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SMNTY Classics: Tumbling Down the Women Blogosphere · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm not going to
0:07
Speaker 1: stuff I never told you production of I Heart Radio
0:18
Speaker 1: and today, as we continue to watch and try to
0:22
Speaker 1: understand whatever is going on with Twitter, one thing that
0:27
Speaker 1: has come out of the conversation that we talked about
0:30
Speaker 1: in our recent episode with Bridget is well, where does
0:34
Speaker 1: this go? What do we do if it goes away?
0:37
Speaker 1: And one of the threads I've seen that kind of
0:40
Speaker 1: made me raise my eyebrow was Tumbler. That tumbler is
0:44
Speaker 1: seeing a resurgence, and not super familiar with it, I'm
0:49
Speaker 1: kind of like it. It does use the hashtag system,
0:51
Speaker 1: but I'm kind of like, I'm intrigued how it would
0:56
Speaker 1: function like Twitter, I guess. But that being said, I
1:00
Speaker 1: also talk about in this episode fan fiction uses Tumbler
1:03
Speaker 1: a lot, and I have seen a rise of people
1:09
Speaker 1: who include like tumbler art or tumbler communities or whatever
1:14
Speaker 1: in my fan fiction space. It doesn't necessarily mean anything
1:19
Speaker 1: other than I'm somehow encountering this more. It's just anecdotal evidence,
1:24
Speaker 1: but I have noticed to rise. I feel like this
1:27
Speaker 1: is just an excuse to talk about fan fiction again.
1:29
Speaker 1: I would love to the art Samantha it's so good
1:34
Speaker 1: and people do comics and they make me laugh. Perfect, Yes,
1:40
Speaker 1: so please enjoy this classic episode all about Tumbler. Hey,
1:49
Speaker 1: this is Annie and Samantha. I welcome to stuff I'm
1:52
Speaker 1: never told to your protection of I Heart Radio. So
2:03
Speaker 1: just so you know, this episode is inspired by recent
2:08
Speaker 1: friends Facebook status which alerted us to the fact that
2:12
Speaker 1: our old Zinga sites and for those of you who
2:15
Speaker 1: might not know, it was an online journal blog site
2:18
Speaker 1: that I used in college and we're gonna talk a
2:20
Speaker 1: little more about Zinga, but that it was still available
2:24
Speaker 1: and possibly even getting an upgrade, which brought on a
2:27
Speaker 1: bit of a panic attack thinking of all the angst
2:31
Speaker 1: and feelings that was my freshman and sophomore year of
2:34
Speaker 1: college that was plastered on the site. So that exists,
2:39
Speaker 1: but it seems my site may not exist. So good
2:42
Speaker 1: and bad, I guess, which made me go down a
2:45
Speaker 1: bit of a rabbit hole about blogging and over all
2:48
Speaker 1: the history and how women used it and still use
2:51
Speaker 1: it today. But honestly, I was kind of surprised by
2:53
Speaker 1: some of what we found out when we started researching
2:56
Speaker 1: this whole blogging world, even though it shouldn't have been
3:00
Speaker 1: a surprise, but it kind of was. And yeah, I'm
3:02
Speaker 1: not telling you my user name, so you have to search.
3:05
Speaker 1: It's not happening. But Annie, I do have a question
3:08
Speaker 1: for you, because out of all of the years and
3:11
Speaker 1: many times that I've thought about, you know, doing a
3:13
Speaker 1: different job or trying to find something new or trying
3:16
Speaker 1: to find a job, I was like always thinking, man,
3:19
Speaker 1: what is that one thing that I could just make
3:21
Speaker 1: money off of? And of course one of those things
3:24
Speaker 1: that came to view was blogging. You can how you
3:27
Speaker 1: can make money in blogging? And by the way, y'all,
3:29
Speaker 1: there are thousands, if not millions, but definitely thousands of
3:33
Speaker 1: how to to start your own blog and how to
3:37
Speaker 1: make money? By the way, did you ever have a
3:40
Speaker 1: blog that you thought, man, I could make money off
3:42
Speaker 1: of this, if only I could monetize this, or have
3:45
Speaker 1: an idea that you didn't do that you wish you had,
3:49
Speaker 1: or you are you thinking about it? I thought I
3:55
Speaker 1: have only posted in a blog once, but I did
3:58
Speaker 1: feel that I had which feels kind of weird to say,
4:02
Speaker 1: but I thought I was a decent writer and fairly
4:05
Speaker 1: charismatic and also very authentic, like I was a very
4:08
Speaker 1: open person when I would write and I don't think
4:13
Speaker 1: I ever considered blogging as like a source of money
4:17
Speaker 1: because I was always I was very shy. But also
4:20
Speaker 1: my parents, like many parents, were very i don't want
4:24
Speaker 1: to say logical, but they're like, how can you make
4:27
Speaker 1: money off of this? And one of the reasons I
4:28
Speaker 1: chose the career path or the college path that I did,
4:32
Speaker 1: because I wanted to be a writer like a performer.
4:35
Speaker 1: But they were like, well, so does most everybody, and
4:38
Speaker 1: only as certain amount of people make it, so you're
4:41
Speaker 1: you should probably choose something you have a better chance
4:43
Speaker 1: at succeeding in. But that being said, like when I
4:47
Speaker 1: got this job, which was like two thousand, a lot
4:51
Speaker 1: of parts of the job did involve blogging and editing
4:55
Speaker 1: and later videos, and it was something called always in
4:59
Speaker 1: the back of my head that I didn't really seriously consider,
5:01
Speaker 1: but it was always sort of back there. It's like, well,
5:04
Speaker 1: people are making money off of it, and I feel
5:07
Speaker 1: like I could be decent enough at this, at writing
5:12
Speaker 1: things that I'm seeing on other blogs, but I was
5:16
Speaker 1: too shy to do it, and definitely way too shy
5:19
Speaker 1: to like speak up for myself or ask for such
5:22
Speaker 1: an opportunity and that's in fact, like I would not
5:24
Speaker 1: be a host right now if someone else hadn't asked me,
5:27
Speaker 1: which I think great, which isn't great. As far as
5:30
Speaker 1: money making ideas that I haven't done, I've I've had
5:36
Speaker 1: a couple of what I think our genius ideas that
5:38
Speaker 1: people later did, and I'm sure I was in the
5:42
Speaker 1: first person to think of it anyway, but I think
5:45
Speaker 1: I could. I like to think I could make money
5:48
Speaker 1: writing somehow, but I don't know. I don't know. It
5:51
Speaker 1: is competitive fields. What about you? Oh yeah, I had
5:55
Speaker 1: the genius idea because for a little while I was
5:58
Speaker 1: on a hot streak of really bad online blind dates.
