The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Mommy Blogger @JosiDenise Tells the Truth: Nobody’s Reading Your Fake Crap

Posted on | May 19, 2016 | 49 Comments

 

Josi Denise is a mother of three who has spent the past three years “building her brand” online as a mommy blogger. Apparently, moms never read books or magazines anymore. Everything is Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest. This creates opportunities for clever women to cash in by promoting products (and promoting themselves) on the Internet. But then she got tired of the fakeness and wrote a brutally honest takedown of the entire phenomenon of mommy blogging:

YOUR MOMMY BLOG F–KING SUCKS.
NOBODY IS READING YOUR S–T
I mean no one. Even the people you think are reading your shit? They aren’t really reading it. The other mommy bloggers sure as hell aren’t reading it. They are scanning it for keywords that they can use in the comments. “So cute! Yum! I have to try this!” They’ve been told, like you, that in order to grow your brand, you must read and comment on other similar-sized and similar-themed blogs. The people clicking on it from Pinterest aren’t reading it. They are looking for your recipe, or helpful tip promised in the clickbait, or before and after photo, then they might re-pin the image, then they are done. The people sharing it on Facebook? They aren’t reading it either. They just want to say whatever it is your headline says, but can’t find the words themselves. Your family? Nope. They are checking to make sure they don’t have double chins in the photos you post of them, and zoning in on paragraphs where their names are mentioned.
Why? Because your shit is boring. Nobody cares about your shampoo you bought at Walmart and how you’re so thankful the company decided to work with you. Nobody cares about anything you are saying because you aren’t telling an engaging story. You are not giving your readers anything they haven’t already heard. You are not being helpful, and you are not being interesting. If you are constantly writing about your pregnancy, your baby’s milestones, your religious devotion, your marriage bliss, or your love of wine and coffee…. are you saying anything new? Anything at all? Tell me something I haven’t heard before, that someone hasn’t said before. From a different perspective, or making a new point at the end at least if I have to suffer through a cliche story about your faceless, nameless kid.
You’re writing in an inauthentic voice about an unoriginal subject, worse if sprinkled with horrible grammar and spelling, and you are contributing nothing to the world but static noise.

Read the whole thing. (Via Motto. Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

Ace of Spades has sometimes noted the “Internet Famous” syndrome, whereby people seek a simulacrum of actual fame by blogging, YouTube videos, etc. And while it is possible to exploit fame to get money, their motive is essentially narcissistic: “I want to be somebody!”

This is why every 19-year-old girl is posting selfies on her Tumblr. She is celebrating her own existence and seeking validation from online admirers, and this mentality seldom leads anywhere good. If she ends up working as a “camgirl” or being a “sugar baby” for old rich guys, at least there is the profit motive to explain that. What is more difficult to explain is why nobody warned her against seeking admiration this way.

Sometimes you need to step back from your life, examine what you’re doing and ask yourself why you’re doing it. “Money” is a good answer. There’s nothing wrong with writing for money. “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money,” Samuel Johnson famously said, but who would want to get paid to lie? Why be a professional liar?

Sure, Hillary Clinton has made a career of it, but . . .

Josi Denise found herself in an existential crisis because she realized that the work-to-reward incentive ratio in mommy blogging is insane, and that writing the truth is always better than “building your brand” by creating a phony public image as a marketing strategy. Then she published an angry rant about her ex-husband not paying child support, and when that went viral — because people actually want to read the truth — she realized how fake her online image was. Mommy blogging is a cult in much the same way modern feminism is a cult, and one of the emotional incentives a cult provides its members is the sense of belonging. The cult is Us, and the outside world is Them, and everything Eric Hoffer wrote about The True Believer applies to such a situation. Inside a cult, the only people who matter are Us, and your identity as one of Us requires you to buy into whatever ideology defines the cult. If you are not willing to constantly prove your loyalty to Us, you might be exiled and ostracized from the cult, becoming one of Them — and this, to the cult member, is a fate worse than death.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg chose the death penalty rather than to cooperate with the FBI and expose their Communist spy network. This is an extreme analogy, but the basic psychology is the same. Marxism is much worse than mommy blogging, but whenever we see people acting irrationally in order to demonstrate their loyalty to a cult and its ideology, we always find the psychology of The True Believer in operation.

