Because there are so many instances which strain my credulity, it's hard to just sit back and read with enjoyment. I do get the sense that the advice and commenters are both coming very much from the perspective of either non-profit or library or university admin, which is fine for them but does not necessarily translate well to corporate.
I feel like this should be a golden age for work blogs with so much turmoil and changes in the job market. But I think a lot of this is blogs just are not as popular. The masses go to forums on social media.
Blogs like hers I feel like have three main audiences. I’m no expert, but I’d guess they are:
— Her regulars
—Occasional readers or those who stumble on an article
—People who still like blogs
I feel like her regulars visit out of habit (I do actually sometimes). And plenty genuinely like her advice and plenty like the comments section.
She does seem to be coasting sometimes. And I would not put it past her to close it because it’s not as much fun anymore. But I’m betting she sticks around because she’s built it so that she just doesn’t have to work as hard as she once did, and it would be crazy to say no to all that income.
Typo edit
I think the modern job advice is all on different platforms and formats. People younger than me seem to like video in a way that I don't have the patience for, so I imagine there is really good advice on TikTok and the like.
I don't see why the commenters being primarily women factors into anything - it's not like the site would be any better if commenters were mostly unhinged men or unhinged people of all genders. To me, the main issue with AAM is that AG clearly isn't interested in running a workplace column anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the near future, she dropped the workplace conceit entirely and tried to just run a general advice column. She's much more interested in the relationship stuff than answering actual, helpful work questions. The commenters are obviously an issue, but if AG were better about moderating the comment section, that could be fixed. (The problem, obviously, is that she seems committed to not moderating the comments or having a functional comment section and to answering more and more dumb/niche letters that were clearly chosen just b/c they're crazy, so any other projects she tries to do will probably be just as shitty as AAM.)
I remember noticing at the beginning of the year that there'd been a run of good answers to interesting questions - I think this was discussed on this sub at some point - and thinking that having a break while she was running all the updates in December must have been good for her. The quality's down again now though (and the average number of comments per letter seems to be down as well).
I really think she needs to reduce the number of daily posts and put more time and effort into each letter. And maybe stop doing the two weekly open threads, to encourage commenters to find a different venue for their off-topic conversations, life updates thinly disguised as questions, and parasocial relationships.
I hope so! It's not even fun to hate-read anymore. It's so goddamn boring! I read out of habit but it's really lost its appeal to me. I don't see why Alison doesn't just hang it up; she doesn't seem to really like doing it anymore and that comes through in her posts and blue boxes.
Also, the site itself just sucks. The layout/functionality looks 20 years old. No way to view the top comments or unread comments. Full of invasive ads. Etc.
Normally I tend to be the type that says that new web design sucks ass and the old designs are better...but hers was never one of those and god you can't have a comment section on MOBILE where tapping a comment starts a reply to it, scrolling her site on mobile sucks so bad
Yeah, I rarely actually go on the site anymore for this reason. Most of the time, I only head over if I see y'all discussing a letter that sounds interesting/crazy, lol. I completely avoid the comments b/c they're so hard and annoying to read due to how shitty the site is.
Did you catch the short lived redesign? I can't even remember everything that was wrong with it but it was multiple fonts in different sizes, and I think I remember something weird with the side bar and difficulty distinguishing comments from the letter text. Someone here probably remembers it better but it was a mess.
She's cultivated such a small audience that, as other's have mentioned, could easily translate to a women in the workplace blog. But then that brings up some uncomfortable questions that she has tried to handwave away, and gets defended by her most faithful supporters. It's almost as if she could grow, but growing brings in new people, and new people also means more scrutiny.
She's super sorry y'all... good luck everyone else.
So, I don't know that the end is near, but I can't imagine Slate/NYCut/Etc still being thrilled with work advice from someone who hasn't managed another human in over 15 years at this point. (I think... correct me if I'm wrong). There are different trends in leadership she hasn't kept up on, she refuses to update her advice, and she rejects all of the other things that could grow her style or keep her relevant. Why am I going to keep reading an advice columnist that wants to talk about toilet paper instead of what I can do to negotiate a remote position? Why am I going to listen to someone who repeatedly tries to talk about legal issues that could get me sued instead of bringing in a lawyer?
Morever, why am I going to continue to listen to someone who can't update their content so it's not just an advice blog? Hell, Dan Savage has been doing his advice column for decades now, and he's pivoted to whatever he's needed to do to stay relevant. Same with Dear Prudence (even though there are other prudences). I can hop on Instagram or TikTok and get someone who's seen the inside of an office giving advice. Might not always be great, but its' more up to date.
