September 3, 2021 • 38 mins
Dear Internet, what's the history of women blogging? SMNTY unearths the history of blogging and shines a light on spaces women were and are dominating.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I don't recom to
stuff I've never told your protection of I Heart Radio.
So just so you know, this episode is inspired by
a recent friends Facebook status which alerted us to the
(00:28):
fact that our old Zinga sites and for those of
you who might not know, it was an online journal
blog site that I used in college and we're gonna
talk a little more about Zinga, but that it was
still available and possibly even getting an upgrade, which brought
on a bit of a panic attack thinking of all
the angst and feelings that was my freshman and sophomore
(00:49):
year of college that was plastered on the site. So, yeah,
that exists, but it seems my site may not exist,
so good and bad, I guess, which made me go
down a bit of a rabbit hole about blogging and
overall the history and how women used it and still
use it today. But honestly, I was kind of surprised
by some of what we found out when we started
(01:11):
researching this whole blogging world, even though it shouldn't have
been a surprise, but it kind of was. And I'm
not telling you my user name you search, it's not happening.
But Annie, I do have a question for you, because
out of all of the years and many times that
I've thought about, you know, doing a different job or
trying to find something new, or trying to find a job,
(01:33):
I was like always thinking, man, what is that one
thing that I could just make money off of? And
of course one of those things that came to view
was blogging. You can how you can make money in blogging?
And by the way, y'all, there are thousands, if not millions,
but definitely thousands of how to to start your own
blog and how to make money? By the way, did
(01:55):
you ever a have a blog that you thought, man,
I could make money off of this if only I
could monetize this, or have an idea that you didn't
do that you wish you had, What are you thinking
about it? I thought I have only posted in a
blog once, but I did feel that I had, which
(02:17):
feels kind of weird to say. But I thought I
was a decent writer and fairly charismatic and also very authentic,
like I was a very open person when I would write.
And I don't think I ever considered blogging as like
a source of money because I was always I was
very shy, but also my parents, like many parents, were
(02:39):
very I don't want to say logical, but they're like,
how can you make money off of this? And one
of the reasons I chose the career path or the
college path that I did because I wanted to be
a writer like a performer. But they were like, well,
so does most everybody, and only as certain amount of
people make it, so you're you should probably choose something
you have a better chance as exceeding. In that being said,
(03:02):
like when I got this job, which was like two thousand,
a lot of parts of the job did involve blogging
and editing and later videos, and it was something always
in the back of my head that I didn't really
seriously consider, but it was always sort of back there.
It's like, well, people are making money off of it,
and I feel like I could be decent enough at
(03:27):
this at writing things that I'm seeing on other blogs,
but I was too shy to do it, and definitely
way too shy to like speak up for myself or
ask for such an opportunity. And that's in fact, like
I would not be a host right now if someone
else hadn't asked me, which I isn't great, which isn't great.
As far as money making ideas that I haven't done,
(03:51):
I've I've had a couple of what I think are
genius ideas that people later did, and I'm sure I
was in the first person to think of it anyway,
But I think I could. I like to think I
could make money writing somehow, But I don't know. I
don't know. It is competitive fields, it is what about you.
Oh yeah, I had the genius idea because for a
(04:13):
little while I was on a hot streak of really
bad online blind dates. This has existed and it's gotten
bigger with the other platforms, but this was like two
thousand seven, so little early on. I really wish I
had done so and did a whole like take because
I'm not the best writer, but I am personable and funny,
(04:34):
so whenever I did have the online journals, I would
get compliments about the way I wrote things, and I
am a sarcastic individual that makes a lot of things.
Of course, it's probably good in some retrospect because I
wasn't so PC back then and there could be a
lot of things that could haunt me. Yeah, which is
a good reminder for those who are writing today. They
(04:55):
will haunt you yes, as my Zenger site has recently
done from me. So yeah, but we're not talking about
our own woes. We will, obviously because it's the thing
that we did, but we did want to dig into
some of what is blogging, what happened with blogging, how
affects women, doesn't affect women? I don't know, So to
(05:17):
start off, let's get into that history. Yes, so the
use of the word blog didn't actually get coined until
the nineties by Peter Merholtz, and the word was coined
officially in even though the actual practice of blogging may
have been around for a bit before then. But the
term that was used was not blogged. It was called
something else. And if you're curious, which I would be
(05:41):
really interested for listeners to write in if you have
no experience with this world and you don't know what
we're talking about. Okay, so here's our definition a coin
to word press at w P beginner dot com. A
blog is quote a type of website where the content
is presented in reverse chronological order. Newer content appears first.
Is often referred to as entries or blog post. Is
typically run by an individual or a small group of
(06:03):
people to present information in a conversational style and if
you don't know what wordpresses, it is one of the
larger platforms for blogs. And according to those who have
researched this, they state that Justin Hall, a student at
the time, was the first blogger and created the first
blog in nineteen four on links dot net. But it
(06:25):
wasn't necessarily called blog like we said until much later,
but the time was referenced as online journals, which and
I believe is what they called zinga for a while,
an online blog. It had all the little fun little decorations,
animations and music if you wanted to head floats oh yeah,
or personal pages again much kind of look about MySpace,
(06:47):
but not all the friends. Maybe I don't know. So
in nineteen seven we have what is called the web blog,
as in web blog, weblog, you get it, which was
coined by John Barger who created the Robot Wisdom blog.
And many of the original or first blogs were centered
around programming and gaming, but that did expand to journalism
(07:09):
or news and even to music, where people like Rose Marshak,
musician with Poster Child, was credited about having a blog
for keeping an online tourd journal in the mid nineties
or Jonathan Dube, who reported on Hurricane Bonnie for the
Charlotte Observer in And it was in that we saw
the beginning of a whole new platform on the interwews,
the blogging platform, beginning with open Diary, which allowed for
(07:32):
other people in the platform community to comment on other
people's writings. But yes, it burned so many others, and
soon there were three more that would follow, including my
beloved defunct Zenka. That is that's really trying to make
a comeback, y'all. They want, they need funding. Apparently it
was more social media friendly and more geared to being interactive.
(07:52):
For me, I only used a user name and didn't
attached my actual name and told the selective group of
friends to be a part of my community. So very selective.
But it wasn't just Zanga, but more size like live
journal and Blogger. And live Journal existed until the mid
two thousand's and apparently ended up being one of Russia's
primary social media platforms according to one site huh interesting.
(08:16):
As for Blogger, the site being a more commercial blogging service,
it was eventually purchased by a Google and like everything popular,
this began to be an avenue for some capital and
it became monetized with things like blog ads, which was
a cursor to Google ad Sense, and with people seeking
to become searchable and marketable by appearing on list and
available through search engines like the first blog search engine, Technoaty,
(08:42):
which was created in two thousand two, and I believe
still exists because I just found a list on their site.
So there you go. And of course many platforms still exists,
including WordPress, which is set up as a fully customized
size and easy to use for all. And I also
have one of those that I did for project with
domestic violence survivors, and it's really easy to use. Again,
(09:05):
they also have a beginner's guide if you need some assistance.