Motherhood is a wonderful vocation, and if a mom can be home with her children, earning money by blogging, this is wonderful, too. Thank God for capitalism, which makes this possible through technological innovation. If companies are willing to pay mommy bloggers to promote their products, this is also wonderful, and as long as you’re honest about what your doing, why not? Nothing wrong with honest capitalism.

Better to be a mommy blogger than a Commie blogger.

Just tell the truth, and don’t buy into a cult mentality.





 


Category: Blogging

Comments

49 Responses to “Mommy Blogger @JosiDenise Tells the Truth: Nobody’s Reading Your Fake Crap”

  1. RS
    May 19th, 2016 @ 9:20 am

    Sometimes you need to step back from your life, examine what you’re doing and ask yourself why you’re doing it.

    Tom Lehrer, in an introduction to his song Alma from his 1965 album That Was The Year That Was, noted that there are certain people in the world who make you realize how little you’ve actually accomplished. He said, “It’s sobering to realize, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he’d been dead for five years.”

    I think there is a human desire to be acknowledged for something, anything. It is a universal desire for validation. The problem is that when we rely upon the accolades of others, we lose sight of the truth of the old adage, “virtue is its own reward.” The internet is a cheap way of trying to obtain that validation with minimal effort or actual achievement. And so, people flock to its various venues in droves, writing fiction, when necessary, to get that validation. At least Jodi Denise had a conscience which she listened to.

  2. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 19th, 2016 @ 9:53 am

    Good post!

    BTW: you might want to check out Poog which is a parody of Gwyenth Paltrow’s Goop.

  3. Bob Belvedere
    May 19th, 2016 @ 10:08 am

    RSM wrote: …but whenever we see people acting irrationally in order to demonstrate their loyalty to a cult and its ideology, we always find the psychology of The True Believer in operation.

    See: Trumpists, The

  4. Finrod Felagund
    May 19th, 2016 @ 10:09 am

    There is an excellent story linked to from Tom Lehrer’s wikipedia page written by someone who took the last class that Tom Lehrer taught before he retired.

    Oh, and Tom Lehrer is also the inventor of the jello shot, which he invented as a way to sneak alcohol onto an army base.

  5. Finrod Felagund
    May 19th, 2016 @ 10:10 am

    This story fits extremely well with your masthead quote, RSM.

  6. RS
    May 19th, 2016 @ 10:26 am

    My parents owned That Was The Year That Was and I wound up listening to it a lot, to the point where I had all the lyrics memorized. What’s funny is that the songs originated in 1965 when I was but a pup, but propelled me when I was a teenager to find out what the references were. I bought the CD of the album years ago and still listen to it occasionally.

    In many respects, the album is still topical. My son, the math major, absolutely adores “New Math.” And my wife rolls her eyes when I quote the “MLF Lullaby:”

    Once all the Germans were warlike, and mean,
    But that couldn’t happen again.
    We taught them a lesson in 1918,
    And they’ve hardly bothered us since then.

  7. darleenclick
    May 19th, 2016 @ 10:29 am

    “Write what you know” … which is about emotions, not events – and inauthentic voices are easily spotted.

    now this isn’t about a mommy can’t ever be happy, it’s just that being a mommy, no matter those random moments of bliss, is hard work.

    (I write this from #3’s kitchen table – daughter & SIL just left to take 3-day-old Harper for newborn well check – I’m on grandma duty this week – marketing, cooking, cleaning, etc – to help them ease into this brand new way of living.)

  8. Finrod Felagund
    May 19th, 2016 @ 10:39 am

    I had two separate college professors play Tom Lehrer in class: a chemistry prof played The Elements, and when we were reading the autobiography of Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, another prof pulled out the song of the same name. Yet another professor let me borrow his original 10in copy of Songs by Tom Lehrer to make a cassette copy (along with Beyond The Fringe), and a music prof once declared that his unattainable goal as an amateur musician was to be able to play The Vatican Rag.

  9. Quartermaster
    May 19th, 2016 @ 11:26 am

    I like “Trumpanzee” batter.

  10. Quartermaster
    May 19th, 2016 @ 11:28 am

    Good looking woman. Why is her husband and ‘ex?’

