I took exactly one photo at BlogHer this year. Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado, here is that photo (PREPARE TO BE DAZZLED!):
This was an envelope left to us by the fabulous Cake Girls, makers of The Unicorn Cake To End All Unicorn Cakes. And yes, I so totally LOLed when I read what was written on it.
I spent most of this year’s BlogHer in three states of being: 1) Total Panic, 2) Exhausted/Hungover, 3) Social Overload. It’s a tidy, but fairly accurate summary. Everything else pretty much went by the book: I cried, as I predicted I would, when I finally met Kate from Sweet|Salty (my emotional state wasn’t helped by the fact that Kristin from Better Now was right there with her — these are two women who I adore both as writers and human beings in ways that are inarticulable and there they were, before me suddenly, all pretty and good-smelling and stuff — I’M NOT MADE OF STONE, DAMMIT). Similarly, I teared up at several points hanging out with the writers of MamaPop, who I consider to be brothers and sisters in my chosen family, and who are each in their own way endless sources of real joy for me. Finally, as anticipated, by Saturday night I’d reached Maximum Density with regard to my capacity for real-life socializing, and rapidly retreated back into the lush, tropical introversion that is my natural habitat (I know, you don’t believe that, right? But it’s true. I only play an extrovert on the interwebs. Unlike some people we know and love).
But all that to-be-expected crap aside, here’s what I want to say: making money as a blogger, and having blogging as your business, is not the same thing as selling out.
What I mean to say is that beneath the recent finger-wagging and tsk-tsking about swag-hungry conference attendees and bloggers whose seals of approval are purchased for samples of laundry detergent (or, alternately, new washers/dryers, as the scale here really isn’t the point), lies that same anxiety we’ve been grappling with since Heather Armstrong (most prominently in our community) put up her first Google ad, boiled down to its bluntest essence. Who’s real and who’s putting on? Who’s a “writer” and who’s just cranking out filler content? Who genuinely cares about the community and who is playing it, leveraging unearned cache and relevance for the basest, most self-serving of motives? Who would be here if there was no money, no free trips, no free crap? Who’s a product/sample whore and who’s Blogging With Integrity? Who’s one of us, and who’s one of Those People?
On the one hand, this topic kind of bores me to tears. On the other hand, it just doesn’t seem to go away, so there must be some important There there.
I remember the first BlogHer, which was in both spirit and practice more aligned with a Star Trek convention than a gathering of Influential Tastemakers. But then this was, of course, before the money came in. By the next year everything had changed: there was a new tension and competitiveness, and a clear if not openly verbalized hierarchical power structure solidified that shifted relationships and pushed some people apart while drawing others together. Which, ehh, not to get all Marx/Engels Reader on you or anything, but within a society based in capitalism this is kind of par for the course — the whole social stratifying thing. I’m not condoning it by any stretch of the imagination, I’m just saying that when you push large sums of money at a bunch of glorified monkeys you shouldn’t be surprised when shit starts getting lobbed about and, at least in some but certainly not all instances, gums up the works of said monkey’s typewriters, crappifying the resultant prose. Stupid monkeys.
Wait, what was I saying?
I guess I’m kind of just plain out of enthusiasm for the Us vs. Them mentality. I’m tired of division, segmentation, of the whole Those People idea. Because elbowing a baby in the face to get to some free shit has nothing to do with whether a person is Blogging With Integrity or not — it’s just plain old run-of-the-mill, garden-variety douchebaggery and bad manners. Ridiculous, asinine, horrible people can be found in all spheres and walks of life, and it just so happens that now some of them are blogging. And this surprises us how, exactly?
The profound generalized contempt expressed regarding the highly visible swag giveaways of this year’s BlogHer seems to me to be expressive of two things: 1) a failure to understand that crapheads with bad manners will find ways to express their doucheyness whether free flash drives are offered to them or not, and 2) the persistence of that old, lingering discomfort relative to the idea that commerce, art/craft, and integrity can all coexist peacefully without one necessarily suffering to accommodate the other. That you can be an entrepreneur or businessperson in this realm, yet not be a “sell-out.” That one could happily accumulate swag, make money, and take advantage of free goods and services offered to them without compromising their principles and integrity, or without diluting and diminishing the bite of their prose, the power of their individual voice and vision. It seems there’s some part of us that goes on worrying that idea, turning it over and over again in our minds, long after we say we’re SO TOTALLY FINE WITH IT, NO REALLY. We say that, and yet it seems as though we can’t quite dispel the notion that money and corruption are inextricably linked, and that somehow, some way, the Making Money From Something You Love bit diminishes and taints the thing you love, or the love itself even.