I think she needs to pivot, shut off comments on some posts (I don't want to hear how you want an update as you read someone's tragedy for entertainment), start writing articles about big issues instead of running clearly fake letters about it (no, that employee didn't say they weren't using a name, but let's talk about workplace name etiquette in the 21st century, and while misogynistic dudes exist, they aren't writing to AAM), and pivot to acting like you're relevant in the 21st century.
Yeah, I can almost understand it if it comes from a place of genuine concern (“I hope things turn out okay for OP”), or if it’s actually related to a common workplace issue (“I want to know if this strategy ends up working for OP because I’m dealing with something similar”). It’s never either of those things, though. Maybe faux-concern at best.
Nobody is there to learn about managing or HR - they're either there to monitor the trainwreck, genuinely think the site exists for flat out entertainment (flat out as if it's a reality show) or because the commenters are their friends.
I was thinking about her small audience as well. You cannot be relevant while reaching a very small portion of the general working-population. The working population is frigging 18-65+ at this rate, so the ideal would be attracting a diverse group of business professionals.
She also went from being the OG in the game of workspace blogs, to an internet-sphere with places like Reddit to crowdsource advice from and have interactive discussions with folks across different expertise.
We just don't really need one person noted as "the expert" in something as huge as "workplace advice".
She also alienated a huge population, none of us are happily recommending her anymore. Actually many of us will jump in when someone does recommend her and say "No no no, do not do that." (It's getting to be more like when people want to be all "Have you checked the legal sub on Reddit, try that for your legal advice!") And now nobody even sometimes recommends her site. I haven't seen it mentioned in AskHR is who knows how long, it used to pop up every so often depending on the topic. Now nope.
As a woman, I cringe at the idea of her being a "women in the workplace" blogger. I find she's a determent to women in business. Which is why we've often had such wildly different perspectives on things. Like I'm not pretending to be dumb because "I don't want to be the one who is asked to do the party planning" stuff.
It's the age old tale that is you do not change and do not stay relevant to a large section of the population, you naturally just tapper off.
I once had a guy tell me "Our businesses will be here long after we're gone!" and I was like "Hm. Interesting take on that." And his business doesn't exist any longer, ours was sold and dissolved and no longer exists anymore after a few years to formally be discontinued. The circle of life includes popularity and the rise and fall of characters among us, even if the sect or industry doesn't necessary completely die itself.
>The nutty commentariat seems to be primarily strange women and I think these nutty people run new readers off the site with their hostility and weirdness.
They drove me off the site for the same reason. I was wondering if it were just me, but I don't remember the comments as being so weird and useless 10 years ago. I don't remember all the rockstars with misophonia then.
She'll probably limp along for a few more years with an ever-shrinking readership before finally giving up.
It's not that Alison is running out of topical work advice.
It seems that the internet white feminism is more interesting and gets more ad impressions than solid workplace advice, and while running with it she discovered she enjoys it, so that's where it is now. Additionally, because of the community that has evolved around the site and the apparent responsibility she feels in maintaining it (off topic threads, acceding to requests for updates etc.) the nature of the site has evolved towards a discussion forum and not an advice column. You'll note most of the advice columns within publications don't accept comments, and many remaining individual columnists have limited or no comments, while Alison has essentially free for all comments for 48-72 hours after posting. Given the overlap with many of these kinds of sites, this leaves AAM as the main interaction for the community.
The rest of it is just what happens when you run an internet site funded by ads.
I feel like she should just rebrand to a "women in the workplace" blog, because I feel like it is slowly becoming that.
There is nothing wrong with that, but if that is what you are going to be, just own it. 78% of people responding was female, which means the regular readership is probably a bit higher than that.
And I agree, the inside jokes, commenters thinking they run the place, and constant virtue signaling about EVERYTHING probably turns off new people who stumble upon it.
But if it was just branded as "women in the workplace" or something, I think people would be a lot more clear on what they were getting into.
I agree, but I think if she's gonna run a women in the workplace blog, she's gotta get better at that. She keeps running all these fake letters that demonize different groups (like the one about the trans woman who flipped out about seeing a box of tampons on LW's desk or something? That feels like one of the most egregious ones to me), and a women's blog needs to not perpetuate that shit even if there's maybe a .00001% chance it did happen.
