Nina Badzin: 0:05

Welcome to another episode of Dear Nina Conversations About Friendship. Today I have a very special guest, my friend and, i’d say, a colleague too in this podcast world. You may have known her as Scary Mommy. I have known her as Jill since college. I have Jill Smokler with me today.

Nina Badzin: 0:23

Jill now hosts the podcast. She’s Got Issues which she describes like this I’ve got a ton of issues and I’m pretty sure you do too. So let’s use this space to open up about hard stuff, the parts of life we don’t usually talk about and the parts we really should. She covers so many good, juicy and important topics for women in midlife, In the same honest and fearless approach she had for young moms when she started Scary Mommy. But today we’re not talking about podcasting.

Nina Badzin: 0:49

We are diving back to a time of the early blogging days, i’d say around 2008 to 2015 on average. I’ve been thinking lately about what a new world that was at the time, with all these new online friends to be leaving heartfelt and vulnerable comments on each other’s writing and to be developing real friendships with people you never met in real life. That seems kind of normal now, but it really wasn’t. It was new. There was also a negative side. There were clicks, there was jealousy and there were hard feelings. We will discuss it all, covering what it meant to us and what we think it meant to others too. I’m very excited to finally welcome Jill Smokler to Deanna.

Jill Smokler: 1:26

Hi Jill, hi Nina. I’m so excited to have this conversation. I love this and people don’t talk about it. I feel like it was so smart of you to want to broach the subjects.

Nina Badzin: 1:37

Well, sometimes you and I talk about it offline and I was like we really should talk about this. There’s a lot of us out there, right?

Jill Smokler: 1:43

I think it’s interesting for the readers too, who followed along with our lives and may not have known about the community behind the scenes. They have seen us sharing each other on a blog role, but not really know the dynamics at conferences, and it was all very mysterious.

Nina Badzin: 2:01

Yeah, let’s dive in What I wanted to talk about first. we’re not going to go into the whole history of scary mommy, because people can find that anywhere and should. Jill has had amazing articles everywhere. I’ve written about her, written by her. Let’s go earlier, earlier, because those really focus on how big it got. I want to get back to those roots, what it felt like at the very beginning to all of a sudden realize people were reading your stuff At the beginning it was weird because I was really starting it as a baby book for my family and friends.

Jill Smokler: 2:32

The first comment I was like this is creepy, why is someone else reading it? But very quickly, when I clicked on the link with her name, it went to her blog and then I saw her blog role and I started clicking around and realized there was this whole community of moms and women. I had no idea that it existed.

Nina Badzin: 2:52

What platform are you using? at the time, there was WordPresscom and there was WordPressorg. Ironicallycom was the one that was free, andorg was the one you had to pay for Which was always so weird. Why was that? It was not crazy, yeah, anyway. So I started with the free one for a while. What did you start with?

Jill Smokler: 3:08

That was even more evolved than me. I was on blogger. That’s how OG you were.

Nina Badzin: 3:12

You were just so yes.

Jill Smokler: 3:14

Yes, but I was smart enough from the beginning to get the domain. I always had the scarymommycom, which was very good from the get go. But, yep, it was blogger and it was for a long time. Whenever I commented, it was scarymommyblogspotcom, because I couldn’t figure out how to link it. But yeah, so way back when I had four really close bloggy friends, they just commented on my site and I followed over to theirs and we just became this little unit. I keep up loosely with two of them. One of them I’ve kind of last touched with, but we would be the first to comment on each other’s posts. We were each other’s people. Back then You needed someone to help propel you. It’s so isolating and lonely blogging by yourself.

Nina Badzin: 4:01

It’s really like real life in that way. It’s like showing up in the lunch room and having no one to sit with on the first day of school, if nobody ever comments on your stuff, and then, yes, you’re so grateful at the time. I remember being so grateful for a human being showing up and being like oh, i’m not just talking to myself, but the fact that any of us signed up for these accounts, it’s a course we wanted people to read it. I think to deny otherwise that maybe a first one, because you were so early, i could see that. But as time marched on, anybody who understood what blogging was and signed up for an account to start a blog was hoping to have readers.