6:02
Speaker 1: This has existed and it's gotten bigger with the other platforms,
6:06
Speaker 1: but this was like two thousand seven, so little early on.
6:11
Speaker 1: I really wish I had done so and did a
6:13
Speaker 1: whole like take because I'm not the best writer, but
6:16
Speaker 1: I am personable and funny, so whenever I did have
6:19
Speaker 1: the online journals, I would get compliments about the way
6:22
Speaker 1: I wrote things, and I am a sarcastic individual that
6:26
Speaker 1: makes a lot of things. Of course, it's probably good
6:28
Speaker 1: in some retrospect because I wasn't so pc back then,
6:32
Speaker 1: and there could be a lot of things that could
6:34
Speaker 1: haunt me, which is a good reminder for those who
6:38
Speaker 1: are writing today. They will haunt you, as my Zenger
6:42
Speaker 1: site has recently done for me. So yeah, but we're
6:47
Speaker 1: not talking about our own woes. We will obviously because
6:50
Speaker 1: so it's the thing that we did, But we did
6:53
Speaker 1: want to dig into some of what is blogging, what
6:57
Speaker 1: happened with blogging, how affects women, doesn't affect I didn't,
7:00
Speaker 1: I don't know. So to start off, let's get into
7:02
Speaker 1: that history. Yes, so the use of the word blog
7:05
Speaker 1: didn't actually get coined until the nineties by Peter Merholtz,
7:09
Speaker 1: and the word was coined officially in even though the
7:14
Speaker 1: actual practice of blogging may have been around for a
7:16
Speaker 1: bit before then. But the term that was used was
7:20
Speaker 1: not blogs. It was called something else. And if you're curious,
7:24
Speaker 1: which I haven't been really interested for listeners to write in,
7:26
Speaker 1: if you have no experience with this world and you
7:28
Speaker 1: don't know what we're talking about, Okay, so here's our
7:32
Speaker 1: definition a coin to word Press at w P beginner
7:34
Speaker 1: dot com, a blog is quote a type of website
7:37
Speaker 1: where the content is presented in reverse chronological order. Newer
7:40
Speaker 1: content appears first, is often referred to as entries or
7:44
Speaker 1: blog post is typically run by an individual or a
7:46
Speaker 1: small group of people to present information in a conversational style,
7:51
Speaker 1: and if you don't know what word presses it is
7:54
Speaker 1: one of the larger platforms for blogs and according to
7:58
Speaker 1: those who have researched the US, they state that Justin Hall,
8:02
Speaker 1: a student at the time, was the first blogger and
8:04
Speaker 1: created the first blog in nineteen four on links dot net.
8:09
Speaker 1: But it wasn't necessarily called blog like we said until
8:12
Speaker 1: much later, but the time was referenced as online journals,
8:15
Speaker 1: which and I believe is what they called zinga for
8:18
Speaker 1: a while, an online blog. It had all the little
8:20
Speaker 1: fun little decorations, animations and music if you wanted to,
8:25
Speaker 1: had floats, oh yeah, or personal pages again much kind
8:30
Speaker 1: of look about my space, but not all the friends.
8:33
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know. So in nineteen seven we have
8:36
Speaker 1: what is called the weblog as in web blog, web blog,
8:41
Speaker 1: you get it, which was coined by John Barger who
8:45
Speaker 1: created the Robot Wisdom blog. And many of the original
8:48
Speaker 1: or first blogs were centered around programming and gaming, but
8:51
Speaker 1: that did expand to journalism or news and even to
8:54
Speaker 1: music where people like Rose Marshak, musician with Poster Child,
8:58
Speaker 1: was credited about having a blog for keeping an online
9:00
Speaker 1: tour journal in the mid nineties, or Jonathan Dube, who
9:03
Speaker 1: reported on Hurricane Bonnie for the Charlotte Observer in And
9:07
Speaker 1: it was in n that we saw the beginning of
9:10
Speaker 1: a whole new platform on the interviews, the blogging platform,
9:14
Speaker 1: beginning with open Diary, which allowed for other people in
9:17
Speaker 1: the platform community to comment on other people's writings. But yes,
9:21
Speaker 1: it barked so many others, and soon there were three
9:24
Speaker 1: more that would follow, including my beloved defunct Zenka that
9:28
Speaker 1: is desperately trying to make a comeback. Y'all they want,
9:31
Speaker 1: they need funding. Apparently it was more social media friendly
9:35
Speaker 1: and more geared to being interactive. For me, I only
9:38
Speaker 1: used a user name and didn't attach my actual name
9:40
Speaker 1: and told the selective group of friends to be a
9:42
Speaker 1: part of my community. So it was very selective. But
9:46
Speaker 1: it wasn't just Zena, but more sizes like live journal
9:49
Speaker 1: and blogger. And live journal existed until the mid two
9:52
Speaker 1: thousand's and apparently ended up being one of Russia's primary
9:55
Speaker 1: social media platforms according to one site huh interesting. As
10:01
Speaker 1: for Blogger, the site being a more commercial blogging service.
10:04
Speaker 1: It was eventually purchased via Google, and like everything popular,
10:08
Speaker 1: this began to be an avenue for some capital, and
10:11
Speaker 1: it became monetized with things like blog ads, which was
10:14
Speaker 1: a cursor to Google ad Sense, and with people seeking
10:17
Speaker 1: to become searchable and marketable by appearing on list and
10:20
Speaker 1: available through search engines like the first blog search engine, Technoaty,
10:26
Speaker 1: which was created in two thousand two and I believe
10:29
Speaker 1: still exists because I just found a list on their site,
10:31
Speaker 1: So there you go. And of course many platforms still exist,
10:36
Speaker 1: including WordPress, which is set up as a fully customized
10:39
Speaker 1: size and easy to use for all. And I also
10:42
Speaker 1: have one of those that I did for a project
10:44
Speaker 1: with domestic violence survivors and it's really easy to use. Again,
10:49
Speaker 1: they also have a beginner's guide if you need some assistance.