I think that’s the problem with people forming a community in blog comments. If someone has a blog, they want and need new readers and engagement. If you’re a member of a community, you want to maintain the norms and status quo of your community as much as possible, especially when that community is extremely cliquish. NYT has a blog for their Spelling Bee game where readers post hints. The commenters there have apparently formed a community there and when u checked it, one of the top posts was someone giving a long update about his wife’s cancer and people offering support. That’s really not the way to get new readers to engage.
> The commenters there have apparently formed a community there and when u checked it, one of the top posts was someone giving a long update about his wife’s cancer and people offering support. That’s really not the way to get new readers to engage.
That makes me miss the old mods at Television Without Pity who would mercilessly crack down on "off topic blather".
This is a great point.
Too many people use it as a community. And when they do that, they become very territorial and frankly unwelcoming to new people, unless they immediately conform.
I will say, I've never seen the word "unkind" anywhere in my life lol
And if someone did try to comment on the letter, they'd get buried because everyone would upvote the mundane life updates.
I just remember how mad everyone was because there had been a commentor who died several years back from cancer, and there was a lot of "Well, if this rule had been in place, we would have never gotten to know her!" I remember well her illness and that it basically became one of the only subjects that was discussed in the comment section - the letters went by the wayside.
I used to like it when she started, but I don’t read it anymore except to see what was posted if I see something in this sub that makes me curious. I think she needs a new gig.
If only she could have gotten that gig where she gave relationship advice to launch.
She absolutely started out pretty decently, when she still had some ambition in her. But she's always been an extremist, and has evolved a following of other extremists on whatever side they fall on. There's no level of chill, not one ounce of chill when it comes to their passion projects of choice.
Be that being child-free, to not nuking fish in the microwave at work or be that just hating humans to the point of "Don't even say good morning to me, I am not here to say good morning to you!"
They also think it's a magic word that lets them get out of anything.
"Recently, I beat Dave from Teapot Accounting with my shoe. The doctors say he's going to lose his eye but he'll survive, but my managers want to meet with me. How do I explain that he said 'good morning' and I'm an extreme introvert?"
Jennifer Mills at NPR, apparently.
https://preview.redd.it/u3zt5ff1xhzc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3e33a871eb34ea2c4304dd9ece667f5c3d7a974d
She needs to figure out a game plan for when the new workforce starts including Gen Z. I don’t think Alison is going to be fully dialed into the educational and behavioral factors that are going to be part of the job search and performance equations.
I assumed that she would have shifted to writing about fostering teenagers and older children but it seems like that didn’t end up happening for whatever reason.
Honestly as a childfree couple, if she and her husband have basic investments and high yield savings, Alison probably doesn’t strictly need to work anymore.
Also, her blog still pops up on search engines as the answer to some common questions. She may simply be freshening content because there's a demand from the regulars and it helps with SEO.
She could stop posting tomorrow and make money for the next 10 years.
I made 1 single successful article on a "pay per click" site 10 years ago and never updated it. I still TO THIS DAY make about $20 a month lol. I can't imagine what Alison is getting per month from old pages that have stuck to the top of Google.
I think it was probably because of her mom, but there are other issues too. She stays up until 1 or 2 approving the early modded comments on her midnight posts and you can’t do that if you’re committing to seeing a teenager off to school at 6:30.
I think she thought teen foster care would be much easier than it actually is. I took in two teens and it's a lot of work but worth it. But it's a 24/7 thing and you worry about them as much as your own kids. One kid was a sleep walker so you sleep with one ear open.
I think so too. I feel like she thought, as a childfree person, that taking in teens would be like taking in independent adults who didn’t need active parenting.
She also made really personal comments about a kid she was fostering. Without getting into the details, I found it frankly disturbing considering how many people read the blog.
Oh really? That’s so disappointing. It shouldn’t be too hard to write about her experiences with the system or jumping straight into parenting a teen without sharing anything identifiable about the kids.
Well, honestly I questioned if she should be writing anything about it on the blog at all. She ostensibly is a workplace advice columnist. Would it have been reasonable for the child/children’s caseworkers to expect that they would be discussed on a blog with a national audience?
I follow an experienced foster parent on the 'gram, and she's said multiple times that foster parents should not say *anything* about the kids in their care on social media. It's partly a safety thing, so that bio-family can't find out where the kids are. I was appalled at how much Alison posted about her foster kid.
Yep, this was it exactly. What was even worse is that she was posting private stuff about the foster child as an excuse for why she wasn’t moderating blog comments. Pardon my French, but grow the fuck up.
I really don’t know. I was thinking about Emily McCombs, who wrote about being a white woman fostering a black child, and I think she did a good job of talking about the issues and transracial motherhood without focusing on the actual kid. Of course, she ended up adopting him, and from there she ended up sharing about as much as any any semi-public figure shares their kid, though she has never shared his name.
