Ever see that movie “Mean Girls“? Ever wonder what happens when girls like that reach adulthood? Apparently some of them become Mommy bloggers.

I’m not going to get into naming names and linking to other blogs because a) it’s not an isolated incident and b) why give them the traffic? Sure, it’s been happening a lot this week but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen it. It’s just the first time I’ve seen it taken to this level.

So let’s talk about it in general, shall we?

Anyone who has survived junior high knows what bullying is. When someone tries to intimidate you, threaten you, scare you or exert some kind of imaginary control over you, that’s bullying. A lot of the time it involves a group of people, sometimes it’s just one person, and sometimes it’s a mob of people following around one person like a flock of sheep.

Stalkers, on the other hand….well, that’s usually just one person. A cyberstalker will obsessively Google your name, read your blogs, spy on your Twitter stream, maybe even create fake profiles in an attempt to befriend you if they can’t get access to your private profiles.

Personally, I don’t get the mentality behind either one of these. I’m thinking that the Internet gives them some kind of courage that they don’t have in real life. Me? I’d never say something to you online that I didn’t have the balls to back up in real life. And I certainly don’t try to rally up a bunch of others to help fight my battles for me. As far as the stalkers go, they’re usually people who have some sort of insecurity or jealousy issue that creates and fuels their obsession with the stalkee. (Or, in some cases, they’re mentally unstable, delusional or paranoid and they think that everything you write or say online is about them.)

The common denominator between bullies and stalkers is the fact that they are, for lack of a more entertaining term, chicken shits. They have nothing more interesting or productive to do with their free time than harass someone else. Sometimes that little voice of reason and sanity will speak up and ask them “What the hell are you doing?!” and they might decide that maybe it’s time to just let it go. But that rarely ever lasts very long.

What a sad, sad way to live.

There’s not really a point to this post, just an observation rather than a lecture. I’ve learned through personal experience that the best way to get rid of these people is to just ignore them. Don’t acknowledge them or give them the attention they so desperately seek and they’ll get bored and move on to something or someone else.

I will say that the behaviors of some of the Mom bloggers this year, especially this week, is just beyond fucking stupid. How OLD are you? Really. Threatening to send people to their house to beat them up? Telling people you’re not going to be their Internet friend anymore if you even talk to the other person? Wow. Real mature. I bet all of those PR companies that keep sending all of that free shit to you are really proud to be working with you, huh? I know if I was the head of some big company, I’d be PROUD to be represented by a bunch of grown women who think they’re Hot Shit and act like a bunch of third graders who managed to get around Mommy’s website blocker to play on Twitter. /sarcasm

Ladies, you’re giving yourselves a bad name. No one takes you as seriously as you take yourselves. The Motrin moms, the Blog Her swag, the PR Blackout… keep it up and you’ll end up being such a liability that you might find yourselves going weeks or even months without the Fed Ex guy showing up at your door with more free shit to gush about. Oh noes!!!!! THEN what will you write about on your blogs??

*insert eyeroll here*

Mario and Luigi

Don’t get me wrong. I have a special place in my heart for Mario and Luigi. I was still in high school when the brothers were released upon the arcade world (note I said “arcade” meaning pre-Nintendo/PS/XBox). There are many nights I can recall hanging out with my friends and playing Mario Brothers as well as Donkey Kong.

That being said, what the fuck is with the sudden increased interest in these spunky little Italian-American brothers?  For the past week solid, my twelve year old and my ten year old have been obsessing over what seems like hundreds of YouTube videos dedicated to spoofing the plumber pair.  These two kids are my most computer savvy children – the youngest used to (and still does, I think) take great pleasure in totally revamping each and every computer setting he could dig up.  The older of the two loves to create sophisticated game programs.

So, what possible entertainment could they be getting out of these videos?  My little guy can be heard howling with laughter so loud that the neighbors are getting rather concerned.  Gamer girl keeps requesting that I look at yet another really asinine video every ten minutes.  If I hear the game’s damned theme song one more time I may seriously consider permanently damaging my ears.

I wonder if they’d believe me if I told them that the internet magically stopped working in that particular part of the house?

Seriously. Anyone who calls me a Mom blogger from here on out will be welcomed with a swift kick to the groinal area.

I can not even measure the amount of distance I want to put between myself and that label. I’ve even stopped blogging on my usual domain and moved to one that makes no mention of motherhood in the URL at all.