10:52
Speaker 1: Also not a sponsor currently, but I think they have
10:55
Speaker 1: sponsored other podcasts in our network in the past, but yes,
10:59
Speaker 1: now sponsored currently. We're not special enough. Apparently, blog and
11:05
Speaker 1: many of the professional levels of mediums have been born
11:08
Speaker 1: through blogging, so much so that in two thousand five,
11:11
Speaker 1: blogger Garrett Graff was invited to the White House and
11:15
Speaker 1: was the first blog are to be invited, so there
11:18
Speaker 1: you go. And sites like Huffington Posts and Medium are
11:21
Speaker 1: still in production as sources and journalist medium, so we
11:25
Speaker 1: use them a lot in referencing what's going on today.
11:29
Speaker 1: Right But okay, this leads to the question of who
11:33
Speaker 1: writes these blogs and who reads these blogs now? And
11:36
Speaker 1: these numbers have changed over time. At the beginning of blogging,
11:39
Speaker 1: it seemed like men took the helm of most things
11:42
Speaker 1: related to the Internet, and of course, um that has
11:45
Speaker 1: also fluctuated over time. According to an article published by
11:48
Speaker 1: the Atlantic in twelve, most social media related sites were
11:52
Speaker 1: more likely to be used by women for things like blogging,
11:55
Speaker 1: though overall women were more likely spend time on social
11:58
Speaker 1: media than men. Women were online twenty foot eight hours
12:01
Speaker 1: a month and men were on twenty two point nine
12:04
Speaker 1: hours a month. But even in these reports there were conflicts,
12:07
Speaker 1: As many said um, though women may be more likely
12:10
Speaker 1: to be on social media, men were also just as likely,
12:13
Speaker 1: and some found even more so on blogs or at
12:17
Speaker 1: least writing these blogs. Right. So, in a article, fifty
12:21
Speaker 1: one percent of men reported reading blogs more than once
12:24
Speaker 1: a day, and of women would do the same, so
12:27
Speaker 1: more likely men would get on once or twice three times. However,
12:30
Speaker 1: women were more likely to subscribe to the blogs, so
12:34
Speaker 1: therefore would be a little more committed and get them
12:36
Speaker 1: email to them again. These numbers are constantly fluctuating, and
12:40
Speaker 1: some of that may be on how researchers are looking
12:42
Speaker 1: at the information, as many of these may include the
12:45
Speaker 1: fact that there are some additive bloggers or video bloggers
12:48
Speaker 1: which we need to dig into later on, and some
12:50
Speaker 1: may exclude professional levels of media like Huffington Post and
12:54
Speaker 1: bus Feed, which are actual blogs, but they're kind of
12:57
Speaker 1: more seen as again professionals, so therefore or not in
13:01
Speaker 1: the same context. But most of the numbers show pretty
13:04
Speaker 1: similar results. When it comes to gender, it's neutral. It's
13:07
Speaker 1: pretty much neutral. Uh, there is a one point eight
13:09
Speaker 1: percent difference in who was blogging. Men were at fifty
13:12
Speaker 1: point nine percent while women were at forty nine point
13:15
Speaker 1: one percent as of seventeen going to one article, and
13:34
Speaker 1: there are some other statistics around all of this, as
13:37
Speaker 1: about seven point five million blog posts created daily. At
13:40
Speaker 1: least fifty three percent of bloggers are between the ages
13:42
Speaker 1: of twenty one, and thirty five of them are twenty
13:45
Speaker 1: or younger. Nineteen are between thirty six and fifty and
13:48
Speaker 1: seven percent are fifty one and older. People on the
13:52
Speaker 1: Internet actually read these millions of blogs. Um, there are
13:57
Speaker 1: over six hundred million blogs on the Internet to a
14:00
Speaker 1: with Tumbler having the largest number of users, which is
14:03
Speaker 1: four eighty eight point one million blogs. And by the way,
14:08
Speaker 1: there were twenty three blogs on the internet, so massive growth. Yes, yes,
14:13
Speaker 1: And of course we have to talk about who's making
14:17
Speaker 1: this money, who's making money because again I see constant,
14:21
Speaker 1: and I have a feeling my ads are gonna be
14:23
Speaker 1: a lot about how to monetize a blog or how
14:27
Speaker 1: to start a blog because of this research that we've
14:30
Speaker 1: been doing. Womp. Not surprisingly, blogging professional media's like the
14:35
Speaker 1: Huffington's Post make a lot of the top dollars. The
14:39
Speaker 1: Huffington Post makes an annual income of five hundred million dollars.
14:43
Speaker 1: As in fact, what article said that they were worth
14:45
Speaker 1: a billion dollars? So yeah, making that chatter cheese, I'm old, okay,
14:51
Speaker 1: But in general, the regular schmos like myself typically don't
14:55
Speaker 1: make much, if at all, as in fact, according to
14:59
Speaker 1: one study, or than never make even one hundred dollars ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,
15:07
Speaker 1: and only eight percent make enough money for this to
15:09
Speaker 1: be their full time jobs. And to say I'm a
15:11
Speaker 1: professional blogger, I guess it's the same way as a
15:14
Speaker 1: saying I'm a professional podcaster. Really well, um, And to
15:20
Speaker 1: make it an even more sad reality, seventy of the
15:23
Speaker 1: people in another survey stated they never make any money
15:27
Speaker 1: at all, but there are a few that are able
15:30
Speaker 1: to make it into this fierce competitive world of blocking.