Jill Smokler: 4:35

Oh, a thousand percent, and it’s addictive. I got over my icky feeling really fast and then I was in it. I mean, these were the days when not only did you respond to a comment on your blog, but you also would go to the other person’s blog and read a blog post and comment. And it wasn’t just like the way the Facebook buttons are now, like oh my God, i agree, whatever, you have to really read it and comment. So you got really invested in these people’s lives And it felt like responsibility. I remember Jeff giving me, my ex-husband giving me such a hard time because I would just stay up until midnight, one o’clock in the morning, just blog hopping And he was like you’re acting like it’s a job. I was like it is a job. In my world it is a job.

Nina Badzin: 5:22

Everything about this is such fun. nostalgia Just the word blog hopping made me smile.

Nina Badzin: 5:28

But you’re right, if you took it seriously to reciprocate, it was like a job And that’s why, in some ways, it also is like real friendship. You cannot have a real friendship work. You are never, ever, ever reaching out to the person. I talk a lot about how it doesn’t need to be equal, because people who are waiting for it to be equal. It doesn’t work because sometimes people are just better at reaching out. But in the blog world, if you are constantly leaving comments for someone else and they never came back, of course you’d stop reading theirs. That was just like a no-brainer.

Jill Smokler: 5:56

That was how it was And it’s so, not how it is now. I mean, if a celebrity or a whatever of the equivalent and influencer actually replies with three words, it’s like people are giddy and it’s amazing. I can’t imagine them taking the time to read a real essay and really leave thoughtful comments. It’s just not the way things are anymore.

Nina Badzin: 6:16

A couple more memories. You mentioned blog roles. That was like the links on your page.

Jill Smokler: 6:20

Right, it was where you would list the RSS feed of all the other blogs. So when they posted, their blog name would come up and the latest post name would come up. So it was like a refreshed feed on your own blog. So it was sort of like a little gift that you gave the people that you were sending them your visitors to. People updated it And then, as blogging evolved, there were some people that would charge for appearing on their blog role or having a little button on their sidebar, because there were buttons back then.

Nina Badzin: 6:51

Ooh, sidebars, just the word sidebar got me excited. I love nostalgia, you know. It’s funny because I recently did an episode about college friendships and focused on the 90s a lot. We’re talking here really about a whole chunk of time later. This isn’t right. When we graduated college, it’s about 10 years later, so there’s like lost gears in there. I don’t even know what happened between 1998 and 2008 when we graduated in 99. You know what I just thought about, something You might be the first person I knew who had a baby. I was pretty soon after you.

Nina Badzin: 7:23

I do remember you getting married really young. I got married soon after you having that baby And so doing this blogging thing was new for us. There might have been a couple of people obviously they were doing it a little before, but even blogger it doesn’t exist anymore as a Google enterprise, wasn’t that Google?

Jill Smokler: 7:40

Didn’t they own that Yep, yep.

Nina Badzin: 7:41

Yep, they went away with that. I wonder why. But that, gary, remember the blog role. I never knew that people charged. You also mentioned something else the days of the week. What was that?

Jill Smokler: 7:51

In the early days you’d have themed days of the week, i see, like Flashback Friday and Throwback Thursday. Now on Instagram or at least I used to So it was that type of thing. Food bloggers would have Meatless Mondays but a lot of like Flashback Fridays, but they wouldn’t just be a picture, it would be like a whole essay, a whole story. Yeah, it was just like a nicer version of what Instagram is now.

Nina Badzin: 8:15

Think about all the time it took, all the time it took to write those pieces. But what it gave people was a deadline and it gave you sort of a writing prompt. But that’s what they were. They were writing prompts that you would have to think about.

Jill Smokler: 8:26

Well, because that’s the other thing. Back then there was the pressure to put out content every day, and it wasn’t just a picture, it was a full essay that you edited, that you needed to find an image. For that you had to respond, to deal with all the comments, for that you had to plan ahead for all the stuff. It was a lot of effort to put out a blog post today, and I don’t know if you ever did this, but on the days when I for some reason didn’t have a blog post or couldn’t blog, i would write an apology to my readers.

Jill Smokler: 8:55

I’m so sorry that I don’t have a post today. I’ll promise I’ll have one tomorrow, but for today I have a flashback for you, so go read this post from 2009.

