Dooce /Heather Armstrong

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

This is a good TLDR on GOMI (Dooce is among the bloggers quoted in the article).

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/21/gomi-blog-internet-comments-women

[Anonymous]

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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.

I said the day her death was ANNOUNCED, not the day she died, but that's a pretty weird thing to hang your hat on. Are you saying that if you or anyone else said anything about her yesterday, it would be inappropriate, but today, because it's not the day she died, it's fine?

Yeah, yeah, I know YOU didn't say anything about her. You are, however defending the nasty things other people said as some kind of valid criticism. Have you read that site and what was posted? It's bullying, and if that happened to your children, by name, you wouldn't be so hands off about it.

[Anonymous]

GOMI is horrendous. It's just the ugly side of the internet. If you wouldn't bring your discussion into a blogger's comments, with your own name attached, then don't write it elsewhere.

They have never built anyone up. They only tear down. That's how you know it's a bully site.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

There were a lot of different types of "mommy bloggers." And pretty much all of them started like Dooce. Only a few got so popular that they became widely known.

Did people go to them for guidance or more for validation/commiseration? Heather was trailblazing because she talked very frankly about things that are hard to talk about and things that were kind of taboo - like the suckier physical and mental side of motherhood.

She will always have the label mommy blogger, but her story is also the story of the internet's second wave - Web 2.0 I guess - where identifying yourself publicly was a new thing. And she dealt with that as an issue for her entire career.

I am truly sad for her family and friends. And for her. Her addiction and mental health issues were obviously severe. I am sorry they took her life.

[Anonymous]

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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.

I’m making money off of posting private details of Dooce’s kids’ lives? Huh.

[Anonymous]

GOMI is owned and written by someone named Alice. She posts things about other people who write on the internet, mostly. She gets the most views by being entertainingly critical, and encourages people who post comments to see things in the same glass-half-empty-and-people-especially-mommybloggers-are-awful-amirite? way way she does.

At some point about 10 years ago after a bunch of negative stories about Dooce, Alice posted something like "Dooce Fakes a Break" saying ... I think that dooce was pretending to need a break from her website (when she was going through a divorce and financial difficulties). Alice ultimately took the post down because she had no substantiation for the "fakes" part -- after armstrong hired a lawyer and basically made her take it down, according to what Alice wrote on GOMI. From this, Alice labeled Dooce as a bully and then continued to make post after post criticizing her, to the point where she is now apparently posting about her death, and now the cycle is complete, amen.

Dooce has her own wikipedia page -- she became internet famous because she wrote about her job on her website and was one of the first people to get fired for that. Later she wrote about her post-partum depression and her family and her kids and her dogs. She was funny. She had problems with alcohol and depression.

[Anonymous]

Heather was a mess, but that's much of how she stood out in the sea of generic "everything is perfect and my kids are perfect and my marriage is perfect" mommy bloggers (ex. Love Taza) who came up around the same time as her. She could also be really funny. And relatable.

Very sad for her and her family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GOMI is owned and written by someone named Alice. She posts things about other people who write on the internet, mostly. She gets the most views by being entertainingly critical, and encourages people who post comments to see things in the same glass-half-empty-and-people-especially-mommybloggers-are-awful-amirite? way way she does.

At some point about 10 years ago after a bunch of negative stories about Dooce, Alice posted something like "Dooce Fakes a Break" saying ... I think that dooce was pretending to need a break from her website (when she was going through a divorce and financial difficulties). Alice ultimately took the post down because she had no substantiation for the "fakes" part -- after armstrong hired a lawyer and basically made her take it down, according to what Alice wrote on GOMI. From this, Alice labeled Dooce as a bully and then continued to make post after post criticizing her, to the point where she is now apparently posting about her death, and now the cycle is complete, amen.

Dooce has her own wikipedia page -- she became internet famous because she wrote about her job on her website and was one of the first people to get fired for that. Later she wrote about her post-partum depression and her family and her kids and her dogs. She was funny. She had problems with alcohol and depression.

Good grief. She sounds almost as mentally ill as Dooce. Obviously you can’t say that GOMI caused the suicide, but it’s fair to say that it has done a lot of harm and probably contributed to Heather’s mental health issues, as well as her other targets like Natalie Jean.

[Anonymous]

I feel so bad for her younger kid. They are only 13 and now almost certainly going to be ripped from her home and end up... where? At least her older daughter is already away at college.

Her last post on her website is like a love letter to her older daughter posted when her partner confirms she was still really sober.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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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.

+3

There is a big difference between profiting by making your life public and profiting by being nasty about other people. That is the whole point of GOMI. It's disgusting.

[Anonymous]

So totally sad that she died. Poor kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel so bad for her younger kid. They are only 13 and now almost certainly going to be ripped from her home and end up... where? At least her older daughter is already away at college.

Her last post on her website is like a love letter to her older daughter posted when her partner confirms she was still really sober.

With her father, who is still very involved in their lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Right. But at least she was pretty open about her short comings. I never read her for advice. She had an interesting perspective. I enjoyed her take on life, which was not always in line with my own.

[Anonymous]

Her poor kids.

[Anonymous]

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.

This. They also target vulnerable people with their "ads" which many influencers don't even disclose and I think she was one of the incredibly high earners doing this. I wish her well. I only occasionally read GOMI-found some on there a bit too much. We do need to discuss and expose the exploitation of children of bloggers. If she was simply a private mommy blogger with a private account not profiting off this stuff, then it would be truly terrible to criticize. She was a public figure profiting off her children and sell, sell, selling. I wish the family peace and love. It is sad whatever happened. People who question the ethics of all this mommy blogging for profit are not responsible for her death and it's disturbing to imply we must never criticize or expose people profiting in concerning ways because that person might get depressed. She has struggled her whole life long before anyone said children need to be protected.