15:33
Speaker 1: With a recent blog listing one of the bloggers, so
15:37
Speaker 1: within this blog listing other bloggers who earns a million
15:41
Speaker 1: dollars per months through their blog post wow right, and
15:47
Speaker 1: that same list of showing the top twenty one bloggers
15:51
Speaker 1: who are making top dollars, and several of these are
15:54
Speaker 1: couples and or partners business partners, so you know, they
15:57
Speaker 1: kind of make up the list that was twelve in
15:59
Speaker 1: Total Life, Inc. And then twenty one people in that list,
16:02
Speaker 1: if that makes sense, And that same list that we
16:05
Speaker 1: talked about with that guy, and it is a guy
16:07
Speaker 1: who makes a million per month, they have the top
16:10
Speaker 1: twenty one earners and uh, there's in total about twenty
16:14
Speaker 1: seven people in that list, and some of them are
16:16
Speaker 1: partners sharing the same sites or sharing I guess the
16:20
Speaker 1: same revenue. Thirteen of those people were women, so seven
16:24
Speaker 1: were women um and their blogs were mainly about finance,
16:28
Speaker 1: fashion and style, several recipe and food, and several mommy
16:32
Speaker 1: blogs are mom blogs which still exists and are making
16:36
Speaker 1: some money. And again, many of these bloggers, though considered
16:40
Speaker 1: professional bloggers, are boosted by other forms of media, including
16:44
Speaker 1: things like social media such as Instagram or video blogs
16:48
Speaker 1: better known as again vlogs, which I still have a
16:51
Speaker 1: hard time with that word, and yes again podcasting, yes,
16:55
Speaker 1: and whenever we return for vlogs, Yeah, I'll have a
16:58
Speaker 1: lot to say about about that. But there are there
17:00
Speaker 1: are similar numbers when it comes to money. Four blogs
17:03
Speaker 1: because I think stuff mom never told you YouTube channel
17:06
Speaker 1: which had a lot of subscribers and you we generally
17:08
Speaker 1: got like ten thou plus views for video. We made
17:12
Speaker 1: like twenty bucks a year. Maybe maybe it's kind of insulting.
17:16
Speaker 1: You get your like spreadsheet, it's it shows how many
17:19
Speaker 1: downloads you have, and it's like here's your Okay, thank you,
17:25
Speaker 1: thanks so much. Yes, but okay, if we break down
17:29
Speaker 1: women in the blogging world, yeah, we wanted to focus
17:32
Speaker 1: on a few specific blogs that we typically see more
17:34
Speaker 1: women being a part of starting with the mommy blog.
17:38
Speaker 1: And we're not going to go in depth on that
17:39
Speaker 1: because past hosts already did an episode on it, but
17:43
Speaker 1: we did want to add some updated information to this
17:46
Speaker 1: conversation because, not too surprisingly, after the surge of mom blogs,
17:51
Speaker 1: many have tried to copy the likes of the larger
17:53
Speaker 1: blocks that still exist today, but have been unsuccessful in monetizing,
17:57
Speaker 1: which has led to another method of finding success, just
18:00
Speaker 1: to pay money for actual blogging courses and even tools
18:02
Speaker 1: to try to make some money and to become bigger
18:05
Speaker 1: than just bloggers but influencers. Right, and according to the
18:10
Speaker 1: statistics that we talked about earlier, I think I want
18:13
Speaker 1: to say at least six of people who were blogging
18:16
Speaker 1: spend at least a hundred dollars in trying to monetize
18:19
Speaker 1: themselves or to get themselves into that same playing field,
18:23
Speaker 1: and for some it has worked. In a Busfeed article
18:26
Speaker 1: published in twenty nineteen, a blogger based out of Pakistan
18:29
Speaker 1: invested twenty five dollars to start her blogging career and
18:33
Speaker 1: has been able to make enough money to stay at
18:35
Speaker 1: home while her husband works. And though she is based
18:39
Speaker 1: in and from Pakistan, the majority of her audience is
18:42
Speaker 1: from the US, so she said at the time. And
18:45
Speaker 1: like many of the blogs that exist, money isn't made
18:48
Speaker 1: by just the information that people are writing about, but
18:50
Speaker 1: a brand they have created through these blogs. Just like
18:53
Speaker 1: it was at the beginning, it still allows for a
18:56
Speaker 1: community for like minded individuals who are living similar lives styles.
19:00
Speaker 1: And I think, as it's been said before, many of
19:02
Speaker 1: the originators of mommy blogging, it was a community to
19:06
Speaker 1: be opened and honest in their struggles as well as
19:08
Speaker 1: their success. Um, and you had a variety, uh, the
19:12
Speaker 1: upfront honest, tired moms, the Christian d i y moms,
19:16
Speaker 1: and the moms who made it look really easy. Yeah
19:19
Speaker 1: it wasn't Glennon Doyle of Tamed. She had a presence
19:24
Speaker 1: from a Christian mother block, I believe, and she was successful.