  11. Brian_E
    May 19th, 2016 @ 12:09 pm

    Good question. I was thinking that too, wondered about ‘why’ as well, and decided to go – as our host suggested ‘Read the whole thing’ – in order to search for clues, only to get a ‘Account Suspended’ error at the link provided. Being one that has an ‘ex’ of my own – I’d be inclined to say that “Well, ‘ex’es are usually ‘ex’es due to being unsuited for having long-term relationships’ (i.e. – they’re batsh*t crazy), but it does take two to tango… :-/

  12. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 19th, 2016 @ 12:50 pm

    I have to say, while I am not a Trump fan, I do enjoy him sticking it to Bill and Hillary.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aTBrF63wGE

  13. Robert What?
    May 19th, 2016 @ 1:21 pm

    Is anyone interested in what I had for breakfast this morning? I’d be happy to share.

  14. M. Thompson
    May 19th, 2016 @ 1:34 pm

    No.

  15. Joe Joe
    May 19th, 2016 @ 1:51 pm

    A world I never knew existed….and could have lived without ever knowing did.

  16. Squid Hunt ?Patriarch
    May 19th, 2016 @ 2:21 pm

    Gotta say, when I used to blog socially, the Mommy Blogs were absolutely the most painfully boring to read. Every one of them was exactly the same. What I ate today. How much weight I lost. (Here’s a pic!) My husband/boyfriend is getting on my nerves. My mom is evil. I started my period. Brutal.

  17. Robert What?
    May 19th, 2016 @ 2:57 pm

    So I wouldn’t make it as a “daddy blogger”? I’m crushed.

  18. Steve Skubinna
    May 19th, 2016 @ 4:40 pm

    Nah, you have to tell us you made for your kids to have for breakfast.

    I still wouldn’t visit your Daddy Blog though. Nothing personal.

  19. Steve Skubinna
    May 19th, 2016 @ 4:40 pm

    Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown the Internet.

  20. Steve Skubinna
    May 19th, 2016 @ 4:42 pm

    None of the blogs about “Look how amazing/awesome/horrible my life is” ever drew me in. Maybe their families care, but if so then why aren’t they calling each other with the updates? Why are they making a public spectacle of their personal li-

    Oh. Never mind.

  21. Peregrine John
    May 19th, 2016 @ 4:54 pm

    Yes, but only 1 to say, “Y’know, my toes have been flattened enough – I’ll sit out this dance.”

  22. DeadMessenger
    May 19th, 2016 @ 4:56 pm

    Either of those also remind me of my former boss.

  23. Robert What?
    May 19th, 2016 @ 5:10 pm

    You’re all just jealous of my success. I got a hundred hits today and I don’t even have a blog.

  24. mole
    May 19th, 2016 @ 6:05 pm

    What a wicked little video, I was betting on the scorpion…

  25. OrangeEnt
    May 19th, 2016 @ 6:58 pm

    Welp, might as well close up the internet and delete it. Let it go back to what it was made for….nekkid pix and vids….

  26. Wombat_socho
    May 19th, 2016 @ 7:50 pm

    Alternately, Trumpkin. Trumpbot, or in the especially rabid, racist, alt-right cases, Sturmtrumper.

  27. Wombat_socho
    May 19th, 2016 @ 7:51 pm

    She seems nice.

  28. Fail Burton
    May 19th, 2016 @ 8:03 pm

    Ay just made uh sandwich in uh fryhin pan and it loox like a buttox. Haw. haw. haw.

  29. Kristen
    May 19th, 2016 @ 8:29 pm

    She wrote a shitty blog, it wasn’t successful, and now she’s whining about it. She acts like she’s gonna quit blogging but keeps going. Over her fake shit.

  30. Fail Burton
    May 19th, 2016 @ 10:04 pm

    She should’ve mentioned more of the names of the products she bought…

    …plus monetized her tits.

  31. BozoerRebbe
    May 19th, 2016 @ 10:44 pm

    I write about cars and you’d be surprised how many of these mommy bloggers and “social influencers” get invited to out-of-town ride & drive events introducing new cars. The PR and social media folks at the car companies think these phonies are influencing people but they’re really just in it for the swag.

  32. Joe Joe
    May 19th, 2016 @ 11:28 pm

    He he he…

  33. M. Thompson
    May 20th, 2016 @ 12:19 am

    I’m just being brutally honest and waiting for either SMOD or Cthuluhu right now.