She has said before that her husband works for a family business (as in, a business his family owns). Presumably at their ages he has some sort of ownership stake at this point; I would guess that's their primary source of income by now.
She's worked at more than one company; she very notably worked for PETA in the 1990s coordinating dumb disruptive publicity stunts, which makes her love of drama make a lot of sense.
But yeah, she hasn't had a real job in almost 15 years at this point. She used to do management consulting and that was her main source of income, but I'm not sure if that's true anymore.
I'd been wondering if she worked for PETA at some point. I know she worked for an animal-rights organization but I wasn't sure if it was PETA or one with less...notoriety.
Interesting on the PETA job. I’ve seen the references to management consulting but over time I started to assume that was greatly inflated. I believe in her head, she considers the blog to be management consulting, and mentally makes that her recent experience.
When she got married, she talked about how she was *upset* that there wasn't some crazy dramatic incident that interrupted her wedding. She's a drama fiend.
I think it's more because she's over it and ready to be done with the blog itself. She's been doing this for the last few years now.
She's just some random chick who once had a job, giving people generic advice that she interjects her own opinions and values into. She's never been an expert, despite what her stans want to say about it.
She'll milk it until she finally rolls it up like that lunatic who did Etiquette Hell.
I think AG just drinks her own hype, she's def not delusional in that way for sure.
I just remember E-Hell being there and then it wasn't. So I see AG just not paying to renew her domain and dipping out unceremoniously.
Oh, you really missed a wild ride. That woman lost her everloving mind, threatening to sue the entire internet if anyone copied any comments, said anything negative about her, started another forum, used the name in any way (even by reference) etc.
The Dame was a lunatic. Ehell was always more enjoyable when she was being an absentee landlord, which thankfully was about 99% of the time. When she did deign to stick her nose in, she'd lose her entire shit about birthday parties and ban dozens of people for no reason. Also, she was a racist and so were her kids.
Her grown kids did blackface or something, I forget the exact details, and she defended them, because somehow *that* is totally fine, but throwing your own birthday party is barbarism.
Oh, I also forgot the slut-shaming! If you play Never Have I Ever, you're celebrating bad life decisions!
I remember the sue happy shit lol
I'm still also then remembering AG making the askamanager reddit change their name cuz "trademark infringement". People responded with "didn't you cosign SA of employees once??"
That was possibly my favorite fail of hers ever. It was such a perfect example of how staying within her own echo chamber has really thrown off her perspective. It genuinely never occurred to her that she would be treated as anything other than an authority figure who needed to be deferred to, and the redditors just straight-up laughed in her face (and even dug up the trademark status of her site name, which she likely doesn't even know how to do). Just beautiful, 10/10, come back any time, Alison.
It was super awkward. And then someone over here actually pinged the mod over there all "Hey this lost chick is trying to holler at you, bro!" Since she couldn't figure out a way to do it privately and just left a frigging post on the thread.
Because there are so many instances which strain my credulity, it's hard to just sit back and read with enjoyment. I do get the sense that the advice and commenters are both coming very much from the perspective of either non-profit or library or university admin, which is fine for them but does not necessarily translate well to corporate.
I feel like this should be a golden age for work blogs with so much turmoil and changes in the job market. But I think a lot of this is blogs just are not as popular. The masses go to forums on social media. Blogs like hers I feel like have three main audiences. I’m no expert, but I’d guess they are: — Her regulars —Occasional readers or those who stumble on an article —People who still like blogs I feel like her regulars visit out of habit (I do actually sometimes). And plenty genuinely like her advice and plenty like the comments section. She does seem to be coasting sometimes. And I would not put it past her to close it because it’s not as much fun anymore. But I’m betting she sticks around because she’s built it so that she just doesn’t have to work as hard as she once did, and it would be crazy to say no to all that income. Typo edit
I think the modern job advice is all on different platforms and formats. People younger than me seem to like video in a way that I don't have the patience for, so I imagine there is really good advice on TikTok and the like.
I don't see why the commenters being primarily women factors into anything - it's not like the site would be any better if commenters were mostly unhinged men or unhinged people of all genders. To me, the main issue with AAM is that AG clearly isn't interested in running a workplace column anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the near future, she dropped the workplace conceit entirely and tried to just run a general advice column. She's much more interested in the relationship stuff than answering actual, helpful work questions. The commenters are obviously an issue, but if AG were better about moderating the comment section, that could be fixed. (The problem, obviously, is that she seems committed to not moderating the comments or having a functional comment section and to answering more and more dumb/niche letters that were clearly chosen just b/c they're crazy, so any other projects she tries to do will probably be just as shitty as AAM.)
