Thoughtful and insightful. Made me care about someone I have never heard of.

It’s another predictable tragedy. She sold her soul and it didn’t end well. The usual trajectory: initially she was in control, or had the illusion of being in control, then she was controlled. It happens with drug addiction: at first the drugs make the user feel better then addiction takes control and misery ensues. Also prostitution as depicted by William Hogarth’s series of paintings: The Harlot’s Progress. To survive, prostitutes often try to separate body and soul by making it clear their body is for sale but not their soul, for example by refusing to kiss their clients.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

This article very much feeds into the discussion around identity in the internet age that few people seem to wish to fully engage in – possibly because it’s “too close to home”.
There are elements of engaging with online communities (and that includes Unherd) that can lead to a distortion of all but the most secure personalities, many of whom fall by the wayside or seek to re-invent themselves under a different username.
The most telling thing about Heather Armstrong was her vulnerability, not her skill as a blogger. It would appear there was nothing left to sustain her personality once the decline of affirmation set in. It really does open up the discussion about what exactly constitutes a “person” who holds this personality, but as said, few wish to go there.

Good article. Part of the problem is the woke insistence that we can only write about what we know directly, for fear of “appropriation”.
Nowadays, every pop-singer, every story-teller, they’re all banging a drum about “my journey”.
If, like writers used to do, you just make shit up, then you swerve this self-cannibalism, and this tail-wags-dog effect.
With the likes of Adele, you get the feeling she needs a divorce to give her something to write about.
My fav rock band is 1970s/80s era Manchester post-punk contrarians, The Fall. Never a hint of “my journey” slop with them. Instead, you got obscure rants about German athletes, Scottish uprisings, Australians in Europe, fat vicars being ripped to pieces, British people in hot weather etc. All miles better than that awful Taylor-Sheeran navel-gazing which is part of the solipsist culture which leads to the kind of tragedy outlined above. Poor woman. Sympathy with her family.   

Is it any wonder that a in a consumer culture we have turned life itself into a commodity.

Does the author of this piece believe that the blogger believed her blogging was truly “therapeutic”? Or is it more likely the case that she said it so often because of course that’s what her audience wished to believe?

I can’t help but notice the author of this piece mentions his own “therapist”. Does he ever get the impression that therapists also tend to tell their clients what they wish to hear?

To my mind, the unanswered question is, once her business failed, what kept her from creating a new product? Didn’t she have an agent who could offer advice?

But perhaps the most interesting thing in this piece, which unfortunately goes unaddressed, is that, if indeed she committed suicide because of business failure, that is far more typical of men. You don’t hear that of women so often. Did she put the same career pressure on herself as a man would? Again, you just don’t hear about that from women. Ironic for someone whose content and brand is quintessentially female.

If you design your life for consumption, it will be consumed.
And then what?
Is it surprising that the resultant void is terrifying?
When your existence is a sold joke, a good story paid for, a cute anecdote, a telling illustration of what to do and not…when your lived experience becomes simply a search for new monetizable content, and your life choices are made with a wink & a nod towards subscribers and boosting ad sales….what do you become when there’s nothing left to laugh about, make fun of, satirize, or ridicule? Who are you after you’ve sold it all? What really is left?
“And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”
“You may ask yourself, “What is that beautiful house?” You may ask yourself, “Where does that highway go to?” And you may ask yourself, “Am I right? Am I wrong?” And you may say to yourself, “My God, what have I done?”
Not the first and clearly not the last to discover that the absolute, objectification of Self is a ‘Dorian Gray’ kind of bargain. In the end, it seems the sad Ms. Armstrong found the end result too much to bear.

Heartbreaking article.

I could not read after a bit – I do not know where you went with this tragic woman – but it seemed you were like a vampire with her horrible story to score some point you had figured to sell a story. The up down votes will tell If I am totally wrong – which may be – but why even burden us with this gratuitous bit of misery? Why make some morality tale out of her horrendous suffering? Just write your ideas standing alone and leave her in her sad grave. Or not – maybe you did a great job of it – but I could not keep reading after her medically induced comas to try to break her out of her hellish affliction, not after beginning with her bit of comedy – then moving to her children.

Sorry if I am wrong….

RIP

Very easy on the eye…