It's time for our LIVE AMA!
Our maiden voyage
Hi paid subscribers! I’m pushing my own limits and attempting coherent brain work past 5PM! What might happen? Who can say?! But I’ll be here until 8PM EST to answer any and all of your questions. Maybe you want to talk newsletters. Maybe you want to talk momfluencers. Maybe you want to talk about knitting. Maybe just maybe you want to talk about ballerinas who also happen to be ranchers who also happen to be beauty queens. If you want to upgrade to join the conversation, you can do so here (paid subscriptions are on sale for only 3 more days!
Let ‘em rip.
Thank you so much to everyone who came! If you missed it and want in next time, let me know if a midday AMA would work better? My brain turns off at 5PM sharp so I sincerely hope any of what I said tonight was useful/fun/worth your time. I almost just signed off "xoxoxo, gossip girl" TO INDICATE STATE OF COGNITIVE FUNCTION. But truly had so much fun with you all. And now - off to my beloved television :)
I got a question from a reader in my little form about the differences between the OG "mommy bloggers" and today's momfluencers, and I wrote a bit about it here, https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/05/heather-armstrong-dooce-death-mom-blog.html
but here are some other thoughts.
1. I wish I had known about the hilarious, raw, profane mommy bloggers when I was a new mom struggling with postpartum depression and a lack of community.
2. In reading so many of these women, it's so clear that many of them were writers first and foremost, rather than what momfluencers are now, which is (talented!) marketers, advertisers, photographers, stylists, and businesswomen. This isn't to say that today's momfluencers aren't also skilled writers, just that Instagram is where many of them live and Instagram is an image-based platform, whereas the early blogs were very much personal essay driven.
3. Momfluencing is an established job with an established pipeline, whereas many of the women writing about motherhood on the internet did so without any clear idea of where their writing would take them.