One of the most frequent search terms coming into my site is some variation of “I Hate Dooce”. I couldn’t figure out why people were coming to my site looking for people who hated Dooce. Who was Dooce? What do people hate her? Why are they coming here? Turns out Dooce is some chick named Heather B. Armstrong who has a website Dooce.com. Apparently, she is pretty much alternately loved and hated by the internet.
In fact, I am not the only person out there who has problems with people coming to my website looking for people who hate Dooce. Most of them get here because for some reason, my post about how I am incredibly jealous of the bloggess is titled “I Hate The Bloggess” and apparently Dooce and the Bloggess are one in the same to google. (I’d love to hear what the Bloggess’s reaction to that.)
Unfortunately, this entire search to discover who Dooce was led to something a little depressing for me. You see, I clicked on her about page, and I discovered that she started her blog in May of 2001 – so I went to her archives, and I found this post, which is totally inconsequential to most people, but set off fireworks of blinding jealousy in my head:
I wonder if men ever get as bloated as a sinking ship sending out mayday signals.
Will Liam Gallagher love me as much as I love him?
You see back when most of you were on AOL or CompuServe, I was begging my Dad to buy me a domain, and back then, domains were no joke, they were $50 and you HAD to buy them from Network Solutions because that was the only option. Finally my father gave in, and purchased me delightz.net, and I started using it for three purposes:
- Part of delightz.net was an NSYNC fansite
- Part of delightz.net was my personal blog
- I also hosted some of my family and friends, like Lindsay on there
The important part about all of this is, all of this happened before Dooce even started her blog – in fact – by the time her blog was only 5 months old I was featured on the cover of the Washington Post because of an article about cam-girls (what you know today as bloggers) and I had a very, very, loyal and strong following. I was asked to interviewed by 60 Minutes (although I declined) and I had various sponsorship’s for my blog. Why does all this matter?
Because back then, when I was getting all the traffic, and Dooce wasn’t, I was the one who linked to her – regarding a mutual love of Liam Gallagher.
Our blogging paths have obviously taken two different roads. She has turned her blog into a money making machine that can support her family of four, while I have this blog, which barely gets any traffic. She was invited to the Whitehouse to talk about working from home, while I just had a job at one point where I had access to the Whitehouse. She is somewhere under 20,000 for her global Alexa rankings – while I am somewhere in the 2 millions. Obviously, she did it better than me.
This is Dooce and her husband - they look a little too pod people for my tastes.
(Not to say that I’m horrible at blogging – I just made the choice of going to livejournal for college and most of after that because it’s difficult to have a publicly facing blog and stayed employed, as Dooce well knows.)
Although, I can’t help but wonder – couldn’t I be Dooce? If I had it to over again, would I have shut down delightz? Or could I be using the blog to make enough money so that I didn’t have to work? I probably would do it all the same, blogging at that level stops you from having a job, or really much a life outside the blog. Plus, I like the ability to walk away from it every once and a while when I need to. If it was my only income I wouldn’t be able to do that.
And Dooce – I just wanted to say you’re welcome for that original link love.
How long have you been blogging?
Stephanie is a 27 year old living outside of Washington, DC.If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the RSS feed. Thank you, and have a wonderful day!
At last, someone to share my non-hater Dooce pain! And you know this post has now even more firmly entrenched you in Google as the logical answer to the search “Dooce Hate”.
I’ve accepted that, and moved on from it. I assume your post on the topic did the exact same thing right?
Although I will say, there are worse things to have people come for – another one of my biggest search terms is “Casey Anthony’s Vagina”. Ewwwwwww
Sadly, Dooce related searches are still one of my largest traffic generators. That and “Cowboy Horse Sex” — which, for the record, I’ve never written about.
I have a feeling now “Cowboy Horse Sex” will also lead people to me based on your comment. Maybe google will think we’re mirror sites and remove us temporarily.
Sadly, she only became popular because she was one of the first people to get fired from her job for writing stuff about her employer on her blog. She sued, she won, and her blog skyrocketed. She went from 10 hits to millions.
Ha, where’s the money for the rest of us that get fired for writing things on our blog? Eh?
Dooce is what she is because she became a mommy blogger and posted about her postpartum. Mommy bloggers are revered by the “mini van majority” for some reason.
This sucks. What about those of us who aren’t mommy bloggers? Where is our readership?
I personally don’t get the whole Dooce thing…some of my fellow blogging friends think she is the bees knees, while others agree with me – there’s nothing special going on there.
I had no idea she got where she is by suing her former employer. LOL Typical.
I wrote this post on Monday, and I’ve been checking her out ever since – she’s really nothing special at all. Like the bloggess I understand because she’s effing hysterical most of the time – but I don’t get Dooce.
RT @doitalone: Dear Dooce: You're Welcome #AOL #family #Network Solutions #NSYNC http://t.co/8o7moEFj
Ouch! Sorry to hear all of that. I’ve been blogging for a little over a year and I’m still learning new things daily. I’d never heard of Dooce prior to reading this blog post, but I doubt you’d feel better knowing you’ve introduced someone else to Dooce, so I think I’ll stop typing now.
number one chart…
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