  34. JohnnyL53
    May 20th, 2016 @ 2:04 pm

    You would be surprised at just how influential a blog can be. I’ve bought a lot of SF books on my Kindle from recommendations on here. Magazines in their day did the same. I had a subscription to Stereo Review for years just for the music reviews. I knew I could buy anything that Steve Simels or Alana Nash reviewed positively and I would like it.
    True, some are in it for the freebies but I don’t discount that if they are honest in what they write. that’s the trick though. Figuring out the BS from the gold nuggets.

  35. Quartermaster
    May 20th, 2016 @ 6:01 pm

    Looks like there’s plenty there to monetize. That leads to other effects she’d probably rather not deal with.

  36. Quartermaster
    May 20th, 2016 @ 6:02 pm

    I saw a video ad that showed how much of the technology we take for granted on the innertubez that came about as a result of porn sites. It’s a lot.

  37. Quartermaster
    May 20th, 2016 @ 6:03 pm

    You almost said life. But I see you caught yourself since they really don’t have a life. At least, not beyond the mundane.

  38. Quartermaster
    May 20th, 2016 @ 6:06 pm

    Trumpanzee really sets them off over at AmSpec.

  39. Quartermaster
    May 20th, 2016 @ 6:10 pm

    Probably the barracks. You could get hootch at the Class 6 store, but you couldn’t take it into the barracks. Every Army or Air Force Post/Base that I’ve ever been on had a class 6 store. Most Naval Bases have the equivalent.

    In the early 70s the Navy started allowing beer in the barracks. There were several places where the troops were mixed and if the Navy was in charge, the others could get suds too. later the Army and USAF gave up and allowed it as well.

  40. Steve Skubinna
    May 20th, 2016 @ 7:20 pm

    Fort Ord, CA in 1975 was the first place I saw with beer vending machines. Not in the Basic Training areas, but once you got to AIT, or the 7th ID areas… wow!

    Though back then 18 year olds could buy 3.2 beer on post.

  41. Steve Skubinna
    May 20th, 2016 @ 7:22 pm

    And cat videos.

  42. Steve Skubinna
    May 20th, 2016 @ 7:23 pm

    In an inverse way, the arrival of home video players caused the porn business to explode. No more going to the seedy part of town and sitting in a theater with sticky floors hoping nobody you knew saw you…

  43. Steve Skubinna
    May 20th, 2016 @ 7:27 pm

    When I first heard of blogs back in the late nineties they were described as an online daily journal. And I wondered why in hell anybody would go read somebody they didn’t know writing about when he got up and what he had for breakfast and how his bike was stolen so he had to ride the bus to work and blah blah blah…

    Then I discovered Instapundit and said “Hey! This isn’t what I thought it was going to be!” That was after I choked down a granola bar and latte because I was running late for work and then something was wrong with the card reader on the door and I had to try getting security to let me into my office and…

  44. OrangeEnt
    May 20th, 2016 @ 7:45 pm

    Either way, you’re looking at puss……

  45. Robert What?
    May 20th, 2016 @ 8:49 pm

    I had to look those up. Heh!

  46. Charles G. Hill
    May 20th, 2016 @ 10:20 pm

    Did someone mention Steve Simels?

  47. Jody Fuller
    May 21st, 2016 @ 1:08 am

    “my room mate Lori Is getting paid on the internet $98/hr”…..!ti689urtwo days ago grey MacLaren. P1 I bought after earning 18,512 Dollars..it was my previous month’s payout..just a little over.17k Dollars Last month..3-5 hours job a day…with weekly payouts..it’s realy the simplest. job I have ever Do.. I Joined This 7 months. ago. and now making over hourly. 87 Dollars…Learn. More right Here !ti689u:?:?:.?.?.?.? http://GlobalSuperJobsReportsEmploymentsLookGetPay-Hour$98…. .????????????????????????????????????????????????????::::::!ti689u….,..

  48. brookstyle
    May 21st, 2016 @ 2:14 am

    enjoy…
    http://www.theonion.com/video/seven-male-role-models-every-child-needs-healthy-u-50487

  49. Art Deco
    May 21st, 2016 @ 2:32 pm

    1. Mommyblogging is not a cult.

    2. She’s foul-mouthed and looks like a streetwalker. Someone should tell her to stop with the f-bombs, to quit dying her hair and to quit displaying her cleavage.

    3. How does a woman with three children under the age of 8 ended up an ‘ex’ whinging about her child support payments? (The smart money says she sued him due to formless discontents and that she hasn’t seen the check because he hasn’t seen his kids in an age).