Why? Because Mommy bloggers have become the pariahs of online communities everywhere – except for their own, of course, where they will continue to worship and kiss the asses of their self-appointed idols and spokesmodels.

Look, if you wanna be a Mommy blogger, you go right ahead. Yes, we know, you blog about more than poopy diapers and your militant stance on breastfeeding and vaccinating. Yes, we know you enjoy doing product reviews and giveaways and the PR companies don’t OWN you, damnit! We’ve heard you (very) loudly and clearly.

And while your Mommy buddies will cheer you on and tell you how awesome you are, you should probably step outside of your little corner of the Internet and take a look at what others are saying. Its not pretty.

Let’s take the whole PR Blackout thing as an example. Apparently the ladies over at MomDot think that the best way to stop letting PR companies own your blogs is to organize some kind of boycott and not do any reviews or giveaways for a week. I’m sorry…WHAT? How about just telling the PR companies ‘no thanks’? And if that doesn’t work and they won’t take no for an answer, tell them to go f**k themselves!

As far as I know, the world of PR has survived for a very long time without a bunch of PMSing harpies armed with laptops telling them how they should do their jobs. Besides, haven’t you ever heard the saying about catching more flies with honey than vinegar? Throwing tantrums and demanding high dollar compensation to share your opinion about wet wipes specially designed to wipe your kids snotty nose isn’t going to get you very far. You may even find it backfiring on you and you find yourself wishing the PR people were flooding your inbox again.

Now let’s talk about the way some of you acted at BlogHer. Now, I will admit that I wasn’t there but some of the blog posts I’ve read around the Internets basically confirm my own observations based on the #BlogHer tweets I saw. Last year, I remember being so jealous of the ladies who were able to attend Blog Her. The topics sounded so interesting, the panelists were intelligent, savvy and witty women that I admired and I loved reading all of the tweets coming from women who were lucky enough to be there live.

This year, not so much. All I heard about this year on Twitter was free shit (a/k/a “swag”), some bowling party, and Moms squealing with delight because they got to meet so-and-so who is some kind of celebrity in their world for reasons I don’t quite understand. Oh, and apparently some of you can take something as simple as a bar refusing to allow an infant to attend a cocktail party into some kind of “Corporate America hates Moms and Kids” drama. Give me a fucking break. Yeah, sure, your kid is cute but there are LAWS about minors being in bars.

Oh, hey, that reminds me. All of these conferences you want to attend…? Stop begging for sponsors. Seriously. Put together a sponsorship package, pitch the companies, tell them WHY they should spend their money on sending you away to some conference so you can get more free shit and get away from those kids you base your entire identity upon, and handle it like a professional.

I mean REALLY….you’re embarrassing us all. You are not Norma Rae or Gloria Steinem so drop the “I am Mommy, hear me roar” speeches. Just go back to doing what you enjoy…blogging about your life, sharing those precious moments of motherhood so you’ll have something to look back on and keep you from strangling them when they’re teenagers…and quit worrying about sponsors and ads and how many comments or subscribers or Twitter followers you have. But if you DO enjoy that side of Mommy blogging, then quit whining about it.

Shit like this is the reason Bad Mommy Blogger came to exist in the first place.

P.S. Did I mention we’re back? Yeah, welcome to Bad Mommy Blogger 2: The Resurrection.

April must have once again been rubbing her crystal ball when she wrote her recent post about mommyblog drama. It seems you can’t turn around in the blogosphere without stumbling over it somewhere, and today is no different. Only this is one I have been expecting for some time now- Blissfully Domestic.

I was checking out my Twitter stream just a bit ago and saw a tweet about Blissfully Domestic. I have known Allie since she started blogging, so I went to see what the fuss was about. Apparently the blogger behind MothersHandbook.net is a contributing writer to the Blissfully Domestic site. She wrote a tongue-in-cheek post about husbands and their never-ending lack of common sense, something she attributes to the gene for common sense being on the X chromosome. Seems fairly obvious to me it was a humor post, given that the writer in question has been married a number of years.

The problem started when she found the post had been removed, with the explanation that the post was “not in line with Blissfully Domestic’s goal of strengthening marriages and encouraging women to be better wives”.

I’m going to echo the author’s sentiment here..”What. The. Fuck.???”

Stronger marriages? I can get behind that. Totally get it. Lack of humor? Not so much.