Also not a sponsor currently, but I think they have
sponsored other podcasts in our network in the past. But yes,
no sponsors currently. We're not special enough apparently. And many
of the professional levels of mediums have been born through blogging,
(09:25):
so much so that in two thousand five, blogger Garrett
Graff was invited to the White House and was the
first blogger to be invited. So there you go. And
sites like Huffington Posts and Medium are still in production
as sources and journalist Medium so we use them a
lot in referencing what's going on today. Right. But okay,
(09:46):
this leads to the question of who writes these blogs
and who reads these blogs now? And these numbers have
changed over time. At the beginning of blogging, it seemed
like men took the helm of most things related to
the Internet, and of course, um that has also fluctuated
over time. According to an article published by the Atlantic
in twent twelve, most social media related sites were more
(10:08):
likely to be used by women for things like blogging,
though overall women were more likely spend time on social
media than men. Women were online twenty four point eight
hours a month and men were on twenty two point
nine hours a month. But even in these reports there
were conflicts, As many said, um, though women may be
more likely to be on social media, men were also
(10:28):
just as likely, and some found even more so on
blogs or at least writing these blogs. Right. So, in
a article, fifty one percent of men reported reading blogs
more than once a day and forty three pc of
women would do the same, so more likely men would
get on once or twice three times. However, women were
more likely to subscribe to the blogs, so therefore would
(10:50):
be a little more committed and get them email to
them again. These numbers are constantly fluctuating, and some of
that maybe on how researchers are looking at the information. Uh.
Many of these may include the fact that there are
some added bloggers or video bloggers, which we need to
dig into later on. And some may exclude professional levels
of media like Huffington Posts and buzz Feed, which are
(11:11):
actual blogs, but they're kind of more seen as again professionals,
therefore not in the same context. But most of the
numbers show pretty similar results. When it comes to gender,
it's neutral. It's pretty much neutral. Uh. There is a
one point eight percent difference in who was blogging. Men
were at fifty point nine percent while women were at
forty nine point one percent as of going to one article,
(11:50):
and there are some other statistics around all of this.
As about seven point five million blog posts created daily.
At least fifty bloggers are between the ages of thirty five,
twenty percent of them are twenty or younger, nine are
between thirty six and fifty, and seven are fifty one
and older. People on the Internet actually read these millions
(12:11):
of blogs. Um. There are over six hundred million blogs
on the Internet. Today with Tumbler having the largest number
of users, which is four and eight eight point one
million blogs. And by the way, there were twenty three
blogs on the internet, so massive growth. Yes, yes, And
of course we have to talk about who's making this money,
(12:34):
who's making money, because again I see constant and I
have a feeling my ads are gonna be a lot
about how to monetize a blog or how to start
a blog because of this research that we've been doing. Womp.
Not surprisingly, blogging professional media's like the Huffington's Post make
a lot of the top dollars. The Huffington Post makes
(12:56):
an annual income of five hundred million dollars. As in fact,
what article said that they were worth a billion dollars?
So yeah, making that chatter cheese, I'm old, okay, But
in general, the regular schmos like myself typically don't make much,
if at all, as in fact, according to one study,
more than eight percent never make even one hundred dollars ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,
(13:23):
and only eight percent make enough money for this to
be their full time jobs. And to say I'm a
professional blogger, I guess it's the same way as as
saying I'm a professional podcaster really will um to me.
And to make it an even more sad reality, seventy
of the people in another survey stated they never make
any money at all, but there are a few that
(13:45):
are able to make it into this fierce competitive world
of blocking. With a recent blog listing one of the bloggers.
So within this blog listing other bloggers who earns a
million dollars per months through their blog post wow right,
and that same list showing the top twenty one bloggers
(14:07):
who are making top dollars, and several of these are
couples and or partners business partners, so you know, they
kind of make up the list that was twelve in
total I think, And then twenty one people in that list,
if that makes sense. And that same list that we
talked about with that guy, and it is a guy
who makes a million per month, they have the top
twenty one earners, and uh, there's in total about twenty
(14:30):
seven people in that list, and some of them are
partners sharing the same sites or sharing I guess, the
same revenue. Thirteen of those people were women, so seven
were women um and their blogs were mainly about finance,
fashion and style, several recipe and food and several mommy
blogs are mom blogs which still exists and are making
(14:52):
some money. And again, many of these bloggers, though considered
professional bloggers, are boosted by other forms of media, in
fluting things like social media such as Instagram or video
blogs better known as again vlogs, which is I still
have a hard time with that word, and yes again podcasting, yes,
and whenever we return for vlogs, yeah, I'll have a
(15:14):
lot to say about about that. But there are there
are similar numbers when it comes to money for vlogs.
Because I think stuff mom never told you YouTube channel
which had a lot of subscribers and you we generally
got like ten thousand plus views for video we made
like twenty bucks a year. Maybe maybe it's kind of insulting.
You get your like spreadsheet, it's it shows how many
(15:35):
downloads you have and it's like here's your Okay, thank you,
thanks so much. Yes, but okay, if we break down
women in the blogging world, yeah, we wanted to focus
on a few specific blogs that we typically see more
women being a part of, starting with the Mommy Blog.
And we're not going to go in depth on that
(15:55):
because past hosts already did an episode on it, but
we did to add some updated information to this conversation because,
not too surprisingly, after the surge of mom blogs, many
have tried to copy the likes of the larger blogs
that still exist today, but have been unsuccessful in monetizing,
which has led to another method of finding success, which
(16:16):
is to pay money for actual blogging courses and even
tools to try to make some money and to become
bigger than just bloggers but influencers. Right, and according to
the statistics that we talked about earlier, I think I
want to say at least six of people who were
blogging spend at least a hundred dollars in trying to
monetize themselves or to get themselves into that same playing field,
(16:39):
and for some it has worked. In a busfeed article
published in twenty nineteen, a blogger based out of Pakistan
invested twenty dollars to start her blogging career and has
been able to make enough money to stay at home
while her husband works. And though she is based in
in from Pakistan, the majority of her audience is from
the US, so she at the time, and like many
(17:01):
of the blogs is that exist. Money isn't made by
just the information that people are writing about, but a
brand they have created through these blogs. Just like it
was at the beginning, it still allows for a community
for light minded individuals who are living similar lifestyles. And
I think, as it's been said before, many of the
originators of mommy blogging, it was a community to be
(17:22):
open and honest in their struggles as well as their
success um. And you had a variety, uh, the upfront
honest tired moms, the Christian d I y moms, and
the moms who made it look really easy. Yeah it wasn't.
Glennon Doyle of Tamed. She had a presence like a
Christian mother block, I believe, and she was successful. She
(17:45):
was a writer. Yeah, you're right exactly. But all of
this soon came with the added bonus that the bloggers
may be offering something more to help all those out
in the world with products that can make life just
a little bit easier. And I've bet a lot of
us are familiar with this. For you're reading a tree um.
For me, it's a lot of time resciupe blocks, which
I know we're gonna talk about a minute, but and
you're like halfway through and then it's like and that's
(18:06):
why I like this product. Fairness. Yes, some of the
bigger bloggers and influencers have created their own products are
brands that are offered exclusively, such as binders, organizers, planners,
et cetera, which can lead to profits. Right, But with
the blogs changing over to being influencers, it does look
a bit differently today, as it stays in one New
(18:27):
York Times article quote, today's most popular representations of motherhood
aren't necessarily occurring on websites anymore, but rather through multi
platform personal brands, exemplified in the Los Angeles Coats Slacker
cohort of Busy Phillips, Kelly Oxford and Liz Carey. As
media producers, they work directly with brands in ways that
(18:48):
most consumers wouldn't even understand, going beyond sponsored content. They write,
they performed, they consult their ambassadors. There profane and genuinely
self deprecating, but glossy, are and more aspirational than mothers
have ever been. They look though the instudent, filtered anyway,
like beautiful linquid teenagers that are representations of motherhood are unsettling, hilarious,
(19:12):
and subversive in a way that is diametrically opposed to
the kind of subversion held that defined early mommy blogs.
