dooce. And the level of hypocrisy in criticism coming from the writer at GOMI is ridiculous:
* she made fun of moms making asking their readers for money to read what they wrote, but she asked her own readers for money to read what she wrote.
* she made fun of moms for editing their comments to take out the negative stuff, but she edited her blog to take out the negative comments.
* GOMI went above and beyond by reading webmail her commenters would send to one another and would terminate people's memberships if they were overly critical of her in their messages to one another.

However you feel about discussion sites in general, in this day and age where we are better informed and know that we should do better by one another, I just don't see how you can defend reading and supporting GOMI. This straw in particular -- mocking someone mercilessly for years and then reporting on their death and thus profiting by it -- is a heavy one.

I…don’t? You clearly read it, though.

I haven't read it in years. I was critical of it 10 years ago and posted criticism on GOMI directly, then stopped reading. But Dooce dies and someone here posts that GOMI has a story about it, so I'm just restating why I think that website is negative, hypocritical, and, ultimately, harmful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hope GOMI is proud of itself for pursuing and mocking this lady. Remember how mad GOMI was 10 years ago that MOMS were making money off the INTERNET by telling their STORIES about raising their children?! And how awful Alice thought it was that women were asking readers for donations, and then Alice asked her readers for donations (and got them, while also policing their website emails and deleting the accounts of people who wrote bad things about her - I was never a member but that's what I saw on reddit)?

Please don't read GOMI and don't support Alice. Follow or don't follow who you want, but don't subscribe to the culture of women knocking down other women just for sport and some lols.

GOMI did not kill Heather. Just because people write things on the internet about you doesn't mean you have to read them. I've never googled my own name, for example.

Justifying the tormenting of a human being is shameful. Shame on you.

I feel no shame, because I bear no responsibility. Firstly, we're all assuming Heather killed herself. For all we know, she got hit by a car or something. Secondly, adults are responsible for themselves. Heather had health insurance, family and friends - she had access to all the resources for blocking any site that talked about her online. Again, if you don't want to read things about yourself, you make a choice to avoid them.

What kind of logic is this?? I'm allowed to say unbelievably sh!tty things about someone all the time, but it's OK because they may not read it and/or know it was me? This is what you consider ethical behavior?

I never said unbelievably shitty things about Heather. And if I did, she was being unbelievably shitty. I don't subscribe to the concept that you have to put anyone whose died on a pedestal. If she did really shitty things, yeah I probably talked about it. If she chose to read that, that's on her. You have to own what you do and say. She said TONS of very personal stuff about her daughters that had to be embarrassing for them. If I talked about how crappy that was of her to do, I'm okay with that.

You can also refuse to "put anyone whose died on a pedestal" while also not going out of your way to say nasty things about them, on the day their death is announced. You could choose to NOT say nasty things.

That is where your problem with ethics is. If this was a person you knew and children you knew, would you make the same comments, with your name attached to them? I doubt it. If the answer is yes, you are just a bad person. If the answer is no, you are a hypocrite. But fine! You feel good about it. Have a great Wednesday. RIP Dooce.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hope GOMI is proud of itself for pursuing and mocking this lady. Remember how mad GOMI was 10 years ago that MOMS were making money off the INTERNET by telling their STORIES about raising their children?! And how awful Alice thought it was that women were asking readers for donations, and then Alice asked her readers for donations (and got them, while also policing their website emails and deleting the accounts of people who wrote bad things about her - I was never a member but that's what I saw on reddit)?

Please don't read GOMI and don't support Alice. Follow or don't follow who you want, but don't subscribe to the culture of women knocking down other women just for sport and some lols.

GOMI did not kill Heather. Just because people write things on the internet about you doesn't mean you have to read them. I've never googled my own name, for example.

Justifying the tormenting of a human being is shameful. Shame on you.

I feel no shame, because I bear no responsibility. Firstly, we're all assuming Heather killed herself. For all we know, she got hit by a car or something. Secondly, adults are responsible for themselves. Heather had health insurance, family and friends - she had access to all the resources for blocking any site that talked about her online. Again, if you don't want to read things about yourself, you make a choice to avoid them.

You bear responsibility for saying things that are hurtful, whether anyone knew that it was you who said them or not. Anonymity on the internet doesn't mean it's not absolutely hurtful and toxic to have the attitude that you have. It just means that you don't have to be accountable for your behavior.

I've never said anything directly to her, or in her presence. I've never met or been in the same room as her. If she didn't want to read GOMI or Reddit, she didn't have to.

Would you say it in front of her kids? Because you basically did, and I don't think it's reasonable for anything their age to have enough protective impulses to stay away from potentially hurtful information.

Absolutely. It would have done me a WORLD of good if even one person acknowledged the messed up things my mother did to me, and said about me. She gaslighted the crap out of me. I absolutely would have let her girls know they deserved privacy, and their mom was wrong for exposing their feelings, their medical issues, their interests, etc. to the world.