Nina Badzin: 9:06

I never did the everyday thing, which probably didn’t help. I was nowhere near the heights that you reached, not even close, i think. One thing I did that I tried to fix with the podcasting because, by the way, podcasting is in a way like blogging 2.0. I’ve taken a lot of what I learned and wish I had done differently then and done it differently for this, which is, i never had a niche. So for podcasting, obviously I have leaned into the niche of friendship, which I’ve written about for a long time, but I’ve written about other things too. I decided to just take this one and go with it because I love it so much.

Nina Badzin: 9:37

But with the writing I was always dancing all over the place. I think I kind of fancied myself someone who was writing about writing which, by the way, gets real old, real fast And I didn’t want to be pinned into parenting, even though I did write a lot about parenting, a lot. But I never had a cute name, so I was always just NinaBadsoncom. That’s still my URL And it’s helpful to have something that isn’t just your name, something that tells people what you’re doing. And so Scary Mommy was brilliant because it said we’re going to be truthful about what this is like, but also there are pieces of this parenting journey that are terrifying And that’s why we have to laugh about it. I mean, i had like a lot of meanings in my mind.

Jill Smokler: 10:15

It totally did, which I loved because it happened somewhat accidentally. My youngest was calling everything scary and said the term Scary Mommy And I was like that’s a perfect blog name. It really also represented the real, authentic side of parenthood And it became sort of a rallying cry. I loved all of what it came to represent And that was what I did in college was branding and graphic design. I love that stuff And before I even, i think before I wrote a blog post or maybe after my first one, i designed the logo. Like that was getting the brand down. Once I sold the site the name became a big hindrance for them. They felt it really, like you were saying, sort of pigeonholed the site into very young motherhood, which made sense. But as they wanted to appeal to a larger crowd, i think the word mommy sort of was a turnoff to that, But say lovey Yeah not my problem anymore.

Nina Badzin: 11:09

Well, actually I’m glad you brought up the word mommy, because that was sort of part of the universe of blogging And you brought up food bloggers too. There was like a whole other world, but you and I were plugged into the same world And I never liked to use the word mommy myself. It sounded not with yours. That’s interesting, because yours had an edge to it. It sounded like cloying.

Jill Smokler: 11:29

It’s like yes, something, Yeah, ew, I agree, But I feel like the scary offset it so it doesn’t have that same baby center. Annoying vanilla perfectness to it.

Nina Badzin: 11:43

Yes it’s true, people pitch me for my podcast talking about mommy friends And it turns me off. I never used that expression. As a parent myself, i might have said mom friends, i guess, but not even really. They’re just friends, i don’t know. Now, though, i do say blogging friends and I have said writing friends and I work friends. I mean, i use those expressions. I never liked the expression mommy friends. I don’t know what my deal is, and I think from the writing perspective, it’s like people were putting it down kind of in a way. Yeah, we saw this with Heather Armstrong passing very sad, and there was a whole thing about how so many of the articles written about her it’s like the headline was still mommy blogger And then all the information about her. I think that maybe also Jill is what brought this conversation back into my mind actually.

Jill Smokler: 12:28

No, i think you’re right. It brought blogging back into many people’s minds and the olden days and how it used to be. I never minded the term mommy blogger, because I very much was. That was quite literally what I was doing. I think Heather started years and years before, when she was single and documented her journey throughout her life, but mine was very limited to my mommy experience, so I always found that to be a very fitting description.

Nina Badzin: 12:58

Do you remember when it turned and by it I mean in this case for you you got into like a whole different category where there’s no way you could be leaving comments for people anymore? Like you did become that person who people would still come and leave comments for, whether or not you were leaving comments back, and people wanted to write for your site. So I wrote for your site a couple of times. I remember personally not wanting a blog, even because I was like publishing short stories and literary magazines. You know, I was sort of fancy myself, a whole nother kind of person, sort of trying on for size, which is really not who.

Nina Badzin: 13:31

I am at all, but I think I was like trying on a costume of literary person. I wrote a guest post for scary mommy. I mean, you’re part of my origin story of blogging. I’ve told it many times, many places. There were so many comments so quickly. I had three kids at the time. You know I have four, i mean. So this was so early. And then I was like, oh man, even I barely even had a website. I was like I gotta start. This is blogging. You said earlier it was addictive. That was it. Why, god’s name, would I want to have a short story in a literary magazine in print that one person read, and that one person was my mother.

Jill Smokler: 14:02

Right.

Nina Badzin: 14:02

I love to write. Why would I want to just write by myself when I could be writing with an audience?

