Take-away from BlogHer08: Bloggers are People, too

When I attended BlogHer last year, I was taken aback by the undercurrent theme of monetizing your blog.  Many of the sessions I attended would quickly take a turn towards the business side of the blog.  As in how to become the next Dooce. 

This year, there was an underlying theme around playing nice on the blog-yard.  Many sessions turned into forums about how to deal with trolls, unwelcoming comments, your mother finding your blog and your not-so-nice story of her.  Ok, so I only actually attended two sessions plus the closing keynote at BlogHer, but I had many friends in many sessions so that makes me so in “the know” about what went down.  I think the turning point of this "can't we all get along" theme was during the closing keynote when Dooce called out another blogger (who happened to be in the room) about making Dooce not a real person but a mythical hobbit.  The blogger then stood up and called Dooce out about it being a compliment and not a trash comment.  FYI… You can hear the response from Jen and more on the backstory over at Gwendomama who, I might add, was my son’s first music teacher and who explains the whole issue very thoughtfully.  Dooce gave a sort-of response here, if you read between the lines. 

I suppose the hard part to blogging is that there are real people behind each blog.  I don’t think that when most people started a personal blog, they were really expecting a large audience (well, at least that’s what a lot of the more well known bloggers say).  I don’t entirely believe it since it was only about the writing, you’d be keeping a personal journal that only you had access if it was just the “writing” you cared about.  There is something intriguing about writing online.  About having an audience.  I doubt most writer’s intentions when starting a blog is to become famous.  But I’m sure that when they started writing online it was to connect with an audience.  Yes, the audience may have first started out as your best friends, your mom, and your Aunt who lives in Alaska.  Or maybe you started writing online because you were feeling things that were so raw and you felt lonely and you just needed to know that somewhere in the world there was someone who felt the same feelings. 

I started writing when Jill, one of the SV Moms Group founders, put out an email over two years ago to her entire network about starting a collaborative blog.  I was a full-time working mom in an affluent mother’s club that struggled with including working mothers.  I wanted to make sure that there was a voice for working mom’s on the blog.  So I signed up.  The blog was so brand new that my response to Jill in saying “I’m interested” was all it took to be a writer.  A year after joining SV Moms, I decided that I had more to say and created my own blog.  A year after that, Nataly contacted me to start writing for Work It, Mom. 

Honestly, I’ve never had the expectation that I’ll strike it rich, write a book based on the writings of my blog, or become a blog-ebrity like Dooce.  I write because there are a million voices out there and I want mine to be one of them.  I don't ever expect to make in blogging what I make in the high-tech industry. 

Rita Hayworth used to say "They go to bed with Gilda, they wake up with me."  I think that is same for the new celebrities of the blogging world.  We can forget that they are real people too.  It's easy to see our writings as stories, to see the blogger as a character, to forget that we are real people.   Perhaps what Heather is trying to say is that we forget she is more than Dooce.  She's a real person with real feelings that get hurt when people send her nasty emails.

Personally, I don't mind getting called an entitled bitch for asking for a replacement scoop of ice cream at Baskin Robbins.   But I don't get death threats or people telling me I'm going to hell or how they want to throw acid on me to reveal the robot under my flesh.  I guess I'm just not that popular to get the really nasty trolls.  I can see how it could be hard to distinguish the positive from the negative, the supportive reader from the uber-stalker, santa claus from the devil. 

Or maybe these new blog-ebrities need to take a healthy does of a chill pill.  There is something fantastic in getting tons of comments and having millions of hits per month.   I love getting comments.   It's fun.  I won't deny it - it's a nice stroke on my ego.   I can't even imagine the ego boost one who get when they get hundreds of comments a day.   Death threats aside (which I doubt the majority of commentors are vitriolly trolls), I think some of us can get a little too sensitive about comments.  I'm not talking about the serious, "i'm going to hurt you or members of your family" comments - people who leave comments like that need to simply be expelled from the blogging community. 

If you don't like, delete it.  If you can't stand the personal attacks, don't write in a public forum.  And if you plan on calling anyone a mythical hobbit, remember that person may be uber-sensitive and take it the wrong way.

Except for me.  You can always call me a mythical hobbit.  A skinny-bitch, mythical hobbit with really fantastic hair.   Got it? 

Comments

[Florinda]

I think you're right. If we weren't hoping to connect with other people through what we write - or at least get noticed for it - we wouldn't do it so publicly. Thanks for sharing your reflections.

Maybe I'll see you at BlogHer next year...

[Nicole/wksocmom]

Okay, you asked for it, skinny hairy hobbit bitch, did I get that right? :)

[Nicole]

And even though my stupid personal info. is not saved so I have to type it again (for your audience which is bigger than mine), I did want to say excellent post (comment whore).

[Jamie R Lentzner]

Okay how did I go home and miss all that fun at the closing by Dooce? I am so bummed and so amused by all of it. Rodney King should have been called in for BlogHer. Good to get to know you this past (oops last weekend) and I hope to see ya at next event.

Great post - I loved it - you are too funny!