19:29
Speaker 1: She was a writer. Yeah, you're right exactly. But all
19:33
Speaker 1: of this soon came with the added bonus that the
19:35
Speaker 1: bloggers may be offering something more to help all of
19:37
Speaker 1: those out in the world with products that can make
19:40
Speaker 1: life just a little bit easier. And I've bet a
19:42
Speaker 1: lot of us are familiar with this. For you're reading
19:43
Speaker 1: an entry. For me, it's a lot of time recipe blocks,
19:46
Speaker 1: which I know we're gonna talk about a minute, but
19:48
Speaker 1: you're like halfway through and then it's like, and that's
19:50
Speaker 1: why I like this product. Yes, some of the bigger
19:55
Speaker 1: bloggers and influencers have created their own products are brands
19:58
Speaker 1: that are offered exclusively, such as binders, organizers, planners, et cetera,
20:02
Speaker 1: which can lead to profits. Right, But with the blogs
20:05
Speaker 1: changing over to being influencers, it does look a bit
20:09
Speaker 1: differently today, As it stays in one New York Times
20:11
Speaker 1: article quote, today's most popular representations of motherhood aren't necessarily
20:16
Speaker 1: occurring on websites anymore, but rather through multi platform personal brands,
20:22
Speaker 1: exemplified in the Los Angeles Coats Slacker cohort of Busy Phillips,
20:27
Speaker 1: Kelly Oxford and Liz Carrey. As media producers, they work
20:30
Speaker 1: directly with brands in ways that most consumers wouldn't even understand,
20:34
Speaker 1: going beyond sponsored content they write, they performed. They consult
20:39
Speaker 1: their ambassadors there profane and genuinely self deprecating, but gloss
20:43
Speaker 1: here and more aspirational than mothers have ever been. They
20:47
Speaker 1: look for the instagent filtered anyway, like beautiful, languid teenagers
20:52
Speaker 1: that are representations of motherhood are unsettling, hilarious, and subversive
20:56
Speaker 1: in a way that is diametrically opposed to the kind
20:59
Speaker 1: of subversion held that defined early mommy blogs. And I
21:05
Speaker 1: think we can say that we've seen that influence in
21:07
Speaker 1: everything we've We've changed from just being bloggers or writers
21:13
Speaker 1: or bloggers it to being ambassadors and influencers, as we've
21:17
Speaker 1: talked about before. But I don't think that blogging has
21:21
Speaker 1: gone anywhere. As we saw in the numbers, there are
21:23
Speaker 1: millions of blog posts being released daily, yes and yeah,
21:29
Speaker 1: we of course I couldn't talk about the world of
21:31
Speaker 1: blogging without the ever controversial recipe blogs. And if you're
21:36
Speaker 1: wondering why is this controversial? Between all the conversations of
21:40
Speaker 1: cultural appropriation within the community, to accusations of stealing to
21:44
Speaker 1: just outright people complaining, there has been a bit of
21:47
Speaker 1: a stir in the food and culinary world when it
21:49
Speaker 1: comes to this, and the blog world continues to be
21:52
Speaker 1: impacted by that. So one of the biggest controversies is
21:55
Speaker 1: the complaints from many including celebrities who make their money
21:58
Speaker 1: by viewing and sometimes nonsense monologues which often turned into
22:02
Speaker 1: books and yeah, which is kind of what I was
22:04
Speaker 1: talking about earlier is like a lot of times you
22:07
Speaker 1: just are scrolling through this whole thing because you just
22:10
Speaker 1: want to get the recipe at the bottom, right right,
22:14
Speaker 1: another wrong. Yeah, I'm the same way, and I've been
22:16
Speaker 1: one of those complaining trying to repeatedly scroll down because
22:21
Speaker 1: I have to reread and reread and reread. You just
22:23
Speaker 1: have to keep scrolling, keep scrolling to get to that recipe.
22:26
Speaker 1: Bit to try out a new delicious dish. Yeah, I
22:28
Speaker 1: made a delicious potato soup from one of these blogs.
22:30
Speaker 1: It was delicious. But what we're actually doing is kind
22:34
Speaker 1: of callously dismissing a person's work and sometimes the livelihood,
22:38
Speaker 1: to the point that a mail driven company was trying
22:44
Speaker 1: to make money by taking recipes out of people's blogs,
22:48
Speaker 1: creating their own site and claiming it even though it
22:51
Speaker 1: shows where it comes from. So it's a whole day
22:54
Speaker 1: and making money off of it. And everybody was pissed.
22:59
Speaker 1: I think, not too where You're like, here's the recipe
23:02
Speaker 1: for this, and you click on it and it's just
23:03
Speaker 1: a link to something else. Yeah, And I'm like, okay, well,
23:06
Speaker 1: I'm all about crediting people's work, but I'm not sure
23:09
Speaker 1: how I ended up here first. Right. There are so
23:12
Speaker 1: many things where they're like, hey, hey, uh, you're not Yeah,
23:16
Speaker 1: you're making this more difficult and they're not getting the
23:18
Speaker 1: views that they need to up their count. What are
23:23
Speaker 1: you doing so? Yeah and uh. Some even talk about
23:26
Speaker 1: how this could be a result of underlying sexism that
23:30
Speaker 1: is often prevalent in home cooking. Writer Chloe Bryant wrote
23:34
Speaker 1: imashable quote, home cooking is still a deeply gendered pursuit,
23:38
Speaker 1: and writers whose work centers on home cooking are still
23:41
Speaker 1: perceived as less professional, less valuable, and less worthy voices.
23:46
Speaker 1: And according to a blogger from the same article, they said,
23:49
Speaker 1: the feeling seems to be that they don't think these
23:51
Speaker 1: writers have something of value to offer, and they aren't
23:54
Speaker 1: the only ones. Many feel this conversation has a lot
23:57
Speaker 1: to do with the same narrative we talked about in
23:59
Speaker 1: out Roman's fiction episode, which is that when it comes
24:02
Speaker 1: to women authors and writers, they are often dismissed and
24:06
Speaker 1: not taken seriously. Yeah, and it goes into the same
24:10
Speaker 1: sexist narrative of the whole shut up and cook thing,
24:13
Speaker 1: which of course continues to push a misogynistic agenda and
24:17
Speaker 1: it doesn't consider the fact that many of those who
24:18
Speaker 1: are posting these delicious free recipes are also trying to
24:21
Speaker 1: make it in the world of monetized blogging, something they
24:24
Speaker 1: are actually putting work into. And again, this type of
24:28
Speaker 1: blogging is typically dominated by women. There's also the argument
24:33
Speaker 1: overall that when women right is full of emotion and
24:35
Speaker 1: even mysticism, while men are direct to the point, um
24:38
Speaker 1: just no frills about it. So, rather than just skipping
24:41
Speaker 1: or enjoying someone's tripped down memory lane, we complain and
24:44
Speaker 1: criticize the author for their free content, which they are
24:47
Speaker 1: trying to up their chances of being seen by putting
24:49
Speaker 1: in correct terms and words that can be found by
24:53
Speaker 1: the all knowing, all powerful algorithm of Google and other
24:56
Speaker 1: search engines. Right, And I think that's a whole other
25:00
Speaker 1: conversation we need to have about how is uh the
25:02
Speaker 1: algorithm working for against women in general when we see
25:07
Speaker 1: things like this, as well as the fact that, yeah,
25:09
Speaker 1: the constant complain about the recipes about free content, I
25:14
Speaker 1: get it. Things are annoying, ads are annoying. Conversations can
25:17
Speaker 1: be a little like long winded and annoying. But it's free. Yeah,
25:23
Speaker 1: and you don't have to use that, so sorry, it's
25:29
Speaker 1: so easy enough to just if you need to keep
25:34
Speaker 1: it in the screenshot. That's about everything to do, screenshot everything.
