Canada Moms Blog

You Are a What? What's a Blog?

I had a post about telephones ready to go, but then Twitter went all 'OH NO SHE DIDN'T' all over an article in The NY Times with the snarky title 'Honey, Don't Bother Mommy.  I'm Too Busy Building My Brand," and I had to stop and read all the furor and posts in response and so on.

I am not going to respond to the NY post, far better writers have done that...read Mom 101's response to the article or Kelby Carr's piece where she sums up nicely why the main stream media treats bloggers who happen to be mothers this way:

"We get marginalized for a few reasons, including:

• We are women who are, perhaps for one of the first times, far better at something than men in many cases and far better in an industry that is making a major impact. I should explain that I know many, many men who are talented, brilliant bloggers, but that isn’t surprising. For women to stand out in an industry that major corporations are clamoring to get involved with just sits wrong with some people.
• We are excelling in the media landscape, which doesn’t sit well with traditional media.
• We are turning our backs on the mold that has been created for us.
• We are threatening to traditional publishers, mostly old white men who couldn’t write a blog or use Twitter if you put a gun to their heads.
• Newspaper circulation keeps declining, while blog readership and authorship keeps growing.
• Writing snarky articles about mom bloggers encourages mom bloggers to share links and drive readers to the newspaper’s web site. (Here’s a hint, New York Times… we would share positive coverage just as much, if not more).

We are trying to make a living by creating content, and for that we get demeaned, criticized, talked down to, made fun of, and stereotyped as unethical money and swag grabbing whores.

I know of a few other organizations that make their money creating content. Namely, mainstream media."

Your cellphone sounds like a mosquito to me

Canadian teens are betting on teachers' and parents' aging ears to allow them to send and receive text messages and phone calls by using high-frequency tones that are inaudible to most people over thirty. Called 'mosquito' tones, these were originally marketed in South Wales to deter teenagers from loitering around stores.

The high-pitched buzzing grows uncomfortable to young people after ten minutes or so. Most people over thirty aren't aware of it at all. We all have old people disease, you see. Even those of us that don't feel particularly old.