Jill Smokler: 14:07

It was the best feeling. Something changed. Yeah, i think it was Facebook, it was social media And it was the confessional on the site. I think I kept following up with comments a lot longer. Well then I really had the time to dedicate to it, but then my time started to be spent on corresponding with all of the writers. That started probably a year after I started Scary Mommy.

Jill Smokler: 14:33

I started the Scary Mommy Society, which ran every Tuesday and Thursday, where I would have somebody guest post on my site and I would in return guest post on their site. And then, the bigger it got and the more comments, it just became not sustainable for me to do it in return. But the exposure became enough that it was worthwhile, like you said, for the other person to give me the content. But I think when things really sort of propelled the site into another level was when I added the confessional, and that was an anonymous place where people could leave Twitter length type confessions about motherhood, about marriage, about whatever was going on in their life, and there were anonymous responses like a hug and an oh my God, me too, because of the anonymity and the refresh, refresh, refresh, obsession and fun, you know, sort of like gambling. Somehow that really took off. I think that captured people’s much shorter attention span. That’s when I think the climate kind of changed. Nicole.

Nina Badzin: 15:40

Alling. You hit on something that I want to play a couple of voicemails from some listeners of this show who are also bloggers back in the day about that vulnerability piece. In the case of the confessionals it was anonymous, but in the whole blogging world that is the thing that probably connected people because, just from a friendship perspective, if you’re never going to be vulnerable, it’s hard to really really connect with a person. So here we all were writing about things that really meant a lot to us, sometimes things that would be hard to say to a person, and yet we were able to write them. Andrea Shear, who really has an interesting story of her blogging. I didn’t know her back in the blogging days at all. I met her more through the podcasting. I was on her podcast not that long ago. She had an early group of bloggers that became close and started traveling together And we’re going to listen to her voicemail first.

Speaker 4: 16:32

Hi there Nina. Oh, how fun that you’re talking about the old school blogging scene. I had a blog called Superhero Journal for many years, i think I started in 2002. It was a very quiet place on the internet back then. It was so much easier to gain an audience because there were just so few of us doing that at the time.

Speaker 4: 16:56

I happened to live in San Francisco during those years as well, and I think the only reason I even knew what blogging was was because I was steeped in this particular world in San Francisco that were and all these people were sort of creating these platforms and stuff like that. I was also pretty quickly going through infertility, so I made this decision really early on to start writing really vulnerably and authentically. I wasn’t sure if it was going to hurt my existing business, which was a jewelry business at that time, but in every way, i think it just drew people toward me and people were compelled by that realness And I think that’s sort of what those early days of blogging really felt like was. This is really authentic. These were our online journals. In fact, that’s what I used to call it an online journal And as far as meeting other people, it just kind of quickly became part of that community in San Francisco.

Speaker 4: 17:55

I don’t think I ever thought I was in this sort of in crowd in a certain way, because I just didn’t have quite as much visibility as some of those other sort of OG bloggers, but I would see them at conferences and I guess I was part of that circle in certain ways.

Speaker 4: 18:11

I met a lot of people through blogging, people who were reading my blog and really resonated with it and then reached out to me and then we became in real life friends And, just like every other friendship, some of those went really badly and went south and others I still have to this day. Anytime that you’re making yourself visible through your art and through your creative work, you are attracting people who are a kind of like vibration to you. The other thing I’ll say is that my friend Kelly Ray Roberts she decided this must have been back in 2000. Okay, there’s all these people that we really admire online, but we’ve never really met them. What if I invite all these bloggers to the Oregon coast, to this beach house, and what if we bell hang out for a week? And so she started inviting us one by one, and one of those people was Brinay Brown, actually And we just decided that this was going to be a community that lifted each other up in friendship and allowed each other to shine really bright in our friendship.

Nina Badzin: 19:25

Okay, Jill, did you catch that one of Andrea’s blogging travelmates was Brinay Brown?

Jill Smokler: 19:32

Yeah, i did, and I went in on that trip retroactively. That sounds amazing. Yes, how amazing.