Blissfully Domestic represents certain ideals that in a lot of ways alienate modern women. Every section of the site is titled with a Bliss theme, such as ‘Family Bliss’, ‘Creative Bliss’, and ‘Delish Bliss’. In today’s time, I don’t know too many women  who are truly ‘blissful’ in their finances, and juggling work and time with your kids while attempting to maintain your own identity doesn’t really say ‘bliss’ to me. Applying the word to those things makes them sound nearly impossible to be honest. Given the site’s unmistakable attempt to appeal to married women, I am  left wondering where that leaves the rest of us.

I said not long ago that there is about to be a turn of the tide where this sort of  thing is concerned. For so long women have strived to live their lives like Martha Stewart and Oprah have told us we should, and could, if we just made the time. We could work, do crafts, spend quality time with our kids, garden, scrapbook, clean, prepare delicious healthy meals AND manage great sex at the end of the day, if we just tried harder.

Screw that.

I love Allie, and I think Blissfully Domestic is probably a great resource for the women who have the time and desire to aspire to that 50’s housewife dream.

I just know as a soon-to-be-divorced, going-back-to-work mother of 3, my life is anything but bliss, and as more and more women burn themselves out trying to have it all, I suspect the backlash against the 50’s dream will only continue.

Sara is a blogger in south Alabama who currently spends her time taking care of her trio of Satan’s spawn and plotting world domination through her personal blog, Suburban Oblivion.

I have come to the conclusion that anytime you have a group of females over the age of 12 together, there is going to be drama. And they don’t even have to be physically in the same place. Even if they are just in the same category, its gonna happen.

We’re talking Joan Collins level bullshit. (For our readers, Joan Collins was notorious for her role in the TV drama ‘Dynasty’ a hundred years ago.)

Now, if you read my bio then you know I used to be a rollergirl. You would think that a bunch of women that probably have more testosterone than some men would be above that kind of catfighting, mean girls stuff, right? Oh no. See, one of the reasons I quit roller derby was because of the drama. There were league leaders playing favorites, one girl stealing another girl’s boyfriend (or girlfriend), gossip about who was giving lapdances at the last after party. I’m tellin’ ya, just because these girls could kick ass doesn’t make them immune to cattiness and snark.

And now I’m seeing it in the Mom blogging world. Apparently there’s a lot of poo-slinging going on about how Mom bloggers are marketing themselves. I don’t know where or how it all started (and frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn) but it sounds like it was a topic of discussion at Blissdom or Mom 2.0 or something. And some of it came from a post that a Mom blogger read on some blog for fashion designers (of the Etsy variety, not Vogue) that basically bashed Mom bloggers. Oh, and there was the video (from a guy!!) about how calling yourself a WAHM is bad for business but that’s not exclusively directed at Mom bloggers.

Can’t we all just get along??!!

Seriously, why does anyone care if a Mom blogger gets a free car for a year or if another one leaves her business card on grocery store shelves? And why should it matter what clothing designers think of Mom bloggers?

I’ll tell ya why: because it reflects on ALL of us. Fair or not, if you’re a Mom and you blog, sooner or later you are bound to get shoved under the Mom Blogger umbrella. And it SUCKS, especially if you’re one of the “Don’t call me a Mommy blogger!!” people.

Yes, I know some women are very proud of their Mom status. They will call themselves a WAHM, a Mom blogger, a Mompreneur, and they will name their blogs and businesses MOM-this and Mom-that. (I can not tell you how much I regret using the word Mom in my blog URL…but when I first started it, I had only intended for it to be a place where I could bitch kind of an online journal about being a single mom.)

But not everyone wants to be pigeonholed  by their ability to procreate or sign adoption papers. Some want to be recognized as Somebody other than so-and-so’s Mom. They want to be known as business owners, writers, humorists, tech geeks, and experts in something other than parenting.

We’re never going to agree on whether being labeled as a Mom is a good thing or a bad thing. Hell, I can’t even decide if I like it or not. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Either way, we are all going to be stereotyped and one Mom blogger can – and has – give us all a bad name.

So what do you think? Where do you stand on the whole Mom blogger or WAHM thing?

Leave a comment or, better yet, tune in to Blog Talk Radio tomorrow night and chat with us about it.

I’ve always wanted to use the phrase “bloody wanker” and thanks to this asshat on Wife Swap, I finally get that chance!

Now I’ve only watched Wife Swap a few times – enough to know it is not about the swinging lifestyle. If you haven’t seen it, the basic premise of the show is that two women trade places with one another for two weeks. Naturally, it had to be the women because, ya know, moms and wives are just so replaceable, right? We just lift right out.

