That’s a valid point. There was a time when my three favorite mommy bloggers- Dooce, Amalah and Sundry Mourning- all experienced a form of public breakdown and mental illness. All three of them excellent and loving moms; professional women; and uniquely gifted writers. However they shared in common this intense type of navel gazing and obsessive oversharing that made you as a reader almost uncomfortable. Of the three, Dooce’s marriage fell apart, her posts about sobriety were disturbing and her mental illness painfully detailed; Amy Storch (Amalah) left DC for the Baltimore/Elliot city area, experienced a heartbreaking suicide attempt, depression, has seemed to recover but had almost completely halted her online sharing; and Linda (Sundry) in Oregon suffered a horrendous public intoxication episode that could have cost her her marriage but seemed to rebuild it from the ground up, has worked to achieve her life balance and sobriety, and writes occasionally in this beautifully insightful style that finally seems to have struck the right tone. She’s not a mommy blogger, not an oversharer; she’s just a writer.
I am sad for Dooce but like Prince Harry and other oversharers in my generation, this type of obsessive unbidden sharing is not mentally healthy. Of course people will show up, read it, buy it, click it. They are watching the private, sacred, intimate inner workings of your life trainwrecked in a bloody mess across the landscape and they are thankful they are not you.
Thankful for Jon and the girls that he rebuilt his life and seemingly has a good framework and support system for them. Will always remember her Letters to Leta ❤️

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. I'd heard of Dooce but never read it. A few clicks and I can see understand the appeal - the posts have a deft, humorous, slightly manic style. But writing thousands and thousands of posts over many years about her thoughts, her family, her day-to-day life - to be honest, it does not seem sane or healthy.

Not sure what your point is. It was very obvious she was neither mentally or physically well from everything she did and said. And also a good writer.

DP. The point is no one who is mentally well puts this much content on the internet or spends this much time writing stuff about themselves.

Anonymous wrote:NP. I'd heard of Dooce but never read it. A few clicks and I can see understand the appeal - the posts have a deft, humorous, slightly manic style. But writing thousands and thousands of posts over many years about her thoughts, her family, her day-to-day life - to be honest, it does not seem sane or healthy.

Not sure what your point is. It was very obvious she was neither mentally or physically well from everything she did and said. And also a good writer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. I'd heard of Dooce but never read it. A few clicks and I can see understand the appeal - the posts have a deft, humorous, slightly manic style. But writing thousands and thousands of posts over many years about her thoughts, her family, her day-to-day life - to be honest, it does not seem sane or healthy.

Same, I’m a little younger (more of the Julia Engel/Berolzheimer, KJP age) but reading her blog now, she is a great storyteller.

Fwiw I have looked at Gomi and it is incredibly toxic. It’s like 4chan for women/influencers. They definitely do snark on children too, there was so much speculation about one of Amber Fillerup’s kids, and Brittany Boren Leach.

The Brittany Boren Leach stuff was crazy over there. It was like a week or two of sympathy and “can’t believe what she’s going through” and then an abrupt shift to the usual amateur psychologist stuff and diagnosing everyone as a closet narcissist and hoping CPS takes her kids.

Anonymous wrote:NP. I'd heard of Dooce but never read it. A few clicks and I can see understand the appeal - the posts have a deft, humorous, slightly manic style. But writing thousands and thousands of posts over many years about her thoughts, her family, her day-to-day life - to be honest, it does not seem sane or healthy.

Same, I’m a little younger (more of the Julia Engel/Berolzheimer, KJP age) but reading her blog now, she is a great storyteller.

Fwiw I have looked at Gomi and it is incredibly toxic. It’s like 4chan for women/influencers. They definitely do snark on children too, there was so much speculation about one of Amber Fillerup’s kids, and Brittany Boren Leach.

NP. I'd heard of Dooce but never read it. A few clicks and I can see understand the appeal - the posts have a deft, humorous, slightly manic style. But writing thousands and thousands of posts over many years about her thoughts, her family, her day-to-day life - to be honest, it does not seem sane or healthy.