And I think we can say that we've seen that
influence in everything we've We've changed from just being bloggers
or writers or bloggers to being ambassadors and influencers, as
(19:33):
we've talked about before. But I don't think that blogging
has gone anywhere. As we saw on the numbers, there
are millions of blog posts being released daily, yes and yeah,
we of course I couldn't talk about the world of
blogging without the ever controversial recipe blogs. And if you're
wondering why is this controversial? Between all the conversations of
(19:56):
cultural appropriation within the community, to accusations of stealing to
just outright people complaining, there has been a bit of
a stir in the food and culinary world when it
comes to this, and the blog world continues to be
impacted by that. So one of the biggest controversies is
complaints from many including celebrities who make their money by
spewing and sometimes nonsense monologues which often turned into books.
(20:18):
And yeah, which is kind of what I was talking
about earlier, is like a lot of times you just
are scrolling through this whole thing because you just want
to get the recipe at the bottom, right, right, another
way wrong? Yeah, I'm the same way, And I've been
one of those complaining trying to repeatedly scroll down because
I have to reread and reread and reread. You just
(20:39):
have to keep scrolling, keep scrolling to get to that recipe.
Bit to try out a new delicious dish. Yeah, I
made a delicious potato soup from one of these blogs.
It was delicious. But what we're actually doing is kind
of callously dismissing a person's work and sometimes the livelihood,
to the point that a mail driven company was I
(21:00):
to make money by taking recipes out of people's blogs,
creating their own site and claiming it even though it
shows where it comes from. So it's a whole day
I'm making money off of it, and everybody was pissed.
I think I've seen that too, where you're like, here's
the recipe for this, and you click on it and
it's just a link to something else. Yeah, and I'm like, okay, well,
(21:22):
I'm all about crediting people's work, but I'm not sure
how I ended up here first. Right. There are so
many things where they're like, hey, hey, uh, you're not Yeah,
you're making this more difficult and they're not getting the
views that they need to up their count. What are
you doing so yeah and uh. Some even talk about
how this could be a result of underlying sexism that
(21:46):
is often prevalent in home cooking. Writer Chloe Bryant wrote
immashable quote home cooking is still a deeply gendered pursuit
and writers whose work centers on home cooking are still
perceived as less professional, us valuable, and less worthy voices.
And according to a blogger from the same article, they said,
the feeling seems to be that they don't think these
(22:07):
writers have something of value to offer, and they aren't
the only ones. Many feel this conversation has a lot
to do with the same narrative we talked about in
our romance fiction episode, which is that when it comes
to women authors and writers, they are often dismissed and
not taken seriously. Yeah, and it goes into the same
sexist narrative of the whole shut up and cook thing,
(22:29):
which of course continues to push a misogynistic agenda. And
it doesn't consider the fact that many of those who
are posting these delicious free recipes are also trying to
make it in the world of monetized blogging something they
are actually putting work into. And again, this type of
blogging is typically dominated by women. There's also the argument
overall that when women right, is full of emotion and
(22:51):
even mysticism, while men are direct to the point, um,
just no frills about it. So rather than just skipping
or enjoying someone's tripped down memory lane, we can plain
and criticize the author for their free content, which they
are trying to up their chances of being seen by
putting in correct terms and words that can be found
by the all knowing, all powerful algorithm of Google and
(23:12):
other search engines. Right, And I think that's a whole
other conversation we need to have about how is the
algorithm working for against women in general when we see
things like this, as well as the fact that, yeah,
the constant complain about the recipes about free content, I
get it. Things are annoying, ads are annoying, conversations can
(23:33):
be a little like long winded and annoying. But it's free, yeah,
and you don't have to use that, so sorry, it's
not so easy enough to just if you need to
keep it in the screenshot. That's not everything to do
(23:53):
screenshot everything. It's a delightful thing. Um. But we didn't
get into the narrative about the stealing of recipes, which
has been a back and forth between a lot of
authors and a lot of bloggers, because that happens a
lot in this industry, especially if they're lesser known to
the bigger influencers who should be called out. And so
(24:13):
that's a whole other conversation we didn't get into. I'm
sure we'll get into when we talk about video content
and blog our ships and such, because we know what
it happens a lot. Okay, we're going down another world
(24:40):
in blogs. And I think any was so excited. Yes, yes, yes,
which is fansic blogs. I feel like it's kind of meta.
Is that not kind of meta? Is that kind of meta?
And that you're talking about something that's talking about something?
Oh yeah, and I have uh thought thoughts about that.
Which and by the way, as we were researching trying
(25:02):
to find different blogs as well as you know, which
is dominated more about women, which isn't, and fan fic
did come up quite often and there are many of
fan fic blogs. They didn't tell me why it just
more have told us who was out there where you
should go to find those blogs, So just that you know,
and yeah again there are plenty of blogs concerning your
(25:25):
favorite fan fix and blogs to give you new fan
fix you may have never heard about. We're not even
seen yet. And I saw plenty on archive of our own,
which is a oh three and he just had to
tell me what that stood for. Um and there's a
tons and apparently a lot of those have the slash
yeah okay, which for those who don't know, if you
(25:48):
somehow missed all the fan fiction talk I've done is
usually a two male characters romantically involved. However, I will
say while the ones you hear about are usually they're
highly sexual, ones, often they're not sexual. Usually there what's
called curtain fick, which is just like domestic life, a
slice of life. And yeah, many many of these blogs
(26:12):
do you offer, like yeah, all of your favorites under
one site. And we were looking at some of the
favorites which I have heard of these um here at
the top three, there's Twisting the hell Mouth, which is
a Buffy related fan fixed site. There's um fan fixed nets,
which is uh, they have potions that stitches a Harry
Potter one. I am very familiar with that one. And
then yes, AO three works tag Steve Rogers and Tony Stark.
(26:35):
That's pretty obvious. So yeah, it's interesting because, as I
talked about in the fan fiction episode, fan fiction is
a very community driven space, and it's like it's kind
of like blocking, like you write this thing, you write
a chapter, and then people can comment on it, or
in the case of AO three, they can leave kudos,
(26:56):
which is just like hey, thumbs up, I liked that,
and then from the people become they want to be
even more fanish about their favorite fan fictions. So there
are blogs that are spaces where the creators of the
stories can design um artwork or chapter artwork, and they
can like give teasers about like what's coming up in
(27:18):
the next chapter, or use it as kind of like hey,
the new chapters up. Here's the snippet, here's a piece
of art. And at the same time, fans who read
this fan fiction and really love it, they might go
to their blog and design like a piece of art
or something for it, and then that gets shown in
the fan fiction sometimes if the author finds it or
sees it. But it's also used for something Samantha's heard
(27:40):
me talk about, but I'm not sure you've ever really
understood what I'm talking about. Which are challenges are prompts
where somebody on a Tumbler or discord I see discord
a lot come up in this conversation will say like
it's this is just the first example coming to mind.
Keep cleek, and here's like, I want a week of
(28:02):
this type of like, well, they'll do sentences, you have
to include the sentence, or they'll do like exchange weeks
where different authors will exchange like stories for each other.
Almost has gifts. But a lot of these like prompts
come up in tumbler where authors or fans get together
and they're like, you know what I really want to see.