Anyway, to make it interesting the show’s producers match up families that are like total opposites. The right wing fundies swap with the tree hugging hippies. The high powered career mom trades places with the vegan homeschooling mom.

This time they swapped the female halves of a snooty, overeducated, environmentalist couple from San Francisco and a chubby, fun-loving, blue collar Midwestern family.  Here’s a quick rundown on the families:

The McSnobbersons – Hubby (Stephen Fowler) is some kind of environmentalist and venture capitalist who was, up until this week, a board member with various “green” companies. He’s a pompous, arrogant, condescending, verbally abusive bloke. And if you couldn’t tell by my excessive use of Britspeak, he’s from England. Wife (Renee Stephens) is a “certified life coach and weight loss counselor”…or at least she was.

The All-Americans – Gayla and….um…her husband are your typical average American family. They live in Missouri, they love paintballing (which I’m not allowed to do anymore according to my friend and ex-fiance Sonny) and they are proud of both their family and their country. I’m sorry I don’t know more about them but this Stephen Fowler jerk’s obnoxious behavior just totally eclipsed the other family.

So that’s the foundation of the episode. But here’s why this particular show brought out the claws and fangs and death threats. I present you with The Stephen Fowler, King of the Wankers, Skool of Thawt. (Sorry, I live in the Midwest and according to Dickhead, I’m too uneducated to spell. Must be all of those cuss words I use rotting my brain cells.)

Thawt # 1 – People from the Midwest are stupid, lazy and uneducated.
Thawt #2 – America NEEDS stupid people because someone has to join the military and it may was well be them.
Thawt #3 – Children should not be allowed to have fun. They should be forced to learn several languages and attend fencing lessons if they ever hope to be anything other than scum.
Thawt #4 – Overweight people do not deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. Their only purpose in life is to give his wife, the weight loss “hypnotist”, lots of money.
Thawt #5 – It is perfectly acceptable to berate, abuse, and humiliate publicly anyone who is deemed to be inferior.

Well here’s a word that I’m sure Mr. Fowler will understand given his vast vocabulary and worldly ways: schadenfreude. It means taking pleasure in someone else’s suffering. And I think its funny as hell that he has had to resign from those non-profit organizations, that his wife has had to remove her website and blog, and that there is even a website called Stephen Fowler Sucks.

Because he does.

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Ok, so I’ve been sitting on the sidelines all, “Well if that chick with octuplets wants to have babies to make some money maybe that’s her talent.”

But for some reason, now that she HAS a website openly asking for donations, well, I plan on making an anonymous (ok, not so anonymous since I’m posting about it publicly) call to the IRS asking how this not a not-for-profit can get donations and ask about the tax ramifications, because man, I was okay with Oprah potentially paying her $2M but get the hell off my interwebz with your beggin’ strips ass.

Seriously. People are going to give her ass money that should be donating to the Red Cross or the March of Dimes or the autistic kid’s family that lives down the street that Mrs. Jones (or whoever) didn’t say hi to at the store the other day.

That she is going to be the excuse that lets people give her $5 via paypal to sleep better at night for not helping the local fundraiser they skipped out on or did not participate in. That just bugs me.

Where do you think it ends? Do you think she’s going to now spend the rest of her life trying to get money for free?

Even more important: Do you think she reads the messages people send? Or do you think she has someone that screens out the bitter, awful people like me who threaten to turn her in to the IRS?

Jen is an awful person and secretly wishes she could set up a website and sit on her ass and collect money all day. She actually works, albeit from home, so no one thinks she really does anything but blog all day.

If there is one place in the world you can find a bunch of uptight, sanctimonious bitches, it’s on the internet.

Seriously, the PTA women have *nothing* on some of the people I’ve seen online recently.

Don’t get me wrong, I can be as opinionated and judgmental as the next person. No, really, don’t be so shocked! But there comes a point where the lingering taste of leather from sticking one’s size 8 Steve Madden pump between their jawbones has got to get tiresome, does it not?

This thought occurred to me as I read a post on Friday concerning the use of cursing on blogs and social networking sites. As expected the post in question sort of straddled the fence, but the comments were where things truly got interesting. Along with the usual variations of yes and no, I saw this little gem-

I have a low opinion of people who use curse words in everyday conversations. It’s not necessary. Unless your vocabulary is so small, you can’t say anything else.