Anonymous wrote:when i was going thru depression, hit a dark place, and finally went to a psychiatrist. First thing the doctor talked about was he asked me if I loved my kids, and I said of course, and then he said the absolute worst thing I could do to them is kill myself.

kept me from killing myself, would love to stop feeling lousy everyday , but I can't hurt my kids.

so each day is one more day of misery, but alive

You are brave and strong for staying here for your kids, PP. I have so much respect for you.

when i was going thru depression, hit a dark place, and finally went to a psychiatrist. First thing the doctor talked about was he asked me if I loved my kids, and I said of course, and then he said the absolute worst thing I could do to them is kill myself.

kept me from killing myself, would love to stop feeling lousy everyday , but I can't hurt my kids.

so each day is one more day of misery, but alive

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Putting your whole life on the internet is not good for your mental health, and minor children should definitely not be exposed in that way by their parents or guardians.

This. There needs to be regulation. There's none that I'm aware of. There aren't even any rules regarding the division of money earned by these family bloggers/vloggers or rules that money must be put in a Coogan account for the kids.

I listened to a podcast episode late last year with the college-aged daughter from a well-known family vlogging channel. They didn't reveal her identity and skewed her voice, but it was sad. She wasn't allowed to have a job like other teens to earn money because it took away from making content. When she didn't want to film, her mother gaslit her with statements like "sorry guys, we won't be able to go to Hawaii this year because Jane doesn't want to film today" etc.

What podcast? Would love to listen.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Clearly you are a huge Dooce fangirl. Does that mean you are also transphobic?

I'm actually not. And I agree it can be problematic to write about your kids. Truly and honestly I just really hate GOMI. I absolutely hate that the owner does exactly the same crap that she mocks other bloggers for doing, and worse! And now to post about this! You spend your whole life mocking other people -- that's what her website was, one mocking post after another -- and then when they ultimately commit suicide you write another post about it, and profit off the pageviews you get, and in your mind you are totally removed from the whole cycle of what happened. You're not connecting these two events at all.

What are the defenses for GOMI at this point? "These bloggers do bad things so we should do bad things to them." Are you twelve? It's fine to say that you don't think writers should write openly about their kid's lives, but when everything you write on your website is a florid and nasty takedown, and you want all your commenters to take everybody down even harder, what are you contributing? What are you accomplishing, exactly?

Don't go there and don't contribute to it.

How is DCUM any different than GOMI? Yet you're still here.

Every single post here isn't a takedown written for maximum entertainment. Comments here are removed when they're personally insulting to other posters - at GOMI the insults were basically encouraged. DCUM is not a takedown site, or even primarily a gossip site. It's mostly a solutions site about parenthood and adulting -- "hey my kid is doing this, wtf do I do?" Whereas GOMI is pure negativity. Why are you defending it? What positive things does anyone get out of Gomi, I would sincerely like to understand.

I'm not defending GOMI, I don't even use that site, it's not my thing, but I am telling you that you are sitting here on a site full of trolls even though you are putting down another site full of trolls.

You asked me how DCUM is different from GOMI, and I told you, and you don't dispute anything I asserted but tell me that DCUM is a site full of trolls. That hasn't been my experience here. I've gotten good advice here. I'm sure there are gossipy threads but I don't go into a lot of those, whereas on GOMI there are ONLY gossipy threads. You don't see a difference? If you think this is a site full of trolls, maybe YOU shouldn't be spending your time here.

NP. I've read both and I think that they're roughly equal. I think that GOMI has probably behaved very poorly, but I think calling it ONLY gossipy is an unfair characterizations of the site. I would say that the main page put out by Alice is probably gossipy, but also sometimes quite valid, and some of the forums are pretty nuanced. But carry on.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Clearly you are a huge Dooce fangirl. Does that mean you are also transphobic?

I'm actually not. And I agree it can be problematic to write about your kids. Truly and honestly I just really hate GOMI. I absolutely hate that the owner does exactly the same crap that she mocks other bloggers for doing, and worse! And now to post about this! You spend your whole life mocking other people -- that's what her website was, one mocking post after another -- and then when they ultimately commit suicide you write another post about it, and profit off the pageviews you get, and in your mind you are totally removed from the whole cycle of what happened. You're not connecting these two events at all.