Nina Badzin: 19:39

But it just goes to show the power that was in this world. I caught on to. Andrea use the word community a lot and you and I use it a lot and the word vulnerability and authenticity. Those were the things that felt so new, because before blogging, anybody who wanted to write nonfiction and memoir or whatever I mean there were gatekeepers. You had to get a column in a newspaper or a magazine. You had to publish a book. Back then you had to publish a book with an agent. Now people can get their thoughts out in any number of ways, even just on Twitter or something. I mean you don’t need someone to tell you that you have permission to say things that you feel. But that was huge.

Jill Smokler: 20:17

It really was. All of a sudden, you were your own publisher for the first time. Yeah, it was a very new thing.

Nina Badzin: 20:25

And then Andrea also talked about that jump from not knowing people in real life but really getting to know them deeply online to meeting in real life. And there’s one other voice I want to play from someone who talked about knowing you.

Speaker 3: 20:39

My name is Debbie Gilboa and I go by AskDrG online And the thing that really amazes me about blogging friendships from 10 and more years ago and I’ve seen both these things in my friendship with Jill these friendships have such staying power that, even though some of these women I have never been lucky enough to meet in person or I’ve seen just a few times, i know they’re kids and I’ve seen their highs and lows because people are so authentic and vulnerable and willing to share. And the second thing I wanted to say kind of, i think, comes out of the first thing, and that is the generosity of spirit in these relationships. These are women who, having often never met in real life, know that these are real friendships and do favors and support and lift up and promote and make introductions and are just so generous with their time, with their platform and with their heart. Nobody can be described that way more than Jill.

Jill Smokler: 21:38

Aww, that was the nicest voicemail ever.

Speaker 3: 21:42

Yes, isn’t that nice.

Nina Badzin: 21:43

I was so pleased that she left that and I got to play it for you live. She’s capturing that gratitude that a lot of people felt for like sharing the platform. I mean, it was such an active generosity. She’s right that people develop their own audiences and then would share it with someone else. I don’t know if you remember this trend. I absolutely hated it and refused to participate in it. There was a thing on Twitter called Triber. Does that sound familiar to you?

Jill Smokler: 22:10

Yes, but I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I do remember it.

Nina Badzin: 22:13

It was horrible. If you wanted to participate, you would sign up to be like part of a tribe and then you would automatically be sharing each other’s posts on.

Nina Badzin: 22:22

Twitter And I did not like that because it turned social media. It wasn’t just that. There were probably other things like that where people maybe had unofficial agreements to do that also. I never had an agreement like that with anybody. That was a more formalized agreement. This became another thing where it was very clear like, oh, this person always shares this person. I’m like very petty. but then social media just turned into white noise.

Speaker 3: 22:43

You knew that no one had read that stuff.

Nina Badzin: 22:45

You’re telling me this is stunning, beautiful heartbreak.

Jill Smokler: 22:47

Exactly You’ve never read something so moving. Really. It’s Instagram and Facebook comments. Now It could just be AI responding to it. There’s nothing of substance. You reminded me, though, with the early OG group, i was telling you about the four women we had formed, for a brief period of time, it’s own tribe of mommy bloggers who would comment on each other’s things and support each other and promote each other. It was called Moxie, and we had this ambassador that was like a doll and we, like, sent it around the country to all the different people who were bloggers. It was like this whole thing, but it was before. There were really strong communities and that bridged into in person And it was cool. Those early days were fun and things weren’t being done, so there were so many new ways to bring people together and it was all just felt so innovative and fresh.

Nina Badzin: 23:41

Yeah, And then technology had to sort of catch up And it had to ruin everything. A couple more comments from listeners and blogging friends. Rivki Silver said the blogging world feels like ages and ages ago, but it was so all-encompassing back then. I remember the feeling of healthy and not so healthy competition, seeing where other bloggers were cross posting, who was getting what award and who had been featured on HuffPost. Remember that Seeing the array of my work was also featured on icons at the bottom of a blog’s homepage Was a major impetus. Right, I know I love, I knew you love. This comment Was a major impetus for me to start submitting my work to other publications, which eventually led to my current writing work. And that, by the way, is true for me too. That’s me, Nina, interrupting. Okay, Back to Rivki.

Nina Badzin: 24:27

She said through connecting with other bloggers and readers, my world was expanded so much that I think it was really the start of those online relationships where you feel a sense of intimacy with someone because you’re reading about their life and commenting and sharing It forms a bond. It’s a real relationship with a give and take, And the next levels were things like talking shop, recommending different graphic artists or web designers and, of course, the actual meeting a person, which on occasion was awkward but sometimes really nice. So while I never felt part of the in-crowd, I do have some friendships like ours. Thanks, Rivki. That lasts to this day And that’s worth more than any blogging award whatever have been worth.