I want to see a lot of stories that are
really sad about like Darth Vader being a terrible dad
(28:25):
and all that kind of stuff. Murder Dad, sad murder
Dad as he's called, yes um. And that's a funny
thing too about A oh three. One of my favorite
things is it has tags. So every story is tagged
with like you know, the characters that are in it,
the genre, and then oftentimes they get really creative of
like sad murder dad or whatever, so you know what's
going to be in the story that you're reading. But
(28:46):
they can get quite funny and long. But you'll see
in there like the Dan Luke discord made me do it,
or like the Tumbler made me do it um, so
you'll know like, oh, this is a challenge or this
is something that happened in that vanished spit, which I
really enjoy. I love that kind of community aspect of it,
and of like everybody getting so excited and liking each
(29:07):
other's work and kind of building each other up. And yes,
many of these blogs have been used for educational purposes
as well, because of course, who doesn't want to study
about the North Rings fan fiction through blogs unless you
know the best content out there. I've seen busfeed to
Busfeed has done list of like here twenty three fan
fiction that are better than the original, which is really great,
(29:29):
especially because there's so much content. Yes, yes, let me
ask you, because you know I must ask as the
all knowledgeable fan fic expert. Yes, Sminty, do you have
favorite blogs? I don't. I wouldn't say I have favorite blogs,
but I often at the bottom of of a fan
fiction at the end of a chapter, it'll be like,
(29:51):
check out this person's work of this scene or go
do this, and I will because that art can be amazing,
and some people embed it in the fan fiction, so
you'll be reading it's like straighted. I'm so excited to
be talking about this right now. So right before when
you asked me, you told me we're going to ask.
I looked at some stories that I know. I've included
a lot of art that I really liked, and one
(30:12):
is called Furio Sophie. So that's f U r I
O S O p h I E dot Tumbler dot com.
They've written a lot of stuff I love, and they've
got a lot of art work up. And then there's
s A d B right, So that's s A d
I E B w r I t E s dot
Tumbler dot com and Tumbler if you don't know, is
t U M B l r um. And they also
(30:34):
have stories that they've written that I love, and illustrations
and like teasers, and they'll do you like funny gifts,
which are good. One of my favorite is like horny
but terrified. You can look that up if you want.
But okay, and that's that's funny too, is I was
telling you right before when you ask is meta. There
are stories that are what are essentially love letters to
(30:57):
people on these tumblers are the groups or communities and
tumbler or on discord or on Twitch or whatever. So
there are stories that are like modern alternate universes that
are about like, say, what if Luke found if he
was a blogger and he met the Mandalorian that way,
or what if they found fan fiction and then what happens?
(31:21):
But they're they're very like cute stories about kind of yeah,
these love letters to the other fans, and there's one
where they're both streamers and it's just really funny sweet.
Uh yeah, very meda though very very meda. Okay, okay, yeah,
I thought so. So I don't know. You don't have one,
do you. I don't have one. No. I feel like
(31:42):
I could really excel in this area. What you could do?
I think you might need to because I know you're
always giving recommendations to friends and other people who are
dabbling into the world of fan fiction. So I feel
like you needed a beginner's blog of beginner's guide blog
for fan fiction. I think I could because I've got
like my list of if I think you're interested in this,
(32:02):
it's like separated out by categories, and then I'll have
caveats of like this is one thing I love about
Fan Issue now is that has trigger warnings often and
they're very specific and you press a button to skip
to the end to see it. So if you don't
want to be spoiled in any way, then you can
do it that way. But I feel like I could
really lay it out and uh, I like, if you
want to go this way, if you want to go
this way, if you want to go this way, and
then I can like explain, have like an explainer of
(32:24):
terminology and what you're looking for. I think we found
your blog. Yes you never see me again, I doubt
you would know. I was happy. Yes she went down
happy it's coming back. And although fansiic blogs seems very
(32:45):
much on the original track of what blogging was, as
in like the whole writing and that's it. It's just
for pure joy and for pure community, because we know
overall the other types of blogging have changed, especially the
ones that we've talked about now includes vlogging, social media influencers,
and podcasters, and just like all things. It has changed
(33:06):
substantially since its inception, and largely due to that dreaded
word monetization. I mean again, I don't blame you, because
you know I would love to make money that way.
I guess I do make money that way. What And
according to a blog post written by Rebecca Deeds on Medium,
personal blogging is slowly dying out. So those days of
(33:27):
being able to post about your daily journey or just
thoughts are slowly dying out, in part to things like
Twitter and TikTok, which allow for a condensed version of
all of that, so you can just do three lines
a d thirty words to days this instead of the
the very much longer Uh well, tumblers are short. How
(33:47):
long of it can be? It can be pretty shut.
Does it allow for larger posts? It does? I mean
usually I feel in my experience though, it's like maybe
three four paragraphs and then art. Okay, But I don't
know much about tumbler. I never got into that route,
I will say that. But also due to the level
of successive blogs that pertain to lifestyle, which is dominated
(34:08):
by mostly celebrity level of influencers, and even if they're
not celebrities yet they eventually become celebrities because of their
lifestyle content. Yeah, and Deets is not the only one
who has seen the signs at the end of the blog.
But when you look at the numbers, it seems like
it's not really going anywhere, um, just being used as
(34:29):
part of like a multi level section of a larger brand.
And I know that was a big push at our
job for a while, like you had to have a
YouTube persons, you had to have a Tumbler presence, like
you had to have a brand, and that meant being
on all of these different platforms, right, which is shocking.
I don't know if I can do that just being
on these social media performs. It's a lot of work.
So Yeah, blogs typically no longer stand on their own,
(34:50):
but have now become incorporated into everyday business sites as
a way to increase sales or increase traffic to websites,
and typically marketers reuse blogs to sell their products or
get interaction with them. And with the use of blogs
for content marketing, many businesses prefer this method and use
this method and it seems to work. Seven out of
ten customers preferred articles over ads, according to one study,
(35:11):
and another study showed that over sixty percent of people
think blogs add credibility to a site. Yeah, I mean again,
that's kind of why when we talk about recipe bloggers,
why it's important that we allow them to tell the
story and not only allow them, but you know, let
them do their things. You don't have to read it.
It just has to be there, enjoy the recipe, Go
(35:31):
make you some good potato soup. Potato soup. I can't
a winner. But overall, blogging has not really gone anywhere.
Just the importance of blogging again, it's become a bigger
part of a brand um, which is what we've heard
a lot more of. And it seems so different to
the wholesome zanga days of all for me, which I
(35:54):
try to hide away. I want to know again, as
we continue to grow, especially when it comes to social
media and how many different platforms have been developed since
blog and blogging, it'll be interesting to see how much
more people will have to do in a being able
(36:16):
to monetize in this type of industry, the lack of
better terms, and whether or not it is feasible to
keep up with it. Yeah, I mean, that's a conversation
that's been ongoing in the world of entertainment and media,
and I do find it interesting because I feel like
the reason people connect with a lot of blogs and blogs,
(36:39):
our podcasts or or whatever it is is usually because
there is um kind of that personal like I'm opening
myself up to you when you feel like connection to
whoever is doing that. So like the fan fiction, like
people are so excited that they found someone else that
connects and it makes you happy that you can bounce
ideas off each other and make this stuff that you're
(36:59):
unfortunately probably aren't going to get paid for unfortunately, we're
unfortunately there's you know, pros and cons to both in
the case of like, this is something that I love
and I'm just kind of doing it for for fun.
But it is interesting to me that there's sort of
that dichotomy of just give me the damn recipe versus
(37:20):
I'm reading this because I want to connect with another person,
and there's sort of this openness there. But yeah, yeah,
that is It is interesting, and I'm excited to come
back and and look at other other things like blogs
and I'm you know, like things like discorded Twitch and
just see see what's going on, what's going on there
(37:41):
but in the meantime, listeners, If you have a blog,
if you have blog recommendations, we want them. You can
emails at Stuff with your Mom and Stuff That I
Hurt Me dot com. You can find us on Twitter
at Mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram and Stuff I've
Never Told You. Thanks as always too, are super producer Christina. Christina,
do you have a blog? It feel like we need
to find her blog. I thought she has a blog.