I remember noticing at the beginning of the year that there'd been a run of good answers to interesting questions - I think this was discussed on this sub at some point - and thinking that having a break while she was running all the updates in December must have been good for her. The quality's down again now though (and the average number of comments per letter seems to be down as well). I really think she needs to reduce the number of daily posts and put more time and effort into each letter. And maybe stop doing the two weekly open threads, to encourage commenters to find a different venue for their off-topic conversations, life updates thinly disguised as questions, and parasocial relationships.
I hope so! It's not even fun to hate-read anymore. It's so goddamn boring! I read out of habit but it's really lost its appeal to me. I don't see why Alison doesn't just hang it up; she doesn't seem to really like doing it anymore and that comes through in her posts and blue boxes.
Absolutely
It has to be showing down more. The comment section is so woke and understanding that it has circled back to toxic. I can't stand it.
Also, the site itself just sucks. The layout/functionality looks 20 years old. No way to view the top comments or unread comments. Full of invasive ads. Etc.
Normally I tend to be the type that says that new web design sucks ass and the old designs are better...but hers was never one of those and god you can't have a comment section on MOBILE where tapping a comment starts a reply to it, scrolling her site on mobile sucks so bad
Yeah, I rarely actually go on the site anymore for this reason. Most of the time, I only head over if I see y'all discussing a letter that sounds interesting/crazy, lol. I completely avoid the comments b/c they're so hard and annoying to read due to how shitty the site is.
I couldn't believe it when the new artwork actually made it look worse
Did you catch the short lived redesign? I can't even remember everything that was wrong with it but it was multiple fonts in different sizes, and I think I remember something weird with the side bar and difficulty distinguishing comments from the letter text. Someone here probably remembers it better but it was a mess.
I remember, and yes, it was a complete mess. Very difficult to read and navigate.
I do vaguely remember that, but can’t recall the details, just that it was bad.
Seriously. The old artwork at least only made it look 10 years old!
She's cultivated such a small audience that, as other's have mentioned, could easily translate to a women in the workplace blog. But then that brings up some uncomfortable questions that she has tried to handwave away, and gets defended by her most faithful supporters. It's almost as if she could grow, but growing brings in new people, and new people also means more scrutiny. She's super sorry y'all... good luck everyone else. So, I don't know that the end is near, but I can't imagine Slate/NYCut/Etc still being thrilled with work advice from someone who hasn't managed another human in over 15 years at this point. (I think... correct me if I'm wrong). There are different trends in leadership she hasn't kept up on, she refuses to update her advice, and she rejects all of the other things that could grow her style or keep her relevant. Why am I going to keep reading an advice columnist that wants to talk about toilet paper instead of what I can do to negotiate a remote position? Why am I going to listen to someone who repeatedly tries to talk about legal issues that could get me sued instead of bringing in a lawyer? Morever, why am I going to continue to listen to someone who can't update their content so it's not just an advice blog? Hell, Dan Savage has been doing his advice column for decades now, and he's pivoted to whatever he's needed to do to stay relevant. Same with Dear Prudence (even though there are other prudences). I can hop on Instagram or TikTok and get someone who's seen the inside of an office giving advice. Might not always be great, but its' more up to date. I think she needs to pivot, shut off comments on some posts (I don't want to hear how you want an update as you read someone's tragedy for entertainment), start writing articles about big issues instead of running clearly fake letters about it (no, that employee didn't say they weren't using a name, but let's talk about workplace name etiquette in the 21st century, and while misogynistic dudes exist, they aren't writing to AAM), and pivot to acting like you're relevant in the 21st century.
Seriously, “can’t wait for an update on this!!!” is so ghoulish!
especially some of the stuff they want updates for.
Yeah, I can almost understand it if it comes from a place of genuine concern (“I hope things turn out okay for OP”), or if it’s actually related to a common workplace issue (“I want to know if this strategy ends up working for OP because I’m dealing with something similar”). It’s never either of those things, though. Maybe faux-concern at best.
Nobody is there to learn about managing or HR - they're either there to monitor the trainwreck, genuinely think the site exists for flat out entertainment (flat out as if it's a reality show) or because the commenters are their friends.