Jill Smokler: 25:03

Oh.

Nina Badzin: 25:04

Wasn’t that good.

Jill Smokler: 25:05

That was so sweet. But those blogging awards, those really they could make you feel good. They were just so comical because they were just these made up awards that you would be queef upon people and expect them to be ecstatic. I remember sending them to some bloggers who were very highbrow, like original bloggers, being like I wanted to feature you on my site. You can take this button and put it on your sidebar because you won an award. Yes, the button. You had to make a button. They didn’t respond. Now I feel like quite a moron for that. But yeah, filling up your sidebar and your footer with all the bling, yes, the bling, that was huge.

Nina Badzin: 25:39

But I think when Rivki talks about not totally feeling in the in-crowd, i felt this too. There was awards that people got in conferences, blog her. You know ULG capital HER was huge And I never went to one. I just felt unseen some ways like obviously I’m like working on my own emotional issues here. I don’t know We’re going to get back to that again with the negative thing. I have one more comment I want to read from my friend, former guest. We also met through the blogging world, ruhi Koval in Cleveland. She said and I thought this was so succinct and true She said the conversations I had on my blog that I’d never have in real life. That was exhilarating. The negativity I got online that I would never have gotten in real life often made me question why on earth I did it. I thought she’ll that that is the perfect segue to talking about some of the less than positive parts of blogging it was not all besties and everybody reciprocating and everybody feeling good.

Nina Badzin: 26:37

Let’s just talk about the negativity. I didn’t have a ton of it because I just wasn’t as big, but for you, with such a huge platform, that had to be a thing.

Jill Smokler: 26:46

It took a while for it to set in. I did an article on CNN’s website that got a lot of traction and that brought in some negativity, but I really didn’t deal with that much, aside from a really hot button topic now or then. But it really would be more from a guest than from me personally. It really didn’t start until the 2016 election and then things just raged it up to a crazy, crazy level because I was very vocal about my feelings about Trump and really turned off a good at least half of the readership. That brought a ton of negativity, but up until that point it really wasn’t so bad.

Nina Badzin: 27:28

It’s lucky for you that it wasn’t. I think people did deal with some mean comments. One thing I dealt with that really bugged me. It wasn’t from readers really. It was more like from real life people, families, some friends. They would kind of just have this are you still doing that blogging thing? The money piece would be a question. People ask me that too. sometimes with podcasting. I just feel like it’s no one’s business. It is so rude, like how you’re making that work. I cannot stand it. I’d be five years into it. Someone would be like what’s a blog? What is that? I’d be like come on, you know what a blog is by now.

Jill Smokler: 28:02

Yeah, there was not a hell of a lot of respect for blogging the way there seems to be with influencers now. It’s much cooler and trendy and hot to be an influencer. We didn’t have that with blogging. It was never the cool thing to do, it was kind of dorky. We were in our closets writing in the middle of the night.

Nina Badzin: 28:21

It didn’t have the pizzazz of the influencer thing. Now people do roll their eyes at influencers too, but at least they’re making a lot of money, the way this society is like. That counts for something, i guess, even though no one really knows how authentic, what we had was authenticity.

Jill Smokler: 28:38

Well, because it started with the likes and shares and then it was money. Now it’s like how can you not be driven by it? I had my likes on Instagram. So I don’t see it because I just don’t want to get caught up into numbers, because I know how obsessed I get and I just don’t want to ever get to that place. It’s really addictive and hard not to.

Nina Badzin: 29:00

That is a negative piece of it. Riff, you touched on that with the competition. I love that she brought up Huffington Post.

Jill Smokler: 29:06

Those were the days.

Nina Badzin: 29:07

Right, that was a switch back to the money thing that’s related to that. That really got writers for other websites and magazines and newspapers upset because Huffington Post wasn’t paying writers at that time.

Jill Smokler: 29:20

Well right, That was something else that I did want to fess up about was it wasn’t completely altruistic that I was giving people this platform. It was also content that I was providing that I didn’t have to write.

Nina Badzin: 29:32

There was that benefit to it also, As I teach these writing classes, I’m always trying to tell people you’re in a more powerful position as a writer who’s trying to get published than you think. There are so many places out there desperate for content So desperate.