(38:02):
We must know And thanks to you for listening Stuff
I Never Told You. Subjection of I Heart Radio for
more podcasts on I Hear Radio, is h Radio, app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I don't recom to
stuff I've never told your protection of I Heart Radio.
So just so you know, this episode is inspired by
a recent friends Facebook status which alerted us to the
(00:28):
fact that our old Zinga sites and for those of
you who might not know, it was an online journal
blog site that I used in college and we're gonna
talk a little more about Zinga, but that it was
still available and possibly even getting an upgrade, which brought
on a bit of a panic attack thinking of all
the angst and feelings that was my freshman and sophomore
(00:49):
year of college that was plastered on the site. So, yeah,
that exists, but it seems my site may not exist,
so good and bad, I guess, which made me go
down a bit of a rabbit hole about blogging and
overall the history and how women used it and still
use it today. But honestly, I was kind of surprised
by some of what we found out when we started
(01:11):
researching this whole blogging world, even though it shouldn't have
been a surprise, but it kind of was. And I'm
not telling you my user name you search, it's not happening.
But Annie, I do have a question for you, because
out of all of the years and many times that
I've thought about, you know, doing a different job or
trying to find something new, or trying to find a job,
(01:33):
I was like always thinking, man, what is that one
thing that I could just make money off of? And
of course one of those things that came to view
was blogging. You can how you can make money in blogging?
And by the way, y'all, there are thousands, if not millions,
but definitely thousands of how to to start your own
blog and how to make money? By the way, did
(01:55):
you ever a have a blog that you thought, man,
I could make money off of this if only I
could monetize this, or have an idea that you didn't
do that you wish you had, What are you thinking
about it? I thought I have only posted in a
blog once, but I did feel that I had, which
(02:17):
feels kind of weird to say. But I thought I
was a decent writer and fairly charismatic and also very authentic,
like I was a very open person when I would write.
And I don't think I ever considered blogging as like
a source of money because I was always I was
very shy, but also my parents, like many parents, were
(02:39):
very I don't want to say logical, but they're like,
how can you make money off of this? And one
of the reasons I chose the career path or the
college path that I did because I wanted to be
a writer like a performer. But they were like, well,
so does most everybody, and only as certain amount of
people make it, so you're you should probably choose something
you have a better chance as exceeding. In that being said,
(03:02):
like when I got this job, which was like two thousand,
a lot of parts of the job did involve blogging
and editing and later videos, and it was something always
in the back of my head that I didn't really
seriously consider, but it was always sort of back there.
It's like, well, people are making money off of it,
and I feel like I could be decent enough at
(03:27):
this at writing things that I'm seeing on other blogs,
but I was too shy to do it, and definitely
way too shy to like speak up for myself or
ask for such an opportunity. And that's in fact, like
I would not be a host right now if someone
else hadn't asked me, which I isn't great, which isn't great.
As far as money making ideas that I haven't done,
(03:51):
I've I've had a couple of what I think are
genius ideas that people later did, and I'm sure I
was in the first person to think of it anyway,
But I think I could. I like to think I
could make money writing somehow, But I don't know. I
don't know. It is competitive fields, it is what about you.
Oh yeah, I had the genius idea because for a
(04:13):
little while I was on a hot streak of really
bad online blind dates. This has existed and it's gotten
bigger with the other platforms, but this was like two
thousand seven, so little early on. I really wish I
had done so and did a whole like take because
I'm not the best writer, but I am personable and funny,
(04:34):
so whenever I did have the online journals, I would
get compliments about the way I wrote things, and I
am a sarcastic individual that makes a lot of things.
Of course, it's probably good in some retrospect because I
wasn't so PC back then and there could be a
lot of things that could haunt me. Yeah, which is
a good reminder for those who are writing today. They
(04:55):
will haunt you yes, as my Zenger site has recently
done from me. So yeah, but we're not talking about
our own woes. We will, obviously because it's the thing
that we did, but we did want to dig into
some of what is blogging, what happened with blogging, how
affects women, doesn't affect women? I don't know, So to
(05:17):
start off, let's get into that history. Yes, so the
use of the word blog didn't actually get coined until
the nineties by Peter Merholtz, and the word was coined
officially in even though the actual practice of blogging may
have been around for a bit before then. But the
term that was used was not blogged. It was called
something else. And if you're curious, which I would be
(05:41):
really interested for listeners to write in if you have
no experience with this world and you don't know what
we're talking about. Okay, so here's our definition a coin
to word press at w P beginner dot com. A
blog is quote a type of website where the content
is presented in reverse chronological order. Newer content appears first.
Is often referred to as entries or blog post. Is
typically run by an individual or a small group of
(06:03):
people to present information in a conversational style and if
you don't know what wordpresses, it is one of the
larger platforms for blogs. And according to those who have
researched this, they state that Justin Hall, a student at
the time, was the first blogger and created the first
blog in nineteen four on links dot net. But it
(06:25):
wasn't necessarily called blog like we said until much later,
but the time was referenced as online journals, which and
I believe is what they called zinga for a while,
an online blog. It had all the little fun little decorations,
animations and music if you wanted to head floats oh yeah,
or personal pages again much kind of look about MySpace,
(06:47):
but not all the friends. Maybe I don't know. So
in nineteen seven we have what is called the web blog,
as in web blog, weblog, you get it, which was
coined by John Barger who created the Robot Wisdom blog.
And many of the original or first blogs were centered
around programming and gaming, but that did expand to journalism
(07:09):
or news and even to music, where people like Rose Marshak,
musician with Poster Child, was credited about having a blog
for keeping an online tourd journal in the mid nineties
or Jonathan Dube, who reported on Hurricane Bonnie for the
Charlotte Observer in And it was in that we saw
the beginning of a whole new platform on the interwews,
the blogging platform, beginning with open Diary, which allowed for
(07:32):
other people in the platform community to comment on other
people's writings. But yes, it burned so many others, and
soon there were three more that would follow, including my
beloved defunct Zenka. That is that's really trying to make
a comeback, y'all. They want, they need funding. Apparently it
was more social media friendly and more geared to being interactive.
(07:52):
For me, I only used a user name and didn't
attached my actual name and told the selective group of
friends to be a part of my community. So very selective.
But it wasn't just Zanga, but more size like live
journal and Blogger. And live Journal existed until the mid
two thousand's and apparently ended up being one of Russia's
primary social media platforms according to one site huh interesting.
(08:16):
As for Blogger, the site being a more commercial blogging service,
it was eventually purchased by a Google and like everything popular,
this began to be an avenue for some capital and
it became monetized with things like blog ads, which was
a cursor to Google ad Sense, and with people seeking
to become searchable and marketable by appearing on list and
available through search engines like the first blog search engine, Technoaty,
(08:42):
which was created in two thousand two, and I believe
still exists because I just found a list on their site.
So there you go. And of course many platforms still exists,
including WordPress, which is set up as a fully customized
size and easy to use for all. And I also
have one of those that I did for project with
domestic violence survivors, and it's really easy to use. Again,
(09:05):
they also have a beginner's guide if you need some assistance.
