On Blogging

I think many writers use their internet logs for selfish purposes. Advertising pollutes many of their sites. Insincere product reviews are gaining more and more attention in the media from writers who receive free product in exchange for positive publicity. One particularly sullied demographic has been internet logs authored by "Women responsible for the upbringing of a child they brought into the world". These so-called "Mom Blogs" are a black stain on the internet. Though, the most successful ones have spent the last year trying to gain legitimacy. Various Public Relations Blackouts and Blogger Ethics movements have swept through their ranks. The Federal Trade Commission has even kicked off their own investigation to figure out how to regulate the bloggers.

Anyway, my curiosity got the better of me today and I searched for a list of these "Mom Blogs" and filtered through the thousands of listings until I found one that looked good enough to click. It said, "Coffee in the morning, cocktails in the evening". Now, maybe it's my personal bias that drew me this site and I can't claim that this is representative of all the "Mom Blogs" but the woman in charge of the one I found was a piece of work. First off, she had announced her retirement from that particular account back in June. I found it fascinating that somebody could formally quit something like a "Mom Blog". This anonymous woman, during her last few posts, claimed (a) a mental breakdown, (b) a need to find a source of income for the upcoming year, (c) that she had started a different internet log site that was more popular, and (d) she was frustrated giving her readers a one-way window into her life in a way that hurt her real social life. Taken separately, there's nothing alarming about any of these individual points. But as a whole, they add up to a woman who I would call unfit to raise a child. This leads me to the hope that the FTC works with child protective services when they conduct their investigations into the ethics and morality of "Mom Blogs" so they can rescue these poor kids from a life of exploitation.

But I digress. I need to substantiate this claim that these four points add up to an unfit mother. Well, point (b) indicates that the woman lacks financial security to raise a kid. This is not necessarily a bad thing if the woman has a support network (be it family, friends, or federal) and a plan to get financial security sometime in the future. However, (d) indicates that there is no support network behind this woman, and (c) indicates that that her "plan" to get financial security is through starting yet another internet log. I predict that internet log #2 will be just unprofitable as her "Mom Blog", and that this will lead to more frustration and yet another (a) which won't be good for her kid.

Granted, I only looked at 1 of the 10,000 "Mom Blogs" but it seems unlikely to me that I found a needle in the giant stack of hay. That is to say that parents should spend less time trying to foolishly monetize the internet and more time raising their bloody children. This will make the world better for everybody. And for goodness sakes, wake up and smell the coffee that monetizing the internet is a job best left to professionals and not the modern day equivalent of the oil prospectors who helped settle the American Midwest. And much like the prospectors of yesteryear, the only successful ones were the ones who got there first... so if a "Mom Blog" isn't established yet, I predict it never will be.