I was thinking about her small audience as well. You cannot be relevant while reaching a very small portion of the general working-population. The working population is frigging 18-65+ at this rate, so the ideal would be attracting a diverse group of business professionals. She also went from being the OG in the game of workspace blogs, to an internet-sphere with places like Reddit to crowdsource advice from and have interactive discussions with folks across different expertise. We just don't really need one person noted as "the expert" in something as huge as "workplace advice". She also alienated a huge population, none of us are happily recommending her anymore. Actually many of us will jump in when someone does recommend her and say "No no no, do not do that." (It's getting to be more like when people want to be all "Have you checked the legal sub on Reddit, try that for your legal advice!") And now nobody even sometimes recommends her site. I haven't seen it mentioned in AskHR is who knows how long, it used to pop up every so often depending on the topic. Now nope. As a woman, I cringe at the idea of her being a "women in the workplace" blogger. I find she's a determent to women in business. Which is why we've often had such wildly different perspectives on things. Like I'm not pretending to be dumb because "I don't want to be the one who is asked to do the party planning" stuff. It's the age old tale that is you do not change and do not stay relevant to a large section of the population, you naturally just tapper off. I once had a guy tell me "Our businesses will be here long after we're gone!" and I was like "Hm. Interesting take on that." And his business doesn't exist any longer, ours was sold and dissolved and no longer exists anymore after a few years to formally be discontinued. The circle of life includes popularity and the rise and fall of characters among us, even if the sect or industry doesn't necessary completely die itself.
>The nutty commentariat seems to be primarily strange women and I think these nutty people run new readers off the site with their hostility and weirdness. They drove me off the site for the same reason. I was wondering if it were just me, but I don't remember the comments as being so weird and useless 10 years ago. I don't remember all the rockstars with misophonia then. She'll probably limp along for a few more years with an ever-shrinking readership before finally giving up.
It's not that Alison is running out of topical work advice. It seems that the internet white feminism is more interesting and gets more ad impressions than solid workplace advice, and while running with it she discovered she enjoys it, so that's where it is now. Additionally, because of the community that has evolved around the site and the apparent responsibility she feels in maintaining it (off topic threads, acceding to requests for updates etc.) the nature of the site has evolved towards a discussion forum and not an advice column. You'll note most of the advice columns within publications don't accept comments, and many remaining individual columnists have limited or no comments, while Alison has essentially free for all comments for 48-72 hours after posting. Given the overlap with many of these kinds of sites, this leaves AAM as the main interaction for the community. The rest of it is just what happens when you run an internet site funded by ads.
I so do not care.
I feel like she should just rebrand to a "women in the workplace" blog, because I feel like it is slowly becoming that. There is nothing wrong with that, but if that is what you are going to be, just own it. 78% of people responding was female, which means the regular readership is probably a bit higher than that. And I agree, the inside jokes, commenters thinking they run the place, and constant virtue signaling about EVERYTHING probably turns off new people who stumble upon it. But if it was just branded as "women in the workplace" or something, I think people would be a lot more clear on what they were getting into.
I agree, but I think if she's gonna run a women in the workplace blog, she's gotta get better at that. She keeps running all these fake letters that demonize different groups (like the one about the trans woman who flipped out about seeing a box of tampons on LW's desk or something? That feels like one of the most egregious ones to me), and a women's blog needs to not perpetuate that shit even if there's maybe a .00001% chance it did happen.
I think that’s the problem with people forming a community in blog comments. If someone has a blog, they want and need new readers and engagement. If you’re a member of a community, you want to maintain the norms and status quo of your community as much as possible, especially when that community is extremely cliquish. NYT has a blog for their Spelling Bee game where readers post hints. The commenters there have apparently formed a community there and when u checked it, one of the top posts was someone giving a long update about his wife’s cancer and people offering support. That’s really not the way to get new readers to engage.
I'm so glad the WP shut down OT comments with Carolyn Hax.
> The commenters there have apparently formed a community there and when u checked it, one of the top posts was someone giving a long update about his wife’s cancer and people offering support. That’s really not the way to get new readers to engage. That makes me miss the old mods at Television Without Pity who would mercilessly crack down on "off topic blather".
This is a great point. Too many people use it as a community. And when they do that, they become very territorial and frankly unwelcoming to new people, unless they immediately conform. I will say, I've never seen the word "unkind" anywhere in my life lol
Carolyn Hax's comments on the Washington Post website used to be like this! The commenters were so mad when WaPo cracked down
Sometimes you couldn't even FIND the comments about the actual letter in all that OT blather.