25:39
Speaker 1: It's a delightful thing. Um. But we didn't get into
25:42
Speaker 1: the narrative about the stealing of recipes, which has been
25:45
Speaker 1: a back and forth between a lot of authors and
25:49
Speaker 1: a lot of bloggers, because that happens a lot in
25:51
Speaker 1: this industry, especially if they're lesser known to the bigger
25:54
Speaker 1: influencers who should be called out. And so that's a
25:58
Speaker 1: whole other conversation we didn't get into. I'm sure we'll
26:01
Speaker 1: get into when we talk about video content and blog
26:03
Speaker 1: our ships and such, because we know what happens a lot. Okay,
26:21
Speaker 1: we're going down another world in blogs and I think
26:25
Speaker 1: any was so excited. Yes, yes, yes, which is fantic blogs.
26:31
Speaker 1: I feel like it's kind of meta. Is that not
26:32
Speaker 1: kind of meta? Is that kind of meta? And that
26:34
Speaker 1: you're talking about something that's talking about something? Oh yeah,
26:37
Speaker 1: And I have uh thought thoughts about that. And by
26:44
Speaker 1: the way, as we were researching trying to find different
26:47
Speaker 1: blogs as well as you know, which is dominated more
26:50
Speaker 1: about women, which isn't and fan fic did come up
26:53
Speaker 1: quite often, and there are many of fanfic blogs. They
26:57
Speaker 1: didn't tell me why, It just more told us who
27:01
Speaker 1: was out there where you should go to find those blogs.
27:04
Speaker 1: So just let you know. And yeah, again, there are
27:07
Speaker 1: plenty of blogs concerning your favorite fan fix and blogs
27:11
Speaker 1: to give you new fan fix you may have never
27:13
Speaker 1: heard about or not even seen yet. And I saw
27:17
Speaker 1: plenty on Archive of our Own, which is a oh
27:21
Speaker 1: three and he just had to tell me what that
27:23
Speaker 1: stood for. Um And there's a tons and apparently a
27:26
Speaker 1: lot of those have the slash yeah, which for those
27:31
Speaker 1: who don't know, if you somehow missed all the fan
27:33
Speaker 1: fiction talk I've done, is usually a two male characters
27:38
Speaker 1: romantically involved. However, I will say while the ones you
27:41
Speaker 1: hear about are usually they're highly sexual, ones, often they're
27:44
Speaker 1: not sexual. Usually there what's called curtain fix, which is
27:48
Speaker 1: just like domestic life, a slice of life. And yeah,
27:54
Speaker 1: many many of these blogs do you offer, like, yeah,
27:57
Speaker 1: all of your favorites under webesite, And we were looking
28:00
Speaker 1: some of the favorites which I have heard of these
28:02
Speaker 1: um here at the top three, there's Twisting the hell Mouth,
28:06
Speaker 1: which is a Buffy related fan fixed site. There's um
28:09
Speaker 1: fan fixed nets, which is they have potions, the stitches
28:12
Speaker 1: a Harry Potter one. I am very familiar with that one.
28:15
Speaker 1: And then yes AO three works tag Steve Rogers and
28:18
Speaker 1: Tony Stark. That's pretty obvious. So yeah, it's interesting because,
28:25
Speaker 1: as I talked about in the fan fiction episode, fan
28:27
Speaker 1: fiction is a very community driven space, and it's like
28:31
Speaker 1: it's kind of like blocking, like you write this thing,
28:34
Speaker 1: you write a chapter, and then people can comment on it,
28:37
Speaker 1: or in the case of AO three, they can leave kudos,
28:40
Speaker 1: which is just like hey, thumbs up, I liked that,
28:43
Speaker 1: and then from that people become they want to be
28:46
Speaker 1: even more fanish about their favorite fan fictions. So there
28:49
Speaker 1: are blogs that are spaces where the creators of the
28:53
Speaker 1: stories can design um artwork or chapter artwork, and they
28:58
Speaker 1: can like give users about like what's coming up in
29:02
Speaker 1: the next chapter, or use it as kind of like hey,
29:04
Speaker 1: the new chapters up, here's the snippet, here's a piece
29:06
Speaker 1: of art. And at the same time, fans who read
29:10
Speaker 1: this fan fiction and really love it, they might go
29:12
Speaker 1: to their blog and design like a piece of art
29:15
Speaker 1: or something for it, and then that gets shown in
29:18
Speaker 1: the fan fiction. Sometimes if the author finds it or
29:21
Speaker 1: sees it. But it's also used for something Samantha's heard
29:24
Speaker 1: me talk about. But I'm not sure you've ever really
29:26
Speaker 1: understood what I'm talking about. Which are challenges are prompts
29:31
Speaker 1: where somebody on a Tumbler or discord I see discord.
29:35
Speaker 1: A lot come up in this conversation will say like
29:38
Speaker 1: it's this is just the first example coming to mind
29:41
Speaker 1: kick week, and here it's like, I want a week
29:45
Speaker 1: of this type of like, well, they'll do sentences. You
29:48
Speaker 1: have to include the sentence, or they'll do like exchange
29:52
Speaker 1: weeks where different authors will exchange like stories for each other.
29:56
Speaker 1: Almost has gifts. But a lot of these like prompts
29:58
Speaker 1: come up in Humbler where authors are fans get together
30:03
Speaker 1: and they're like, you know what I really want to see.