Also not a sponsor currently, but I think they have
sponsored other podcasts in our network in the past. But yes,
no sponsors currently. We're not special enough apparently. And many
of the professional levels of mediums have been born through blogging,
(09:25):
so much so that in two thousand five, blogger Garrett
Graff was invited to the White House and was the
first blogger to be invited. So there you go. And
sites like Huffington Posts and Medium are still in production
as sources and journalist Medium so we use them a
lot in referencing what's going on today. Right. But okay,
(09:46):
this leads to the question of who writes these blogs
and who reads these blogs now? And these numbers have
changed over time. At the beginning of blogging, it seemed
like men took the helm of most things related to
the Internet, and of course, um that has also fluctuated
over time. According to an article published by the Atlantic
in twent twelve, most social media related sites were more
(10:08):
likely to be used by women for things like blogging,
though overall women were more likely spend time on social
media than men. Women were online twenty four point eight
hours a month and men were on twenty two point
nine hours a month. But even in these reports there
were conflicts, As many said, um, though women may be
more likely to be on social media, men were also
(10:28):
just as likely, and some found even more so on
blogs or at least writing these blogs. Right. So, in
a article, fifty one percent of men reported reading blogs
more than once a day and forty three pc of
women would do the same, so more likely men would
get on once or twice three times. However, women were
more likely to subscribe to the blogs, so therefore would
(10:50):
be a little more committed and get them email to
them again. These numbers are constantly fluctuating, and some of
that maybe on how researchers are looking at the information. Uh.
Many of these may include the fact that there are
some added bloggers or video bloggers, which we need to
dig into later on. And some may exclude professional levels
of media like Huffington Posts and buzz Feed, which are
(11:11):
actual blogs, but they're kind of more seen as again professionals,
therefore not in the same context. But most of the
numbers show pretty similar results. When it comes to gender,
it's neutral. It's pretty much neutral. Uh. There is a
one point eight percent difference in who was blogging. Men
were at fifty point nine percent while women were at
forty nine point one percent as of going to one article,
(11:50):
and there are some other statistics around all of this.
As about seven point five million blog posts created daily.
At least fifty bloggers are between the ages of thirty five,
twenty percent of them are twenty or younger, nine are
between thirty six and fifty, and seven are fifty one
and older. People on the Internet actually read these millions
(12:11):
of blogs. Um. There are over six hundred million blogs
on the Internet. Today with Tumbler having the largest number
of users, which is four and eight eight point one
million blogs. And by the way, there were twenty three
blogs on the internet, so massive growth. Yes, yes, And
of course we have to talk about who's making this money,
(12:34):
who's making money, because again I see constant and I
have a feeling my ads are gonna be a lot
about how to monetize a blog or how to start
a blog because of this research that we've been doing. Womp.
Not surprisingly, blogging professional media's like the Huffington's Post make
a lot of the top dollars. The Huffington Post makes
(12:56):
an annual income of five hundred million dollars. As in fact,
what article said that they were worth a billion dollars?
So yeah, making that chatter cheese, I'm old, okay, But
in general, the regular schmos like myself typically don't make much,
if at all, as in fact, according to one study,
more than eight percent never make even one hundred dollars ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,
(13:23):
and only eight percent make enough money for this to
be their full time jobs. And to say I'm a
professional blogger, I guess it's the same way as as
saying I'm a professional podcaster really will um to me.
And to make it an even more sad reality, seventy
of the people in another survey stated they never make
any money at all, but there are a few that
(13:45):
are able to make it into this fierce competitive world
of blocking. With a recent blog listing one of the bloggers.
So within this blog listing other bloggers who earns a
million dollars per months through their blog post wow right,
and that same list showing the top twenty one bloggers
(14:07):
who are making top dollars, and several of these are
couples and or partners business partners, so you know, they
kind of make up the list that was twelve in
total I think, And then twenty one people in that list,
if that makes sense. And that same list that we
talked about with that guy, and it is a guy
who makes a million per month, they have the top
twenty one earners, and uh, there's in total about twenty
(14:30):
seven people in that list, and some of them are
partners sharing the same sites or sharing I guess, the
same revenue. Thirteen of those people were women, so seven
were women um and their blogs were mainly about finance,
fashion and style, several recipe and food and several mommy
blogs are mom blogs which still exists and are making
(14:52):
some money. And again, many of these bloggers, though considered
professional bloggers, are boosted by other forms of media, in
fluting things like social media such as Instagram or video
blogs better known as again vlogs, which is I still
have a hard time with that word, and yes again podcasting, yes,
and whenever we return for vlogs, yeah, I'll have a
(15:14):
lot to say about about that. But there are there
are similar numbers when it comes to money for vlogs.
Because I think stuff mom never told you YouTube channel
which had a lot of subscribers and you we generally
got like ten thousand plus views for video we made
like twenty bucks a year. Maybe maybe it's kind of insulting.
You get your like spreadsheet, it's it shows how many
(15:35):
downloads you have and it's like here's your Okay, thank you,
thanks so much. Yes, but okay, if we break down
women in the blogging world, yeah, we wanted to focus
on a few specific blogs that we typically see more
women being a part of, starting with the Mommy Blog.
And we're not going to go in depth on that
(15:55):
because past hosts already did an episode on it, but
we did to add some updated information to this conversation because,
not too surprisingly, after the surge of mom blogs, many
have tried to copy the likes of the larger blogs
that still exist today, but have been unsuccessful in monetizing,
which has led to another method of finding success, which
(16:16):
is to pay money for actual blogging courses and even
tools to try to make some money and to become
bigger than just bloggers but influencers. Right, and according to
the statistics that we talked about earlier, I think I
want to say at least six of people who were
blogging spend at least a hundred dollars in trying to
monetize themselves or to get themselves into that same playing field,
(16:39):
and for some it has worked. In a busfeed article
published in twenty nineteen, a blogger based out of Pakistan
invested twenty dollars to start her blogging career and has
been able to make enough money to stay at home
while her husband works. And though she is based in
in from Pakistan, the majority of her audience is from
the US, so she at the time, and like many
(17:01):
of the blogs is that exist. Money isn't made by
just the information that people are writing about, but a
brand they have created through these blogs. Just like it
was at the beginning, it still allows for a community
for light minded individuals who are living similar lifestyles. And
I think, as it's been said before, many of the
originators of mommy blogging, it was a community to be
(17:22):
open and honest in their struggles as well as their
success um. And you had a variety, uh, the upfront
honest tired moms, the Christian d I y moms, and
the moms who made it look really easy. Yeah it wasn't.
Glennon Doyle of Tamed. She had a presence like a
Christian mother block, I believe, and she was successful. She
(17:45):
was a writer. Yeah, you're right exactly. But all of
this soon came with the added bonus that the bloggers
may be offering something more to help all those out
in the world with products that can make life just
a little bit easier. And I've bet a lot of
us are familiar with this. For you're reading a tree um.
For me, it's a lot of time resciupe blocks, which
I know we're gonna talk about a minute, but and
you're like halfway through and then it's like and that's
(18:06):
why I like this product. Fairness. Yes, some of the
bigger bloggers and influencers have created their own products are
brands that are offered exclusively, such as binders, organizers, planners,
et cetera, which can lead to profits. Right, But with
the blogs changing over to being influencers, it does look
a bit differently today, as it stays in one New
(18:27):
York Times article quote, today's most popular representations of motherhood
aren't necessarily occurring on websites anymore, but rather through multi
platform personal brands, exemplified in the Los Angeles Coats Slacker
cohort of Busy Phillips, Kelly Oxford and Liz Carey. As
media producers, they work directly with brands in ways that
(18:48):
most consumers wouldn't even understand, going beyond sponsored content. They write,
they performed, they consult their ambassadors. There profane and genuinely
self deprecating, but glossy, are and more aspirational than mothers
have ever been. They look though the instudent, filtered anyway,
like beautiful linquid teenagers that are representations of motherhood are unsettling, hilarious,
(19:12):
and subversive in a way that is diametrically opposed to
the kind of subversion held that defined early mommy blogs.
