Last week, Heather Armstrong, born Heather Hamilton and known to most by the internet handle “Dooce,” committed suicide. Her fame had dimmed somewhat in recent years, but she was once an internet sensation that The New York Times dubbed “Queen of the Mommy Bloggers,” and, upon her death, they have proclaimed her “the original influencer.”
I don’t even begin to presume to have useful insights on the actual circumstances of her death, though she had been very public — she was basically a professional over-sharer — about her struggles with mental health. I have dealt with these issues up close in my own family and I know enough not to presume anything specific about what made her end her life. She meant a lot to a lot of people, and she’s earned their grief.
But as a public figure and writer, Armstrong was resolutely snarky and unflinching even when her targets didn’t deserve what she had done to them, so forgive me if I offer my own critical assessment of her legacy. In fact, her Times obituary notes that she first got internet famous when she was fired from her tech job in L.A. after she was discovered pseudonymously blogging cruel observations about her co-workers. Armstrong was naturally quite public about all of this.
“I cried in my exit interview,” she told an interviewer. “My boss, who served as the subject of some of my more vicious posts, sat across the table from me unable to look me in