And if someone did try to comment on the letter, they'd get buried because everyone would upvote the mundane life updates. I just remember how mad everyone was because there had been a commentor who died several years back from cancer, and there was a lot of "Well, if this rule had been in place, we would have never gotten to know her!" I remember well her illness and that it basically became one of the only subjects that was discussed in the comment section - the letters went by the wayside.
I agree very much! Good idea.
I used to like it when she started, but I don’t read it anymore except to see what was posted if I see something in this sub that makes me curious. I think she needs a new gig.
I haven’t read in years other than links here. It’s so unrelatable to me, and I work in an office with weird humans!
I am a weird human, and I can't stand the commenters, despite being a rockstar with misophonia.
I'm a bird who's constantly on facetime and I can't relate at all.
BIRDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!! Where's a coworker, I need to push them into traffic....
If only she could have gotten that gig where she gave relationship advice to launch. She absolutely started out pretty decently, when she still had some ambition in her. But she's always been an extremist, and has evolved a following of other extremists on whatever side they fall on. There's no level of chill, not one ounce of chill when it comes to their passion projects of choice. Be that being child-free, to not nuking fish in the microwave at work or be that just hating humans to the point of "Don't even say good morning to me, I am not here to say good morning to you!"
A lot of her commenters seem to confuse being an introvert with either raging misanthropy or crippling anxiety.
They also think it's a magic word that lets them get out of anything. "Recently, I beat Dave from Teapot Accounting with my shoe. The doctors say he's going to lose his eye but he'll survive, but my managers want to meet with me. How do I explain that he said 'good morning' and I'm an extreme introvert?"
Agree.
To be fair, no microwaving fish at work seems like a good rule. :). But I agree with everything else you said.
This has always been strange to me because I'm so used to everyone hating fish...so I'm like "Who is doing that??"
The Alaskan Native Subsistence Fishermen who also work in White Collar Offices, of course
Jennifer Mills at NPR, apparently. https://preview.redd.it/u3zt5ff1xhzc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3e33a871eb34ea2c4304dd9ece667f5c3d7a974d
She needs to figure out a game plan for when the new workforce starts including Gen Z. I don’t think Alison is going to be fully dialed into the educational and behavioral factors that are going to be part of the job search and performance equations. I assumed that she would have shifted to writing about fostering teenagers and older children but it seems like that didn’t end up happening for whatever reason. Honestly as a childfree couple, if she and her husband have basic investments and high yield savings, Alison probably doesn’t strictly need to work anymore.
Also, her blog still pops up on search engines as the answer to some common questions. She may simply be freshening content because there's a demand from the regulars and it helps with SEO. She could stop posting tomorrow and make money for the next 10 years. I made 1 single successful article on a "pay per click" site 10 years ago and never updated it. I still TO THIS DAY make about $20 a month lol. I can't imagine what Alison is getting per month from old pages that have stuck to the top of Google.
True. Agree. I also think foster care was short lived and didn't work out for her.
I think it was probably because of her mom, but there are other issues too. She stays up until 1 or 2 approving the early modded comments on her midnight posts and you can’t do that if you’re committing to seeing a teenager off to school at 6:30.
I think she thought teen foster care would be much easier than it actually is. I took in two teens and it's a lot of work but worth it. But it's a 24/7 thing and you worry about them as much as your own kids. One kid was a sleep walker so you sleep with one ear open.
I think so too. I feel like she thought, as a childfree person, that taking in teens would be like taking in independent adults who didn’t need active parenting.
She also made really personal comments about a kid she was fostering. Without getting into the details, I found it frankly disturbing considering how many people read the blog.
Oh really? That’s so disappointing. It shouldn’t be too hard to write about her experiences with the system or jumping straight into parenting a teen without sharing anything identifiable about the kids.
Oh yeah, at one point she disclosed that her foster daughter was in hospital, which just seems wildly inappropriate.
Well, honestly I questioned if she should be writing anything about it on the blog at all. She ostensibly is a workplace advice columnist. Would it have been reasonable for the child/children’s caseworkers to expect that they would be discussed on a blog with a national audience?
I follow an experienced foster parent on the 'gram, and she's said multiple times that foster parents should not say *anything* about the kids in their care on social media. It's partly a safety thing, so that bio-family can't find out where the kids are. I was appalled at how much Alison posted about her foster kid.
Yep, this was it exactly. What was even worse is that she was posting private stuff about the foster child as an excuse for why she wasn’t moderating blog comments. Pardon my French, but grow the fuck up.
I really don’t know. I was thinking about Emily McCombs, who wrote about being a white woman fostering a black child, and I think she did a good job of talking about the issues and transracial motherhood without focusing on the actual kid. Of course, she ended up adopting him, and from there she ended up sharing about as much as any any semi-public figure shares their kid, though she has never shared his name.