And I think we can say that we've seen that
influence in everything we've We've changed from just being bloggers
or writers or bloggers to being ambassadors and influencers, as
(19:33):
we've talked about before. But I don't think that blogging
has gone anywhere. As we saw on the numbers, there
are millions of blog posts being released daily, yes and yeah,
we of course I couldn't talk about the world of
blogging without the ever controversial recipe blogs. And if you're
wondering why is this controversial? Between all the conversations of
(19:56):
cultural appropriation within the community, to accusations of stealing to
just outright people complaining, there has been a bit of
a stir in the food and culinary world when it
comes to this, and the blog world continues to be
impacted by that. So one of the biggest controversies is
complaints from many including celebrities who make their money by
spewing and sometimes nonsense monologues which often turned into books.
(20:18):
And yeah, which is kind of what I was talking
about earlier, is like a lot of times you just
are scrolling through this whole thing because you just want
to get the recipe at the bottom, right, right, another
way wrong? Yeah, I'm the same way, And I've been
one of those complaining trying to repeatedly scroll down because
I have to reread and reread and reread. You just
(20:39):
have to keep scrolling, keep scrolling to get to that recipe.
Bit to try out a new delicious dish. Yeah, I
made a delicious potato soup from one of these blogs.
It was delicious. But what we're actually doing is kind
of callously dismissing a person's work and sometimes the livelihood,
to the point that a mail driven company was I
(21:00):
to make money by taking recipes out of people's blogs,
creating their own site and claiming it even though it
shows where it comes from. So it's a whole day
I'm making money off of it, and everybody was pissed.
I think I've seen that too, where you're like, here's
the recipe for this, and you click on it and
it's just a link to something else. Yeah, and I'm like, okay, well,
(21:22):
I'm all about crediting people's work, but I'm not sure
how I ended up here first. Right. There are so
many things where they're like, hey, hey, uh, you're not Yeah,
you're making this more difficult and they're not getting the
views that they need to up their count. What are
you doing so yeah and uh. Some even talk about
how this could be a result of underlying sexism that
(21:46):
is often prevalent in home cooking. Writer Chloe Bryant wrote
immashable quote home cooking is still a deeply gendered pursuit
and writers whose work centers on home cooking are still
perceived as less professional, us valuable, and less worthy voices.
And according to a blogger from the same article, they said,
the feeling seems to be that they don't think these
(22:07):
writers have something of value to offer, and they aren't
the only ones. Many feel this conversation has a lot
to do with the same narrative we talked about in
our romance fiction episode, which is that when it comes
to women authors and writers, they are often dismissed and
not taken seriously. Yeah, and it goes into the same
sexist narrative of the whole shut up and cook thing,
(22:29):
which of course continues to push a misogynistic agenda. And
it doesn't consider the fact that many of those who
are posting these delicious free recipes are also trying to
make it in the world of monetized blogging something they
are actually putting work into. And again, this type of
blogging is typically dominated by women. There's also the argument
overall that when women right, is full of emotion and
(22:51):
even mysticism, while men are direct to the point, um,
just no frills about it. So rather than just skipping
or enjoying someone's tripped down memory lane, we can plain
and criticize the author for their free content, which they
are trying to up their chances of being seen by
putting in correct terms and words that can be found
by the all knowing, all powerful algorithm of Google and
(23:12):
other search engines. Right, And I think that's a whole
other conversation we need to have about how is the
algorithm working for against women in general when we see
things like this, as well as the fact that, yeah,
the constant complain about the recipes about free content, I
get it. Things are annoying, ads are annoying, conversations can
(23:33):
be a little like long winded and annoying. But it's free, yeah,
and you don't have to use that, so sorry, it's
not so easy enough to just if you need to
keep it in the screenshot. That's not everything to do
(23:53):
screenshot everything. It's a delightful thing. Um. But we didn't
get into the narrative about the stealing of recipes, which
has been a back and forth between a lot of
authors and a lot of bloggers, because that happens a
lot in this industry, especially if they're lesser known to
the bigger influencers who should be called out. And so
(24:13):
that's a whole other conversation we didn't get into. I'm
sure we'll get into when we talk about video content
and blog our ships and such, because we know what
it happens a lot. Okay, we're going down another world
(24:40):
in blogs. And I think any was so excited. Yes, yes, yes,
which is fansic blogs. I feel like it's kind of meta.
Is that not kind of meta? Is that kind of meta?
And that you're talking about something that's talking about something?
Oh yeah, and I have uh thought thoughts about that.
Which and by the way, as we were researching trying
(25:02):
to find different blogs as well as you know, which
is dominated more about women, which isn't, and fan fic
did come up quite often and there are many of
fan fic blogs. They didn't tell me why it just
more have told us who was out there where you
should go to find those blogs, So just that you know,
and yeah again there are plenty of blogs concerning your
(25:25):
favorite fan fix and blogs to give you new fan
fix you may have never heard about. We're not even
seen yet. And I saw plenty on archive of our own,
which is a oh three and he just had to
tell me what that stood for. Um and there's a
tons and apparently a lot of those have the slash
yeah okay, which for those who don't know, if you
(25:48):
somehow missed all the fan fiction talk I've done is
usually a two male characters romantically involved. However, I will
say while the ones you hear about are usually they're
highly sexual, ones, often they're not sexual. Usually there what's
called curtain fick, which is just like domestic life, a
slice of life. And yeah, many many of these blogs
(26:12):
do you offer, like yeah, all of your favorites under
one site. And we were looking at some of the
favorites which I have heard of these um here at
the top three, there's Twisting the hell Mouth, which is
a Buffy related fan fixed site. There's um fan fixed nets,
which is uh, they have potions that stitches a Harry
Potter one. I am very familiar with that one. And
then yes, AO three works tag Steve Rogers and Tony Stark.
(26:35):
That's pretty obvious. So yeah, it's interesting because, as I
talked about in the fan fiction episode, fan fiction is
a very community driven space, and it's like it's kind
of like blocking, like you write this thing, you write
a chapter, and then people can comment on it, or
in the case of AO three, they can leave kudos,
(26:56):
which is just like hey, thumbs up, I liked that,
and then from the people become they want to be
even more fanish about their favorite fan fictions. So there
are blogs that are spaces where the creators of the
stories can design um artwork or chapter artwork, and they
can like give teasers about like what's coming up in
(27:18):
the next chapter, or use it as kind of like hey,
the new chapters up. Here's the snippet, here's a piece
of art. And at the same time, fans who read
this fan fiction and really love it, they might go
to their blog and design like a piece of art
or something for it, and then that gets shown in
the fan fiction sometimes if the author finds it or
sees it. But it's also used for something Samantha's heard
(27:40):
me talk about, but I'm not sure you've ever really
understood what I'm talking about. Which are challenges are prompts
where somebody on a Tumbler or discord I see discord
a lot come up in this conversation will say like
it's this is just the first example coming to mind.
Keep cleek, and here's like, I want a week of
(28:02):
this type of like, well, they'll do sentences, you have
to include the sentence, or they'll do like exchange weeks
where different authors will exchange like stories for each other.
Almost has gifts. But a lot of these like prompts
come up in tumbler where authors or fans get together
and they're like, you know what I really want to see.