Excuse me? Did I read that right? Did she really say “I have a low opinion of people who use curse words.” ?

Well I’ll be fucked with a fork.

Call me crazy, but it takes a lot for me to ‘have a low opinion of someone’. I might disagree with something they do, but I don’t base my entire estimation of them as a person based on what words they choose to use at any one given moment. Even people in the conversation who cited their religious beliefs as their basis didn’t go so far as to completely write people off that way.

Maybe it’s just me, but I save the whole ‘low opinion’ label for major crimes, like murders, child molesters, and whoever the hell dresses Sarah Jessica Parker every day.

If  someone wants to throw a few ‘damn’s around, or drop an F-bomb once in awhile, does that really make such a difference in your world? If someone is a great person who adopts orphans and does cancer research, would a well-placed ’shit’ really make them less of a person to you?

Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but looking down your nose at people can very well make you cross-eyed, and that doesn’t help when your words already make you look like an ass.

Sara is a blogger in south Alabama who currently spends her time taking care of her trio of Satan’s spawn and plotting world domination through her personal blog, Suburban Oblivion.

Now I know I’m not alone on this one. Every time I bring it up I get a resounding “You tell ‘em!” from several other people.

I’m talking about these people in the world of blogging and social media *coughcoughTwittercough* who are so full of themselves that its nauseating. People who have put themselves on pedestals so high that the air up there is really thin and its affecting their brains.

I just un-followed some narcisisstic self-proclaimed “expert” for the second time. See, when I was new to Twitter, if I saw someone with like 3,000 followers I would add them to see what all of the fuss was about. After realizing that this blowhard had absolutely nothing valuable to contribute, I unfollowed him. Fast forward a few months, someone I follow is engaged in a conversation with this guy so I’m thinking “Ok, maybe I was wrong. Maybe this guy is worth following” and I followed him again.

Oh wait, I should probably throw in this little tidbit of info. This jackass has like 5,000 followers but only follows like 35. So there’s one red flag. Now not all people with skewed ratios like that are jerks. Rae Hoffman a/k/a SugarRae, for example, has similar statistics but she totally rocks. She is funny, engaging, intelligent, and she interacts with people outside of her own SEO Expert circle.

Anyway, back to the jackass. Over the last couple of weeks he has tweeted about NOTHING else other than fighting with some idiot on Twitter who has a thing for young Asian girls. Apparently this Twitter blowhard is on a mission to expose the troll so the whole world knows he’s a stalker and a pervert. As if we care. I can check online and tell you how many convicted sex offenders live within a 100 mile radius of me. Am I really supposed to be worried about some ugly little Israeli guy living in Japan who likes to have sex with random chicks on the subway?

But, hey, whatever trips your trigger. Anyway, I called this guy out and told him that he’s giving this idiot exactly what he wants….attention. Ever heard the phrase “Don’t feed the trolls!”? You know what this guy says to me? “April, please, leave it to experts.”

OMG, I shit you not, I almost spit my coffee out on my keyboard! “Experts”?? At WHAT exactly? Dealing with trolls and pedophiles on Twitter? Does anyone really want to be an expert at that? Oh it was freakin’ hilarious. Then he blocked me. Boo freakin hoo. P.S. I gained 8 new followers from that little interaction. Thanks, man!

See, that’s the kind of stuff I hate. These people get so much smoke blown up their ass that it shoots straight to their head. You have the bloggers who don’t interact with their readers AT. ALL. and have their husband’s running around blogging about how we should all bow down to his wife and thank her and show her our undying love and gratitude because She is the reason we are all fortunate enough to be bloggers today.  Oh and heaven forbid you should actually disagree with him because your comments will never see the light of day and only comments that kiss his wife’s ass will be approved.

And the guys who get into some kind of pissing contestand slam on other successful bloggers calling them hacks and frauds. Not that their insults have any merit….they just feel threatened and they act like dogs trying to mark their territory. Dude, you can piss and growl and bark all you want…you’re still a chihuahua.

Rest assured, eventually these egos will deflate. People will get sick of listening to it, people will get sick of being talked down to and they will find someone who is just as smart if not smarter than you, someone who is actually NICE.

Oh by the way, in case you’re wondering why I’m not using specific names, its not because I am afraid of incurring their wrath. I’m just not going to give them the satisfaction of seeing their own name online yet again nor am I going to send them any traffic or linkage. If you really wanna know, shoot me an email at april@badmommyblogger.com. Emails don’t show up in search engines.