Jill Smokler: 29:46

That’s just what everyone’s looking for. Everything is just getting recycled and recycled and recycled, because people are desperate for new content to share.

Nina Badzin: 29:54

And now with AI, maybe less so. Maybe they don’t need so much content, but they should, because it’s so choppy reading that stuff.

Jill Smokler: 30:00

That’s awful.

Nina Badzin: 30:01

You said something before we started our episode or in the past couple of days that really surprised me. I’ve been talking about on this episode and I’ve said it to you, that I always felt a little on the outside, never went to conferences And I felt like I just didn’t know the right people, wasn’t in with the right people. And you said the same thing that you felt on the outside. I was actually shocked to hear you say that. Can you say a little more about that?

Jill Smokler: 30:23

Really? Yeah, i did, because I wasn’t the first wave of bloggers, i was kind of the second wave that came in. I’m a little self-conscious about not feeling like an official writer, because I went to art school and I gravitate towards graphic design and that’s where I really feel comfortable. So I always felt like the original bloggers were really almost professional writers and they were a level beyond me And I just was a little intimidated by them. It was also really clicky, honestly, and in retrospect I wonder how much of it was clicky and how much of it was just a bunch of introverts being introverted together, because that’s what we do And I have a better understanding of that now.

Jill Smokler: 31:06

But the community, yeah, it wasn’t very welcoming to me at the beginning. I remember my first blog, her I spent a lot of time in my room crying, not exaggerating. My second blog, her I had a mediocre time because you could go as a new person And at least back in that day there were all these private parties and events and everybody had plans and the conference wasn’t really what you were going for, it was all the extra stuff. But if nobody knew you, you didn’t go to any of the extra stuff. And then the Scary Mommy growth. I didn’t go to conferences for a couple of years And those were the years when Scary Mommy really exploded. When I went back it was a whole different ballgame and people knew who I was. They wanted to get on the site. I had books that were out. It was very different And I sort of was like looking for the people who shunned me at first. Hey now.

Nina Badzin: 32:00

When you came back a couple of years later with so much success New York Times best selling books it had to feel intimidating to other new people And so you probably could see from that point of view, you couldn’t possibly connect with every single person. I do want to address your writing for a second. I’m not just saying this because we’re friends. Part of Scary Mommy’s success I will die on this hill was what a natural, authentic writer you are, are and were, and I told you that then. You probably don’t remember because you had a lot of people talking to you. But you’re so funny and so natural And sometimes it’s that untrained person who’s just making observations about real life in the real world and just saying what you feel. It was excellent. That’s why it caught on. It’s why it felt original and not like the same thing people had read a million times.

Jill Smokler: 32:47

So thank you. You’re one of those people who I think of as the real writers who I aspire to be and really have a lot of admiration for.

Nina Badzin: 32:58

Oh, thank you Me, my tiny audience.

Jill Smokler: 32:59

You know what I mean. So like, and you have an audience now which you’ve built, which is awesome.

Nina Badzin: 33:04

Thank you. One other interesting kind of negative area that could happen with these online relationships. A couple of people have brought this up. Andrea talked a little bit about how it didn’t always go well. You know she had this wonderful group that traveled and Renee Brown and whatnot, But then there was also the times when it kind of went south. Did that happen to you? I mean, maybe that’s hard to talk about.

Jill Smokler: 33:24

Yeah, i think when Scary Mommy really got successful, it did change some of the dynamics of my online friendship. Some of them it didn’t at all and it shouldn’t have. I think some of them resented me. I think there was a lot of resentment. honestly. It got to a point where there is very little that I could do about it, because I wanted to grow the site and I wasn’t apologetic about it. But when you grow with a group of people and everybody wants the same goal and one person is achieving it faster or more than the others, it’s got to cause friction and problems, and I think it definitely did.

Nina Badzin: 34:03

And then there’s the issue of having really good chemistry with a screen between you. You’re leaving comments all these years, that’s wonderful, and then you know you’ll be in person. That’s fine, it’s not negative. It’s totally. But yes, it takes the air out a little bit and there could be no competition, no jealousy. There could be nothing like bad that happened. Maybe meeting a person gets built up and, oh my gosh, and we’re going to both be in the same city and we’re going to have coffee.