I want to see a lot of stories that are
really sad about like Darth Vader being a terrible dad
(28:25):
and all that kind of stuff. Murder Dad, sad murder
Dad as he's called, yes um. And that's a funny
thing too about A oh three. One of my favorite
things is it has tags. So every story is tagged
with like you know, the characters that are in it,
the genre, and then oftentimes they get really creative of
like sad murder dad or whatever, so you know what's
going to be in the story that you're reading. But
(28:46):
they can get quite funny and long. But you'll see
in there like the Dan Luke discord made me do it,
or like the Tumbler made me do it um, so
you'll know like, oh, this is a challenge or this
is something that happened in that vanished spit, which I
really enjoy. I love that kind of community aspect of it,
and of like everybody getting so excited and liking each
(29:07):
other's work and kind of building each other up. And yes,
many of these blogs have been used for educational purposes
as well, because of course, who doesn't want to study
about the North Rings fan fiction through blogs unless you
know the best content out there. I've seen busfeed to
Busfeed has done list of like here twenty three fan
fiction that are better than the original, which is really great,
(29:29):
especially because there's so much content. Yes, yes, let me
ask you, because you know I must ask as the
all knowledgeable fan fic expert. Yes, Sminty, do you have
favorite blogs? I don't. I wouldn't say I have favorite blogs,
but I often at the bottom of of a fan
fiction at the end of a chapter, it'll be like,
(29:51):
check out this person's work of this scene or go
do this, and I will because that art can be amazing,
and some people embed it in the fan fiction, so
you'll be reading it's like straighted. I'm so excited to
be talking about this right now. So right before when
you asked me, you told me we're going to ask.
I looked at some stories that I know. I've included
a lot of art that I really liked, and one
(30:12):
is called Furio Sophie. So that's f U r I
O S O p h I E dot Tumbler dot com.
They've written a lot of stuff I love, and they've
got a lot of art work up. And then there's
s A d B right, So that's s A d
I E B w r I t E s dot
Tumbler dot com and Tumbler if you don't know, is
t U M B l r um. And they also
(30:34):
have stories that they've written that I love, and illustrations
and like teasers, and they'll do you like funny gifts,
which are good. One of my favorite is like horny
but terrified. You can look that up if you want.
But okay, and that's that's funny too, is I was
telling you right before when you ask is meta. There
are stories that are what are essentially love letters to
(30:57):
people on these tumblers are the groups or communities and
tumbler or on discord or on Twitch or whatever. So
there are stories that are like modern alternate universes that
are about like, say, what if Luke found if he
was a blogger and he met the Mandalorian that way,
or what if they found fan fiction and then what happens?
(31:21):
But they're they're very like cute stories about kind of yeah,
these love letters to the other fans, and there's one
where they're both streamers and it's just really funny sweet.
Uh yeah, very meda though very very meda. Okay, okay, yeah,
I thought so. So I don't know. You don't have one,
do you. I don't have one. No. I feel like
(31:42):
I could really excel in this area. What you could do?
I think you might need to because I know you're
always giving recommendations to friends and other people who are
dabbling into the world of fan fiction. So I feel
like you needed a beginner's blog of beginner's guide blog
for fan fiction. I think I could because I've got
like my list of if I think you're interested in this,
(32:02):
it's like separated out by categories, and then I'll have
caveats of like this is one thing I love about
Fan Issue now is that has trigger warnings often and
they're very specific and you press a button to skip
to the end to see it. So if you don't
want to be spoiled in any way, then you can
do it that way. But I feel like I could
really lay it out and uh, I like, if you
want to go this way, if you want to go
this way, if you want to go this way, and
then I can like explain, have like an explainer of
(32:24):
terminology and what you're looking for. I think we found
your blog. Yes you never see me again, I doubt
you would know. I was happy. Yes she went down
happy it's coming back. And although fansiic blogs seems very
(32:45):
much on the original track of what blogging was, as
in like the whole writing and that's it. It's just
for pure joy and for pure community, because we know
overall the other types of blogging have changed, especially the
ones that we've talked about now includes vlogging, social media influencers,
and podcasters, and just like all things. It has changed
(33:06):
substantially since its inception, and largely due to that dreaded
word monetization. I mean again, I don't blame you, because
you know I would love to make money that way.
I guess I do make money that way. What And
according to a blog post written by Rebecca Deeds on Medium,
personal blogging is slowly dying out. So those days of
(33:27):
being able to post about your daily journey or just
thoughts are slowly dying out, in part to things like
Twitter and TikTok, which allow for a condensed version of
all of that, so you can just do three lines
a d thirty words to days this instead of the
the very much longer Uh well, tumblers are short. How
(33:47):
long of it can be? It can be pretty shut.
Does it allow for larger posts? It does? I mean
usually I feel in my experience though, it's like maybe
three four paragraphs and then art. Okay, But I don't
know much about tumbler. I never got into that route,
I will say that. But also due to the level
of successive blogs that pertain to lifestyle, which is dominated
(34:08):
by mostly celebrity level of influencers, and even if they're
not celebrities yet they eventually become celebrities because of their
lifestyle content. Yeah, and Deets is not the only one
who has seen the signs at the end of the blog.
But when you look at the numbers, it seems like
it's not really going anywhere, um, just being used as
(34:29):
part of like a multi level section of a larger brand.
And I know that was a big push at our
job for a while, like you had to have a
YouTube persons, you had to have a Tumbler presence, like
you had to have a brand, and that meant being
on all of these different platforms, right, which is shocking.
I don't know if I can do that just being
on these social media performs. It's a lot of work.
So Yeah, blogs typically no longer stand on their own,
(34:50):
but have now become incorporated into everyday business sites as
a way to increase sales or increase traffic to websites,
and typically marketers reuse blogs to sell their products or
get interaction with them. And with the use of blogs
for content marketing, many businesses prefer this method and use
this method and it seems to work. Seven out of
ten customers preferred articles over ads, according to one study,
(35:11):
and another study showed that over sixty percent of people
think blogs add credibility to a site. Yeah, I mean again,
that's kind of why when we talk about recipe bloggers,
why it's important that we allow them to tell the
story and not only allow them, but you know, let
them do their things. You don't have to read it.
It just has to be there, enjoy the recipe, Go
(35:31):
make you some good potato soup. Potato soup. I can't
a winner. But overall, blogging has not really gone anywhere.
Just the importance of blogging again, it's become a bigger
part of a brand um, which is what we've heard
a lot more of. And it seems so different to
the wholesome zanga days of all for me, which I
(35:54):
try to hide away. I want to know again, as
we continue to grow, especially when it comes to social
media and how many different platforms have been developed since
blog and blogging, it'll be interesting to see how much
more people will have to do in a being able
(36:16):
to monetize in this type of industry, the lack of
better terms, and whether or not it is feasible to
keep up with it. Yeah, I mean, that's a conversation
that's been ongoing in the world of entertainment and media,
and I do find it interesting because I feel like
the reason people connect with a lot of blogs and blogs,
(36:39):
our podcasts or or whatever it is is usually because
there is um kind of that personal like I'm opening
myself up to you when you feel like connection to
whoever is doing that. So like the fan fiction, like
people are so excited that they found someone else that
connects and it makes you happy that you can bounce
ideas off each other and make this stuff that you're
(36:59):
unfortunately probably aren't going to get paid for unfortunately, we're
unfortunately there's you know, pros and cons to both in
the case of like, this is something that I love
and I'm just kind of doing it for for fun.
But it is interesting to me that there's sort of
that dichotomy of just give me the damn recipe versus
(37:20):
I'm reading this because I want to connect with another person,
and there's sort of this openness there. But yeah, yeah,
that is It is interesting, and I'm excited to come
back and and look at other other things like blogs
and I'm you know, like things like discorded Twitch and
just see see what's going on, what's going on there
(37:41):
but in the meantime, listeners, If you have a blog,
if you have blog recommendations, we want them. You can
emails at Stuff with your Mom and Stuff That I
Hurt Me dot com. You can find us on Twitter
at Mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram and Stuff I've
Never Told You. Thanks as always too, are super producer Christina. Christina,
do you have a blog? It feel like we need
to find her blog. I thought she has a blog.
(38:02):
We must know And thanks to you for listening Stuff
I Never Told You. Subjection of I Heart Radio for
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Samantha McVey
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