Wow. So yu think you are, what, protecting her kids? By trash talking their mom (anonymously, online) the day after she died?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hope GOMI is proud of itself for pursuing and mocking this lady. Remember how mad GOMI was 10 years ago that MOMS were making money off the INTERNET by telling their STORIES about raising their children?! And how awful Alice thought it was that women were asking readers for donations, and then Alice asked her readers for donations (and got them, while also policing their website emails and deleting the accounts of people who wrote bad things about her - I was never a member but that's what I saw on reddit)?

Please don't read GOMI and don't support Alice. Follow or don't follow who you want, but don't subscribe to the culture of women knocking down other women just for sport and some lols.

GOMI did not kill Heather. Just because people write things on the internet about you doesn't mean you have to read them. I've never googled my own name, for example.

Justifying the tormenting of a human being is shameful. Shame on you.

I feel no shame, because I bear no responsibility. Firstly, we're all assuming Heather killed herself. For all we know, she got hit by a car or something. Secondly, adults are responsible for themselves. Heather had health insurance, family and friends - she had access to all the resources for blocking any site that talked about her online. Again, if you don't want to read things about yourself, you make a choice to avoid them.

You bear responsibility for saying things that are hurtful, whether anyone knew that it was you who said them or not. Anonymity on the internet doesn't mean it's not absolutely hurtful and toxic to have the attitude that you have. It just means that you don't have to be accountable for your behavior.

I've never said anything directly to her, or in her presence. I've never met or been in the same room as her. If she didn't want to read GOMI or Reddit, she didn't have to.

Would you say it in front of her kids? Because you basically did, and I don't think it's reasonable for anything their age to have enough protective impulses to stay away from potentially hurtful information.

Absolutely. It would have done me a WORLD of good if even one person acknowledged the messed up things my mother did to me, and said about me. She gaslighted the crap out of me. I absolutely would have let her girls know they deserved privacy, and their mom was wrong for exposing their feelings, their medical issues, their interests, etc. to the world.

Wow. So yu think you are, what, protecting her kids? By trash talking their mom (anonymously, online) the day after she died?

Not PP, but what is PP doing that Dooce herself has not done 1000 times over and worse? She put her daughters’ whole lives on the internet to make money from. I can only imagine what her kids went through behind the scenes with a mentally ill, attention-seeking, alcoholic mother.

[Anonymous]

The thing is that the people talking shit was part of what drove the revenue. The controversy drives the model. This isn’t 13 reasons why. This was an educated, adult woman who made a choice and continued to make that choice to be a public person even when it may not have benefited her mentally. Unlike most of America she had resources. It is a reminder that mental illness is not always curable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hope GOMI is proud of itself for pursuing and mocking this lady. Remember how mad GOMI was 10 years ago that MOMS were making money off the INTERNET by telling their STORIES about raising their children?! And how awful Alice thought it was that women were asking readers for donations, and then Alice asked her readers for donations (and got them, while also policing their website emails and deleting the accounts of people who wrote bad things about her - I was never a member but that's what I saw on reddit)?

Please don't read GOMI and don't support Alice. Follow or don't follow who you want, but don't subscribe to the culture of women knocking down other women just for sport and some lols.

GOMI did not kill Heather. Just because people write things on the internet about you doesn't mean you have to read them. I've never googled my own name, for example.

Justifying the tormenting of a human being is shameful. Shame on you.

I feel no shame, because I bear no responsibility. Firstly, we're all assuming Heather killed herself. For all we know, she got hit by a car or something. Secondly, adults are responsible for themselves. Heather had health insurance, family and friends - she had access to all the resources for blocking any site that talked about her online. Again, if you don't want to read things about yourself, you make a choice to avoid them.

You bear responsibility for saying things that are hurtful, whether anyone knew that it was you who said them or not. Anonymity on the internet doesn't mean it's not absolutely hurtful and toxic to have the attitude that you have. It just means that you don't have to be accountable for your behavior.

I've never said anything directly to her, or in her presence. I've never met or been in the same room as her. If she didn't want to read GOMI or Reddit, she didn't have to.

Would you say it in front of her kids? Because you basically did, and I don't think it's reasonable for anything their age to have enough protective impulses to stay away from potentially hurtful information.

Absolutely. It would have done me a WORLD of good if even one person acknowledged the messed up things my mother did to me, and said about me. She gaslighted the crap out of me. I absolutely would have let her girls know they deserved privacy, and their mom was wrong for exposing their feelings, their medical issues, their interests, etc. to the world.

Wow. So yu think you are, what, protecting her kids? By trash talking their mom (anonymously, online) the day after she died?

Not PP, but what is PP doing that Dooce herself has not done 1000 times over and worse? She put her daughters’ whole lives on the internet to make money from. I can only imagine what her kids went through behind the scenes with a mentally ill, attention-seeking, alcoholic mother.

PP is saying that Dooce doing it is wrong, though. While doing it herself. You are also doing it.

