I'm not like a regular mom, I'm a cool mom

[pinstripe_bindi]

Holy shit, I was not expecting to see this: ‘Queen of the Mommy Bloggers’ Dies at 47 After Relapsing. I rarely read Dooce back in the day, since her whole thing was "mommy blogging" and I don't have or have ever wanted children. But certainly I was aware of her, especially as she rose to prominence around the time me and most of my online friends

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

when they say they don't want their entire lives broadcast to strangers as entertainment

This is something that writers deal with all the time and not just with their children. I've had friends stop talking to me when they've identified characters in my fiction as themselves. Were those characters inspired by those friends? In a few instances, yes-though, that inspiration most often comes from unusual incidents that happened to them or interesting things they've said rather than any in-depth analysis of their characters or personalities. I'm a lazy story-teller, so I tend to tell the stories that are closest at hand.

Many, many friends in my daily life have asked me never to write about them in my online diary, so I don't. When I do write about real-life pals, I go out of my disguise the names and scramble the breadcrumbs.

My kids know I keep an online diary. One of them has set conditions for being mentioned; the other one doesn't care (probably because he is a writer himself.)

[pinstripe_bindi]

Most of the kids in the article I mentioned were the subjects of "family vlogs", which feels like a more extreme invasion of their privacy than just writing about them. It's a sliding scale, and I write about my family all the time so obviously I'm not unbiased. But "basing fictional characters on real people" is on one end and "filming your children and showing them to potentially millions of people" is on the other. I feel like you have a right to be annoyed if you're an adult that a writer wrote about you, but how you deal with that is entirely up to you; I don't think you have the right to demand anything from the writer.

But with kids there's a different standard. Dooce was a mother and obviously that was a huge part of her life, so I dunno! You could make the argument either way, that she was invading her kids' privacy and/or she had a right to write about her life. But I feel like that balance is off when it comes to videos. I think California at least has passed, or is trying to pass, a version of Coogan's Law that applies to

[mallorys_camera]

California at least has passed, or is trying to pass, a version of Coogan's Law

Interesting.