Category Archive

Publishing

20 year goals

So, today’s my 37th birthday. I celebrated last night by doing a reading at the Salon of Shame from my 1993 diary, about losing my virginity in a turqouise lace bra & panty set from Fredrick’s of Hollywood. (Keepin’ it classy!) As I was flipping through the diary, I stumbled across this little cartoon that I drew almost 20 years ago…

Ignore, delete, try not to engage: one more perspective on dealing with web hate

“There’s this interesting culture of hate on the internet. I don’t know if it’s just that people are angry and feel a relief in releasing their anger online in the form of anonymous online “hate justice” but it’s rough on the receiving end of it. I won’t lie. People seem to think that ugly opinions are the same as constructive criticism and it’s not but there’s no arguing with them about it. They’re not looking for reasons to like you, they’re looking for more reasons to hate you.”

Why do we discourage blog comments on Facebook?

All the Offbeat Empire blogs have corresponding Facebook Fan Pages. Each Page has a feed of posts links that are syndicated from each blog. It’s not the entire post, it’s just a link to the post on the main blog. This means that if you like reading Offbeat Bride’s blog and fan us on Facebook, you’ll see a link to new Offbeat Bride posts from your Facebook newsfeed.

This is all awesome.

However, what’s LESS awesome is that we can’t turn comments off for these syndicated posts.

Wait, you’re saying. Aren’t comments a good thing? Why aren’t you thankful for the comments people are posting on Facebook? Why would you want less comments? OMG SO MANY REASONS.

When is it cultural appropriation and when is it just kids playing dress-up?

Last week we ran a sponsored post for a family photographer that featured this image of two children playing dress-up, one of them in a Native American head-dress.

The photo struck several readers as objectionable. Let’s talk about why, and what it might mean.