I’m a business owner. MamaPop is many, many things — it is my internet home, my labor of love, my greatest professional source of joy and satisfaction, my social sphere, the place where some of the people I care about most in the world spend their time. But indeed, it is also a business. If MamaPop were a physical place of business, I’d be one of those people who’d go into work at 5am and fall asleep at my desk every night, not because I’m a self-flagellating workaholic but because I truly, truly love and adore what I do, and all of the people involved in it. When I speak of the site, and in particular of the people who write for it, I often tear up like a sap, because I feel so incredibly lucky to be working with these brilliant and hugely talented people, and I am ridiculously proud of what we’ve made together, of what we make every day together. I feel an almost maternal affection for and protectiveness over the writers. They are, as I said, family. And yes, I mean that in the most Tony Soprano way possible.
But I also make money from MamaPop. Indeed, it is my primary source of income, and the thing which will likely make or break my ability to remain a full-time blogger in the long run. Its success will determine whether I can make of this blogging thing my life’s work or have to scrap it and get a desk job somewhere, and I’m very much aware of that, even more so in the wake of my separation since I’m now going to have to garner something equivalent to a “real” salary rather than one that’s supplementary to my husband’s. And sure, there’s a sense of pressure and urgency there. Of course there is. But it changes nothing about how I feel about the site, about how I treat the writers, about what I value in them and their work, and my standards relative to the collective sum of MamaPop. The desire to make a living wage, to financially profit from the thing you love to do more than anything else in the world, and to make your life’s work that which you wanted as your profession since you were a child, is hardly a base thing. Isn’t that what we all want, or at least originally wanted? When I was in 6th grade I told my teacher at the time that I was going to be a writer when I grew up. And after all my years in academia, I never really believed that would come to pass. But here I am. I can’t tell you how astounding that is to me, how grateful I am for it, and how much real, incorruptible love I have for what I’m doing every single day. And though I might not be able to adequately articulate it, I think the MamaPop writers know the profundity of what I feel. In fact, I’m absolutely sure they know.
At BlogHer this past weekend, MamaPop threw an amazing party. And here’s a secret I’ll share with you: I didn’t put all of that together to impress and entertain the general BlogHer population — though I’m incredibly glad people had a great time, and that the online community we’re a part of embraced The Joy of Unicorns. The whole time I was planning the party, making arrangements and purchases, I was thinking about the MamaPop writers. That party was for them, and if there’s anyone I wanted to ‘impress,’ it was them. Right before the party Friday night, all of the writers met up at the Chi Bar in the Sheraton, and I handed out some small gifts, and teared up saying a few flailing words about how awesome they are, and about how thankful I am to have each of them in my work-life and in my life-life. And at some point I told them that the whole thing, the party, all of it, was for them, about them, and that I’d just invited 450 of our closest friends to enjoy it with us. That’s how I felt. That, for me, was the truth of it. That was my motivation.
Throwing a party of that scale costs a ridiculous amount of money, and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without some very generous sponsors. But I never for a second felt I could, should, or had to in any way compromise my sense of personal integrity for that funding. I am many things, both good and not-so-good, but if there’s anything I am consistently relative to MamaPop — and I think Amy and Catherine, the two people who’ve worked most closely with me online, would readily attest to this — it would be uncompromising and stubborn as shit (or is that two things? Meh.). I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I just want to do things MY way, because I’m right, goddammit (AND YOU WILL BOW DOWN BEFORE ME!!! (kidding)). I’m kind of an asshole like that, but pointedly so. Lucky for me, the sponsors we had for our party were INFINITELY laid back, and put an enormous amount of trust in me and my judgment, all but saying “Here’s some money, knock yourself out.” I never had to bend over, kiss ass, make promises I didn’t feel comfortable with, or in any other way compromise. Maybe this is unusual, I don’t know. Actually, I kind of don’t want to know. Because this is the standard that’s been set, and as far as I’m concerned if there’s to be a Sparklecorn 2010, sponsors better be prepared to line up, rub my feet, and tell me how pretty I am if they want in on the action. OH I KEED. (Well, sort of.)
Last night, as I was writing this post, I joked on Twitter, “Am working on a post that seems to have no beginning, middle, or end. I’m going all Led Zeppelin on your asses and shit.” And that’s not far from the truth, I know. But if all of this meandering discourse on art and commerce and love and money is intended to articulate anything, it’s the message that bloggers don’t have to sell their souls to be decent business people, don’t have to compromise their sense of personal and professional integrity for sponsorship money, don’t have to participate in or accept intrusive, cheesy product shilling as the price to be paid for corporate dollars. The best companies won’t ask that you exchange your sense of integrity and dignity for the opportunity to throw a kick-ass party. They’ll just want to be a part of the awesomeness you create. And, if you’re as lucky as I was, they’ll get out on the dance floor beside you and shake it to “SexyBack” when the time comes, because no one — not even the most upstanding, composed corporate suit — can resist the charms of Mr. Timberlake.
. . . . .
*For obvious reasons this song has been on my mind these past few days, as I’ve been mulling things over:
Pavement, “Cut Your Hair”