Jill Smokler: 34:28

And you can’t go back. You can’t go back to what you had before. Once you meet and it just doesn’t click like that. One of my closest friends now I’ve met through blogging. We’ve known each other for probably 14 years and weren’t super close at first And then, when I got divorced, really became, or separated, very, very tight And yeah, i’d say that’s my biggest relationship that I’ve taken away from blogging. Hi, jenny.

Nina Badzin: 34:54

Shout out to Jenny. I have definitely made a lot of blogging friends that some I’ve never met, but one I am finally going to meet in person in Boulder, a Pam Moore. Shout out to Pam, who was a blogging friend, a podcasting friend.

Nina Badzin: 35:10

She really helped me when I was starting my podcast. I’m going to Boulder, then I’m staying longer, to not only meet her, jill, but to stay with her and her family for a couple days. because we talk a lot, we voice, memo a lot. We’ve never met in person, but I think because we don’t just email and text, we actually speak on the phone it feels like we’ve met. I’m totally optimistic that it’s not going to be an issue, but if it is, i’ll go back and re-edit this episode.

Jill Smokler: 35:37

There have definitely been many, many people who I have had high expectations of meeting and been anxious and excited to meet, and then it’s totally met my expectations and the friendship has only grown. Since I mean, that’s sort of the norm. It’s less common for you just to kind of think, eh, this is mediocre.

Nina Badzin: 35:54

I’d say the final negative taste I would get in my mouth sometimes in the blogging world. And we touched on this a little bit earlier in the episode with a lack of reciprocity. but it was awkward and just like in real life to kind of realize at a certain point you’re doing all the giving And you’re sharing that person’s stuff, you’re commenting on their stuff, whether it was on their website or eventually on Facebook or whatever, and you’re kind of invisible to that person.

Nina Badzin: 36:21

It would take a little bit of social aptitude to kind of realize you know, there’s so many other people who would probably appreciate your readership and attention and shares and just move on. But it’s weird. There’s no official way to end those blogging friendships. They just kind of fizzle out.

Jill Smokler: 36:38

Yeah, it is weird. And it’s weird to keep up with people on Facebook and every now and then see their kids, who are suddenly like 10 years older and you used to be so invested into their lives and you’re just seeing like bits and pieces now because the friendships you make through blogging they’re real.

Nina Badzin: 36:52

I think so too. That used to be a question people would ask can online friendships be real? I don’t see that question anymore.

Jill Smokler: 36:58

No, you don’t have to qualify.

Nina Badzin: 36:59

Of course they’re real, and if you weren’t getting something from it, you would stop connecting with that person. As long as online friendships don’t keep you from making sure you do have some people to hang out with in person, i think it’s all good. I think it adds way more positive than negative.

Jill Smokler: 37:16

I think you’re absolutely right, because it’s all of the good stuff And then you could just shut down your computer when you needed to break, and then you had all the support and the community and everything that you needed. But you need the real stuff too.

Nina Badzin: 37:30

So, jill, the last thing you want to leave the world with. On this topic of old school blogging friendships, i look back on that time so fondly.

Jill Smokler: 37:39

It was like 2008 to 2012, 13. That’s the time that I think Scary Mommy was at its prime and it was the most fulfilling and fun, and it was because of the relationships with people It was. The bigger it got, the fewer real relationships there were And we used to have a really tight-knit community that couldn’t be as tight-knit. So I will always look back so fondly on the early days and the friends and the relationships that Scary Mommy helped form. I think it was the best.

Nina Badzin: 38:10

I love that. That’s such a nice note to end on with you, and I would just add that I also feel like it was a very special time. It wasn’t forever. Each day was so long and we stayed up so late, but now looking back, it was like a slice of our adult life that.

Speaker 3: 38:25

I’m really grateful.

Nina Badzin: 38:26

Yes, we were real little babies with little babies. I do think all positive outweigh the negative And it brought us to stay connected beyond friends And to have a real friend who you can geek out on online stuff.

Jill Smokler: 38:43

I have so much fun talking to you. I could do this all day.

Nina Badzin: 38:46

That’s the best. Well, Jill, thank you so much for giving us your time. I know I have a lot of readers and listeners who are impressed.

Jill Smokler: 38:51

I know you So okay, nina, thank you so much for having me. I always love any chance to see you. Bye.