30:04
Speaker 1: I want to see a lot of stories that are
30:06
Speaker 1: really sad about like Darth Vader being a terrible dad
30:09
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. Murder Dad, sad murder
30:12
Speaker 1: Dad as he's called, yes um. And that's a funny
30:14
Speaker 1: thing too about Aoh three. It's one of my favorite
30:17
Speaker 1: things is it has tags. So every story is tagged
30:20
Speaker 1: with like you know, the characters that are in it
30:22
Speaker 1: the genre, and then oftentimes they get really creative of
30:26
Speaker 1: like sad murder dad or whatever, so you know what's
30:28
Speaker 1: going to be in the story that you're reading. But
30:30
Speaker 1: they can get quite funny and long. But you'll see
30:33
Speaker 1: in there like the Dan Luke discord made me do it,
30:36
Speaker 1: or like the Tumbler made me do it um, so
30:39
Speaker 1: you'll know like, oh, this is a challenge or this
30:41
Speaker 1: is something that happened in that vanished space, which I
30:45
Speaker 1: really enjoy. I love that kind of community aspect of it,
30:48
Speaker 1: and of like everybody getting so excited and liking each
30:51
Speaker 1: other's work and kind of building each other up. And yes,
30:55
Speaker 1: many of these blogs have been used for educational purposes
30:58
Speaker 1: as well, because of course, who doesn't want to study
31:00
Speaker 1: about the Lord Rings fan fiction through blogs unless you
31:03
Speaker 1: know the best content out there. I've seen Busfeed to
31:05
Speaker 1: BuzzFeed has done list of like here twenty three fan
31:09
Speaker 1: fiction that are better than the original, which is really great,
31:13
Speaker 1: especially because there's so much content. Yes, yes, let me
31:17
Speaker 1: ask you, because you know I must ask as the
31:20
Speaker 1: all knowledgeable FANSI expert. Yes, Sminty, do you have favorite blogs?
31:26
Speaker 1: I don't. I wouldn't say I have favorite blogs. But
31:30
Speaker 1: I often at the bottom of of a fan fiction,
31:33
Speaker 1: at the end of a chapter, it'll be like, check
31:35
Speaker 1: out this person's work of this scene or go do this,
31:38
Speaker 1: and I will because that art can be amazing, and
31:40
Speaker 1: some people embed it in the fan fiction so you'll
31:42
Speaker 1: be reading it's like illustrated. I'm so excited to be
31:45
Speaker 1: talking about this right now. So right before when you
31:48
Speaker 1: asked me, you told me you're gonna ask. I looked
31:51
Speaker 1: at some stories that I know. I've included a lot
31:53
Speaker 1: of art that I really liked, and one is called
31:57
Speaker 1: Furio Sophie, So that's f you are I O S
32:00
Speaker 1: O P H I E dot Tumbler dot com. They've
32:03
Speaker 1: written a lot of stuff I love, and they've got
32:05
Speaker 1: a lot of artwork up. And then there's s A
32:07
Speaker 1: D B right, So that's s A D I E
32:10
Speaker 1: B W R I T E s dot Tumbler dot
32:14
Speaker 1: com and Tumbler if you don't know, is t U
32:16
Speaker 1: M B l r um. And they also have stories
32:19
Speaker 1: that they've written that I love, and illustrations and like teasers,
32:23
Speaker 1: and they'll do like funny gifts, which you are good.
32:26
Speaker 1: One of my favorite is like horny but terrified. You
32:29
Speaker 1: can look that up if you want, Okay, And that's
32:33
Speaker 1: that's funny too, is I was telling you right before
32:35
Speaker 1: when you ask his meta. There are stories that are
32:38
Speaker 1: what are essentially love letters to people on these tumblers,
32:43
Speaker 1: are the groups or communities on the tumbler or on
32:46
Speaker 1: discord or on Twitch or whatever. So there are stories
32:49
Speaker 1: that are like modern alternate universes that are about like, say,
32:55
Speaker 1: what if Luke found if he was a blogger and
32:58
Speaker 1: he met the Mandalorian that way, or what if they
33:02
Speaker 1: found fan fiction and then what happens. It's just but
33:05
Speaker 1: they're they're very like cute stories about kind of yeah,
33:09
Speaker 1: these love letters to the other fans, and there's one
33:11
Speaker 1: where they're both streamers and it's just really funny sweet.
33:16
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, very meta though very very meda. Okay, okay, yeah,
33:20
Speaker 1: I thought so. So I don't know, you don't have one,
33:22
Speaker 1: do you. I don't have one. No. I feel like
33:26
Speaker 1: I could really excel in this area, so you could too.
33:29
Speaker 1: I think you might need to, because I know you're
33:31
Speaker 1: always giving recommendations to friends and other people who are
33:34
Speaker 1: dabbling into the world of fan fiction. So I feel
33:37
Speaker 1: like you needed to A Beginner's blog, Beginner's guide blog
33:41
Speaker 1: for fan fiction. I think I could because I've got
33:44
Speaker 1: like my list of if I think you're interested in this,
33:46
Speaker 1: it's like separated out by categories, and then I'll have
33:49
Speaker 1: caveats of like this is one thing I love about
33:51
Speaker 1: fan Fixsue now is that has trigger warnings often and
33:53
Speaker 1: they're very specific and you press a button to skip
33:56
Speaker 1: to the end to see it. So if you don't
33:57
Speaker 1: want to be spoiled in any way, then you can
33:59
Speaker 1: do it that way. But I feel like I could
34:01
Speaker 1: really lay it out and uh, like do you want
34:04
Speaker 1: to go this way, if you want to go this way,
34:05
Speaker 1: if you want to go this way, and then I
34:06
Speaker 1: can like explain and have like an explainer of terminology
34:09
Speaker 1: and what you're looking for. I think we found your blog. Yes,
34:16
Speaker 1: I doubt you would know. I was happy. Yes, she
34:22
Speaker 1: went down happy it's coming back. And although fanfic blogs
34:28
Speaker 1: seems very much on the original track of what blogging
34:32
Speaker 1: was as in like the whole writing and that's said
34:35
Speaker 1: it's just for pure joy and for pure community, because
34:39
Speaker 1: we know overall the other types of blogging have changed,
34:42
Speaker 1: especially the ones that we've talked about, which now includes vlogging,
34:45
Speaker 1: social media influencers, and podcasters, and just like all things,
34:50
Speaker 1: it has changed substantially since its inception, and largely due
34:53
Speaker 1: to that dreaded word monetization. I mean again, I don't
34:57
Speaker 1: blame you, because you know I would love to make
35:00
Speaker 1: money that way. I guess I do make money that way.