What are the defenses for GOMI at this point? "These bloggers do bad things so we should do bad things to them." Are you twelve? It's fine to say that you don't think writers should write openly about their kid's lives, but when everything you write on your website is a florid and nasty takedown, and you want all your commenters to take everybody down even harder, what are you contributing? What are you accomplishing, exactly?

Don't go there and don't contribute to it.

How is DCUM any different than GOMI? Yet you're still here.

Every single post here isn't a takedown written for maximum entertainment. Comments here are removed when they're personally insulting to other posters - at GOMI the insults were basically encouraged. DCUM is not a takedown site, or even primarily a gossip site. It's mostly a solutions site about parenthood and adulting -- "hey my kid is doing this, wtf do I do?" Whereas GOMI is pure negativity. Why are you defending it? What positive things does anyone get out of Gomi, I would sincerely like to understand.

I'm not defending GOMI, I don't even use that site, it's not my thing, but I am telling you that you are sitting here on a site full of trolls even though you are putting down another site full of trolls.

You asked me how DCUM is different from GOMI, and I told you, and you don't dispute anything I asserted but tell me that DCUM is a site full of trolls. That hasn't been my experience here. I've gotten good advice here. I'm sure there are gossipy threads but I don't go into a lot of those, whereas on GOMI there are ONLY gossipy threads. You don't see a difference? If you think this is a site full of trolls, maybe YOU shouldn't be spending your time here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This was linked in the NYT obit, and maybe it’s just 20/20 hindsight, but it seems like a goodbye to her daughter.

https://dooce.com/

As best I can tell, this seems to be the last thing she posted. It must have been immediately before she relapsed. While the conclusion claims optimism, she spends more time on the pain and struggle. In the end, she couldn’t live with herself drinking and she couldn’t live with herself sober.

https://dooce.com/2022/04/08/dancing-with-wolves/

So very sad. Her poor children.

That is from 2022. It is 2023.

The first link above is to a post from April of this year. She talks about Leta.

She was a tremendously gifted writer. And so obviously struggling with demons, almost all the time. Even when she was well....well, she was never really well. A very, very sad story.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Clearly you are a huge Dooce fangirl. Does that mean you are also transphobic?

I'm actually not. And I agree it can be problematic to write about your kids. Truly and honestly I just really hate GOMI. I absolutely hate that the owner does exactly the same crap that she mocks other bloggers for doing, and worse! And now to post about this! You spend your whole life mocking other people -- that's what her website was, one mocking post after another -- and then when they ultimately commit suicide you write another post about it, and profit off the pageviews you get, and in your mind you are totally removed from the whole cycle of what happened. You're not connecting these two events at all.

What are the defenses for GOMI at this point? "These bloggers do bad things so we should do bad things to them." Are you twelve? It's fine to say that you don't think writers should write openly about their kid's lives, but when everything you write on your website is a florid and nasty takedown, and you want all your commenters to take everybody down even harder, what are you contributing? What are you accomplishing, exactly?

Don't go there and don't contribute to it.

How is DCUM any different than GOMI? Yet you're still here.

Every single post here isn't a takedown written for maximum entertainment. Comments here are removed when they're personally insulting to other posters - at GOMI the insults were basically encouraged. DCUM is not a takedown site, or even primarily a gossip site. It's mostly a solutions site about parenthood and adulting -- "hey my kid is doing this, wtf do I do?" Whereas GOMI is pure negativity. Why are you defending it? What positive things does anyone get out of Gomi, I would sincerely like to understand.

I'm not defending GOMI, I don't even use that site, it's not my thing, but I am telling you that you are sitting here on a site full of trolls even though you are putting down another site full of trolls.

Anonymous wrote:This was linked in the NYT obit, and maybe it’s just 20/20 hindsight, but it seems like a goodbye to her daughter.

https://dooce.com/

As best I can tell, this seems to be the last thing she posted. It must have been immediately before she relapsed. While the conclusion claims optimism, she spends more time on the pain and struggle. In the end, she couldn’t live with herself drinking and she couldn’t live with herself sober.

https://dooce.com/2022/04/08/dancing-with-wolves/

So very sad. Her poor children.

That is from 2022. It is 2023.