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Tumbling Down the Women Blogosphere · Stuff Mom Never Told You

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