35:02
Speaker 1: What And according to a blog post written by Rebecca
35:06
Speaker 1: Deeds on Medium, personal blogging is slowly dying out. So
35:10
Speaker 1: those days of being able to post about your daily
35:13
Speaker 1: journey or just thoughts are slowly dying out, in part
35:16
Speaker 1: to things like Twitter and TikTok, which allow for a
35:20
Speaker 1: condensed version of all of that. So you can just
35:22
Speaker 1: do three lines a d thirty words todays this instead
35:26
Speaker 1: of the the very much longer Uh well, tumblers are short.
35:31
Speaker 1: How long it can be, it can be pretty short.
35:33
Speaker 1: Does it allow for a larger posts? It does? I
35:36
Speaker 1: mean usually I feel in my experience though, it's like
35:39
Speaker 1: maybe three four paragraphs and then art. Okay, but I
35:44
Speaker 1: don't know much about tumbler. I never got into that route.
35:46
Speaker 1: How We'll say that. But also due to the level
35:49
Speaker 1: of successive blogs that pertain to lifestyle, which is dominated
35:52
Speaker 1: by mostly celebrity level of influencers, and even if they're
35:56
Speaker 1: not celebrities yet, they eventually become celebrities because of their
36:01
Speaker 1: lifestyle content. Yeah, and these is not the only one
36:05
Speaker 1: who has seen the signs of the end of the blog.
36:07
Speaker 1: But when you look at the numbers, it seems like
36:10
Speaker 1: it's not really going anywhere, um, just being used as
36:13
Speaker 1: part of like a multi level section of a larger brand.
36:16
Speaker 1: And I know that was a big push at our
36:17
Speaker 1: job for a while, Like you had to have a
36:18
Speaker 1: YouTube persons, you had to have a Tumbler presence, like
36:20
Speaker 1: you had to have a brand, and that meant being
36:23
Speaker 1: on all of these different platforms, right, which is shocking.
36:27
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can do that. Just being
36:28
Speaker 1: all these social media performs is hard. It's a lot
36:31
Speaker 1: of work. So Yeah, blogs typically no longer stand on
36:33
Speaker 1: their own, but have now become incorporated into everyday business
36:37
Speaker 1: sites as a way to increase sales or increase traffic
36:39
Speaker 1: to websites, and typically marketers reuse blogs to sell their
36:43
Speaker 1: products or get more interaction with them. And with the
36:46
Speaker 1: use of blogs for content marketing, many businesses prefer this
36:49
Speaker 1: method and use this method, and it seems to work.
36:51
Speaker 1: Seven out of ten customers preferred articles over ads, according
36:55
Speaker 1: to one study, and another study showed that over sixty
36:57
Speaker 1: percent of people think blogs add credibility your site. Yeah,
37:01
Speaker 1: I mean again, that's kind of why when we talk
37:04
Speaker 1: about recipe bloggers, why it's important that we allow them
37:07
Speaker 1: to tell the story and not only allow them, but
37:10
Speaker 1: you know, let them do their things. You don't have
37:12
Speaker 1: to read it, it just has to be there. Enjoy
37:15
Speaker 1: the recipe, Go make you some good potato soup. The
37:17
Speaker 1: potato soup. I can't the winner. But overall, blogging has
37:22
Speaker 1: not really gone anywhere. Just the importance of blogging again,
37:26
Speaker 1: it's become a bigger part of a brand um which
37:30
Speaker 1: is what we've heard a lot more of. And it
37:32
Speaker 1: seems so different to the wholesome zanga days of all
37:36
Speaker 1: for which I try to hide away. And again, as
37:45
Speaker 1: we continue to grow, especially when it comes to social
37:48
Speaker 1: media and how many different platforms have been developed since
37:52
Speaker 1: blog and blogging, it'll be interesting to see how much
37:57
Speaker 1: more people will have to do in being able to
38:00
Speaker 1: monetize in this type of industry, the lack of better terms,
38:05
Speaker 1: and whether or not it is feasible to keep up
38:08
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah. I mean that's a conversation that's been
38:12
Speaker 1: ongoing in the world of entertainment and media, and I
38:15
Speaker 1: do find it interesting because I feel like the reason
38:18
Speaker 1: people connect with a lot of blogs and blogs, our
38:23
Speaker 1: podcasts or or whatever it is is usually because there
38:26
Speaker 1: is um kind of that personal like I'm opening myself
38:29
Speaker 1: up to you, and you feel a connection to whoever
38:32
Speaker 1: is doing that. So like the fan fiction, like people
38:35
Speaker 1: are so excited that they've found someone else that connects
38:37
Speaker 1: and it makes you happy that you can bounce ideas
38:39
Speaker 1: off each other and make this stuff that you're unfortunately
38:44
Speaker 1: probably aren't going to get paid for unfortunately or unfortunately
38:47
Speaker 1: there's you know, pros and const to both in the
38:50
Speaker 1: case of like, this is something that I love and
38:52
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of doing it for for fun. But
38:55
Speaker 1: it is interesting to me that there's sort of that
38:58
Speaker 1: dichotomy of just give me the damn recipe versus I'm
39:04
Speaker 1: reading this because I want to connect with another person,
39:08
Speaker 1: and there's sort of this openness there. But yeah, yeah,
39:12
Speaker 1: that is that is interesting, and I'm excited to come
39:15
Speaker 1: back and and look at other other things like blogs
39:18
Speaker 1: and I'm you know, like things like discorded Twitch and
39:22
Speaker 1: just see see what's going on. What's going on there.
39:25
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, listeners. If you have a blog,
39:29
Speaker 1: if you have blog recommendations, we want them. You can
39:34
Speaker 1: emails at Stuff vidia Mom and Stuff That I Hurt
39:35
Speaker 1: Me dot com. You can find us on Twitter at
39:37
Speaker 1: Mom Stuff Podcast or on Instagram at Stuff I've Never
39:39
Speaker 1: Told You. Thanks as always to our super producer Christina. Christina,
39:43
Speaker 1: do you have a blog? It's like me to find
39:44
Speaker 1: her blog. I thought she has a blog. We must
39:47
Speaker 1: know more and thank you for listening Stuff I Never
39:51
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