Blogger dad wants $50K to show he can do it

When I started writing on theITbaby I had a few goals in mind, these were get free stuff for my baby, attempt to teach parents about some technology dangers and useful shortcuts, and to do my own thing and not be a total shill like a few of the baby blogs I’d read that involved product reviews were.

This is one reason I don’t network with the bloggers with network backings. The other is I’m not particularly interested in seeing too much other work to be influenced by it.

It never occurred to me to use the blog to start a GoFundMe campaign claiming I could be as good a stay at home parent as a woman if only I could get $50,000 to put myself financially in a position to prove it. It also never occurred to me to back off of that statement and then claim it was a done on a dare to draw more awareness of the trials and tribulations of men who do child care not getting a very good image in the public eye.

Or something similar. In short, I feel I’ve failed on my blogging bullshit backing off bullshit revenue generation model on some level to which I can’t even fathom and it pains me.

I don’t know if it was actually his plan or if he’s just backpedaled, but either way he wanted a reaction and got a really negative one and is claiming that the people who are reacting negatively against someone putting forth a GoFundMe campaign begging for money while using a picture of an unshaven asleep slovenly looking dad passed out on his kid are the ones being exposed as judgmental fools.

I’m not going further down the rabbit hole, he claims if I take the blue pill I’ll go to his website and see his brand of humor and insight make this not insulting to stay at home dads. Perhaps I’m being easily insulted that the poster child here for stay at home dad posts a picture where he could be drunk and passed out on his baby. I don’t know.

His retraction of the thing:

Okay, I have to be honest. When I posted this it was on a dare, not the dare suggested in the post here, but more of a social experiment. Did I imagine anyone would go for this? Hell no. In fact I’m surprised someone was nice enough to send me $10. What the person who dared me was more interested in was people’s reaction to it – their biases, their hypocrisy and well, what gets noticed on the Internet. The biases are clear here. If this was in support of a woman trying to get back in to the workforce and chronicling it would have been met with a lot more kindness. I”ve also had a few people suggest that I was asking for something for “free.” Which I was insinuating I was not by offering to “chronicle it.” Meanwhile, everyday people follow Facebook and Twitter pages for “free.” People want “free” entertainment everyday, and others work hard to give it to them and open up their lives to make people laugh, so there’s a bit of hypocrisy there. I think we’ve also provd that a lot of media outlets jump the gun and don’t do their research on people before writing their articles. I’m sure most of you know almost nothing about me and simply went on what you read. And lastly, and i guess the most telling part of this experiment is the comment about finding a better way to get noticed. Unfortunately, and I think we all know this, we are not a society that really loves a story about an involved dad who loves his kids so much that he’s devoted a lot of his time to talk about his experiences online. We are a society that likes to tear people down. We are an angry, blind mob who likes to attack others to make ourselves feel better. But let’s be honest, this was one way to get noticed, even if its not the preferred way. I of course will come up with a good way to fund a project that is positive and promotes parental equality and hopefully helps parents who really do need handouts to raise their kids (people on the poverty line, single parents who are struggling). That’s what this should have been about. But it was worth the exercise to see just how negative and angry and presumptuous and callous people would be. I guess it was worth looking foolish to expose all of that. My utmost respect to stay-at-home parents. I will continue to support them in the way I always have (on our website, on social media). May we all learn something from this (although knowing people as I do, most will comment having never read anyone else’s comments on this thread). 🙂

While I’m not a total stay at home dad, I do have my baby two days a work week as daycare is expensive as hell and the idea has been that as long as work doesn’t mind and Maggie doesn’t mind, she’s going to be by my side one day a week at the office and one day not in the office. So I do identify with the staying at home crowd at least a little bit.

The question lingering in my mind becomes where was his aim based on what he actually wrote and the pictures he posted.

What do you expect when you post a disheveled picture of a man passed out and ask for $50,000? No, that’s a real question, not rhetorical. If I were to post a picture of me drunk, passed out, and claimed I needed a large amount of money to write about my experiences in attempting to not be in the corporate world while taking care of a life… I don’t think it’s unwarranted to think there’s going to be negativity packed into what you’ve put out there when you don’t bother to at least look like you cared enough to pick a picture.

Whether this was a grand social experiment or not, to say you’re playing for team A while putting a kick me sign on team A seems like it’s a disingenuous, or at least poorly thought out thought piece. Although I guess if the goal were to get traffic, be it negative or no, it worked.

If the goal was to prove anything to anyone, I think it failed. What was the experiment? Anger people and they’ll get angry? Say dads can do it as well as moms and some will get get angry? Say people who get angry at dads begging for money cause people to get angry?

It’s odd. I don’t get the experiment if it was one. Posting something inflammatory on the internet gets you flamed? Oh really let me whip out my checkbook and fund your deep thought experiment.

It doesn’t do anyone much good, except I guess his site gets more traffic. Even this talking about it gets his site more traffic, which leads to higher impressions and adsense revenue and people arguing. Oh well. Hah hah, joke’s on everyone.

Don’t poke the bear without reason.

[GoFundMe]