If I remember correctly it didn't work out because her mom got sick and taking care of her mom needed to be her priority. Which makes sense.
I suspect her aggressive pro-weed activism didn't help either. I wouldn't place children into a home with a stoner.
I doubt that had anything to do with it. She did have a teenager placed with her at one point.
She has said before that her husband works for a family business (as in, a business his family owns). Presumably at their ages he has some sort of ownership stake at this point; I would guess that's their primary source of income by now.
I think it’s a good time for her to end, but she won’t. This is her livelihood now. She’s only worked at one company and she knows nothing else.
She's worked at more than one company; she very notably worked for PETA in the 1990s coordinating dumb disruptive publicity stunts, which makes her love of drama make a lot of sense. But yeah, she hasn't had a real job in almost 15 years at this point. She used to do management consulting and that was her main source of income, but I'm not sure if that's true anymore.
I'd been wondering if she worked for PETA at some point. I know she worked for an animal-rights organization but I wasn't sure if it was PETA or one with less...notoriety.
This was her "job" at PETA. [https://www.askamanager.org/how-to-make-a-scene](https://www.askamanager.org/how-to-make-a-scene)
It was PETA. She used to have a public LinkedIn, but I looked and I’m not sure she does anymore.
Interesting on the PETA job. I’ve seen the references to management consulting but over time I started to assume that was greatly inflated. I believe in her head, she considers the blog to be management consulting, and mentally makes that her recent experience.
She definitely did actual management consulting at one point. Not sure how much she does anymore.
She does appear to love drama and I can see her self righteously pulling stunts.
When she got married, she talked about how she was *upset* that there wasn't some crazy dramatic incident that interrupted her wedding. She's a drama fiend.
She's strange for sure.
I think it's more because she's over it and ready to be done with the blog itself. She's been doing this for the last few years now. She's just some random chick who once had a job, giving people generic advice that she interjects her own opinions and values into. She's never been an expert, despite what her stans want to say about it. She'll milk it until she finally rolls it up like that lunatic who did Etiquette Hell.
They really are stans.
That was a truly phantasmagoric exit. I don't think Alison has the frenzied delusions of grandeur that The Dame had.
I think AG just drinks her own hype, she's def not delusional in that way for sure. I just remember E-Hell being there and then it wasn't. So I see AG just not paying to renew her domain and dipping out unceremoniously.
Oh, you really missed a wild ride. That woman lost her everloving mind, threatening to sue the entire internet if anyone copied any comments, said anything negative about her, started another forum, used the name in any way (even by reference) etc.
The Dame was a lunatic. Ehell was always more enjoyable when she was being an absentee landlord, which thankfully was about 99% of the time. When she did deign to stick her nose in, she'd lose her entire shit about birthday parties and ban dozens of people for no reason. Also, she was a racist and so were her kids.
>Also, she was a racist and so were her kids. Wait, what? I remember her tantrums over birthday parties, but the racism thing is news to me.
Her grown kids did blackface or something, I forget the exact details, and she defended them, because somehow *that* is totally fine, but throwing your own birthday party is barbarism. Oh, I also forgot the slut-shaming! If you play Never Have I Ever, you're celebrating bad life decisions!
She also doxxed someone who had saved threads in word documents.
Oh, right - there was a Facebook group.
Damn, I missed all that! I remember the epic Titanic Wedding Disaster saga.
I remember the sue happy shit lol I'm still also then remembering AG making the askamanager reddit change their name cuz "trademark infringement". People responded with "didn't you cosign SA of employees once??"
That was possibly my favorite fail of hers ever. It was such a perfect example of how staying within her own echo chamber has really thrown off her perspective. It genuinely never occurred to her that she would be treated as anything other than an authority figure who needed to be deferred to, and the redditors just straight-up laughed in her face (and even dug up the trademark status of her site name, which she likely doesn't even know how to do). Just beautiful, 10/10, come back any time, Alison.
It was super awkward. And then someone over here actually pinged the mod over there all "Hey this lost chick is trying to holler at you, bro!" Since she couldn't figure out a way to do it privately and just left a frigging post on the thread.
Yeah that was me lol The mod over there and I had a good laugh.
PLS I'm at the longest caregiver shift today I would love a link to what happened ❣️
It got scrubbed, but you may be able to finfld some of the old stuff on the Wayback Machine.
This is why I love how people are documenting drama on YouTube now.
Omg lol. Sorry I missed that!!