[Anonymous]

Are there summary links for those of us who are new to GOMI/Dooce?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are there summary links for those of us who are new to GOMI/Dooce?

www.google.com

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course GOMI didn't kill her. Alice just hounded her and mocked her endlessly. I'm sure that didn't contribute positively to her well being. And now Alice is posting about her death on GOMI, and essentially profiting off of it. And so the circle is complete.

1+. Of course GOMI & its ilk wasn't the primary or probably even a significant reason for her (alleged) suicide. But it is also ridiculous how quickly the extraordinary toxicity of internet culture is just waived off, e.g. "don't read it," "well you made your life public," "she's crazy anyway"... And then we wonder why everyone's (and esp. our kid's) mental health is flatlining?

+2 I will never understand why people think being outright cruel to somebody else, particularly somebody with a known history of suicidal ideations, is okay. It's not like they were just saying "I think it's inappropriate for somebody to profit off their child's stories," they were (and probably are) saying horrific things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hope GOMI is proud of itself for pursuing and mocking this lady. Remember how mad GOMI was 10 years ago that MOMS were making money off the INTERNET by telling their STORIES about raising their children?! And how awful Alice thought it was that women were asking readers for donations, and then Alice asked her readers for donations (and got them, while also policing their website emails and deleting the accounts of people who wrote bad things about her - I was never a member but that's what I saw on reddit)?

Please don't read GOMI and don't support Alice. Follow or don't follow who you want, but don't subscribe to the culture of women knocking down other women just for sport and some lols.

GOMI did not kill Heather. Just because people write things on the internet about you doesn't mean you have to read them. I've never googled my own name, for example.

Justifying the tormenting of a human being is shameful. Shame on you.

I feel no shame, because I bear no responsibility. Firstly, we're all assuming Heather killed herself. For all we know, she got hit by a car or something. Secondly, adults are responsible for themselves. Heather had health insurance, family and friends - she had access to all the resources for blocking any site that talked about her online. Again, if you don't want to read things about yourself, you make a choice to avoid them.

What kind of logic is this?? I'm allowed to say unbelievably sh!tty things about someone all the time, but it's OK because they may not read it and/or know it was me? This is what you consider ethical behavior?

I never said unbelievably shitty things about Heather. And if I did, she was being unbelievably shitty. I don't subscribe to the concept that you have to put anyone whose died on a pedestal. If she did really shitty things, yeah I probably talked about it. If she chose to read that, that's on her. You have to own what you do and say. She said TONS of very personal stuff about her daughters that had to be embarrassing for them. If I talked about how crappy that was of her to do, I'm okay with that.

You can also refuse to "put anyone whose died on a pedestal" while also not going out of your way to say nasty things about them, on the day their death is announced. You could choose to NOT say nasty things.

That is where your problem with ethics is. If this was a person you knew and children you knew, would you make the same comments, with your name attached to them? I doubt it. If the answer is yes, you are just a bad person. If the answer is no, you are a hypocrite. But fine! You feel good about it. Have a great Wednesday. RIP Dooce.

Today's NOT the day that she died though. She died yesterday. And I haven't said anything nasty about Heather in this thread. If Heather were a person I knew, I'd have distanced myself from her over a decade ago, because I disagree(d) with so much of how she behaved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there summary links for those of us who are new to GOMI/Dooce?

www.google.com

NP. Oh come on. This is like a decades old mommy blog war that took place in niche compartments of the internet. I have been googling it and went to GOMI to see what you all were talking about and didn't even understand the website. I saw no one named Alice, it seemed like just...like a place where anyone can post something? I came back hoping someone had responded to PP with some TLDR summary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hope GOMI is proud of itself for pursuing and mocking this lady. Remember how mad GOMI was 10 years ago that MOMS were making money off the INTERNET by telling their STORIES about raising their children?! And how awful Alice thought it was that women were asking readers for donations, and then Alice asked her readers for donations (and got them, while also policing their website emails and deleting the accounts of people who wrote bad things about her - I was never a member but that's what I saw on reddit)?

Please don't read GOMI and don't support Alice. Follow or don't follow who you want, but don't subscribe to the culture of women knocking down other women just for sport and some lols.

GOMI did not kill Heather. Just because people write things on the internet about you doesn't mean you have to read them. I've never googled my own name, for example.

Justifying the tormenting of a human being is shameful. Shame on you.

I feel no shame, because I bear no responsibility. Firstly, we're all assuming Heather killed herself. For all we know, she got hit by a car or something. Secondly, adults are responsible for themselves. Heather had health insurance, family and friends - she had access to all the resources for blocking any site that talked about her online. Again, if you don't want to read things about yourself, you make a choice to avoid them.

What kind of logic is this?? I'm allowed to say unbelievably sh!tty things about someone all the time, but it's OK because they may not read it and/or know it was me? This is what you consider ethical behavior?

DP - I suggest one of the two of you go start a GOMI thread and keep this argument off of this one.