Was Working in 2010s Media as Bad as I Remembered?

Or: How is the Blog Class of 2014 doing today?

It brings me no pleasure to report that the 2010s are really, truly back. I’ve spent more time discussing Lena Dunham and Lindy West over the past two months than I had in the previous 10 years. The personal essay has (maybe?) returned. The first rumblings of 2010s internet nostalgia have begun (happy 11th birthday to “I Hate Myself Because I Don’t Work For BuzzFeed”!). I recently watched a new rom-com called Mile End Kicks, which was set in 2011, centers on a female music blogger, and prominently features that one Adrian Tomine The Strand tote bag. We’re trying to understand the legacy of millennial feminism and the world Gawker made. BuzzFeed is even pivoting to video again!

Though I usually love any excuse to look back at pop cultural minutiae, I have been hesitant to pick apart this particular strand, because I myself am one of the biggest 2010s cliches: a burned-out blogger.

I grew up in the ‘90s, when most day-to-day writing jobs were about reporting the news. I knew I didn’t care about the news — I cared about Elizabeth Wurtzel and clove cigarettes and Ghost World and my feeeeeeelings, man. My teenage dream was to publish three novels and teach creative writing.

So imagine my surprise when, in the late 2000s, feelings suddenly became a valuable professional writing commodity! I freelanced, then became a full-time ladyblogger at Bustle in 2015. I podcasted, I worked in an annoying open plan office, I wrote so many detailed posts about my sex life that strangers could probably accurately draw my husband’s dick.

Then I got laid off, realized I had no professional skills except telling everyone my feelings and attending bizarre sponsored corporate events (“Cinnabon x Dos Equis Celebrates Trolls 2”), and promptly had a multi-year nervous breakdown. I worked several marketing jobs that I barely understood, and have now returned to the internet to try again, even though I don’t understand how a loving God would force me to learn how to make face-to-camera videos.

But even though I pay a therapist several hundred dollars each month to try to erase this entire era from my brain, Eternal Sunshine-style, the media-history dork in me eventually won out. We’ve had so much chatter about the legacy of various things the Blog Era created — but what was the legacy of the Blog Era, period?

Working in women’s media was long rhapsodized in TV and film, from Sex and the City to 13 Going on 30. But in pop culture, blog jobs were treated as a joke and a folly from the jump: Hannah Horvath’s tenure writing for “JazzHate.com” (and later, her brief gig writing sponcon at GQ), the episode of Difficult People where Billy and Julie try to work at BuzzFeed, SNL’s Angie Tempura, the Documentary Now! episode making fun of Vice, etc. And the myth-making ecosystem that bloggers created around themselves — Gawker’s in-group reporting about blog “celebrities,” circle jerk-y relationships on Twitter — didn’t help.

But was it all actually that stupid? I started to wonder how other 2010s media survivors remembered it. Did we look back on it fondly, like a favorite ex? Or did we think it ruined our lives, like an ex who secretly memorized your credit card number? Who was wise enough to understand that it was all just temporary? Who (else) was caught totally off-guard when the whole thing collapsed?

So I wrote a survey with about a dozen questions. Just under 30 anonymous 2010s blog survivors — mostly writers and editors, but also a founder and some folks who worked in social media, art, video, sales, tech, and other arenas — were kind enough to fill it out, and let me know what happened to the Blog Class of 2014.

“The money was nonexistent, but we felt like the coolest girls on the internet”

Even though blog jobs were new in the 2010s, they were so incredibly public that it was easy to develop a set of expectations about them long before you ever landed one. And so, it was equally easy to be disappointed when they turned out to be just, you know, jobs — let alone jobs that asked you to spend Christmas Day writing an SEO post about the death of George Michael (I pretended I didn’t have cell service and never saw the message).

So the biggest surprise for me was that for some people, the job absolutely was what they wanted, and more:

“It was wildly exciting. I felt like I was at the center of the universe.”

“Felt like a dream come true. It was even better than I expected.”

“At first, it was more fun. I worked at Rookie and we had a wild Facebook group. The money was nonexistent, but we felt like the coolest girls on the internet.”

“Best job I ever had. BuzzFeed was flush with cash and I had complete freedom to be a beat reporter. Felt like actually breaking news for young people. And then it was over!”

I was more primed for the mixed-bag responses:

“When an intern at BuzzFeed, I felt like I was stuck inside Willy Wonka’s factory. Things appeared fun, but the appearance of fun can only be sustained for so long!”

“It was more prestigious than rewarding. It was cool to say I worked there, and people told me they were interested or jealous when I talked about it. But the bosses barely trusted me with any responsibility.”

“I thought it would be more glamorous: more like 'All the President's Men' and uncovering world-changing stories, or alternatively, like every romcom journalist/writer, with cute outfits, cocktail meet ups and fun excursions. Instead, it was just a grind to get as many stories as possible, without much support or guidance.”

“It sucked.”

“I loved it too much.”

In pop culture depictions, there was something kind of inherently humiliating about 2010s blog jobs. But while some folks I surveyed had a miserable time the whole way through, I was surprised by the number of people who enjoyed their time, at least for a while:

“I loved it too much.”

“I loved it. I loved this entire era, from writing blogs for $30 a piece to getting lucrative contract gigs and finally being on a staff at a website. It was so cool and the website I worked for was weird enough that it was a major conversation starter. I was a hit at all the parties.”

“Yes. Until I realized how easily it was to lose it.”

Why was it so damn great? Well, these were some of the cited high points of the jobs:

“Interviewing Miranda July and Zach Galifianakis. Getting to go to Fashion Week shows and parties. Free clothes and books instead of healthcare.”

“Buying a designer purse with money I got writing for Macaulay Culkin, going crazy viral and having my Reductress work shouted out in Wired and Wikipedia.”

“Making a shit ton of money, being internet famous, writing bestselling books, doing cool photoshoots, speaking, keynoting.”

“I loved getting to write for a living, getting to phone up my childhood heroes and interview them for my job, getting to feel part of the action or culture at key moments like elections, and getting the opportunity to do wild things like jump off tall buildings or drive around in race cars.”

“Free clothes and books instead of healthcare.”

But we wouldn’t be here if it was all just super-sweet memories of exclusive parties and Miranda July, right? Blog jobs also had a pervasive sour side:

“It made me feel inadequate compared to my peers and chipped away at my confidence to do anything great.”

“Crushing uncertainty, mind games from management, awful pay/borrowing money from family, being too broke to date, watching mediocre people succeed, watching wealthy kids not worry.”

“Rapey boss. James Franco trying to pick a fight with me.”

“I got very sick while at my permalance job and came back to find myself being pushed out while regularly having to wear an eye patch.”

“Free clothes and books instead of healthcare.”

“Feeling like you had to share your identity online as a journalist. And obviously getting laid off overnight.”

“There’s not enough time lol. Abysmal salaries, toxic work environments, feeling like you’re on a hamster wheel. Working on 37 things at once when you care about 5 of them.”

“I wrote many pieces that were re-edited so significantly that not one sentence of my original draft was left in there, usually to add throat-clearing language about whatever the Current Thing was.”

“I thought it would last forever.”

It has long been a source of great personal shame for me that when shit fell apart, I didn’t see it coming. I spent my last year-plus at Bustle essentially too burned out to function — so burned out that I could only barely understand that the world was changing, and that our brief time somewhere near the top had ended. When I got laid off (by a top editor who was actively watching for her Uber to take her to the Webbys, natch), I was caught totally off-guard.

And maybe I should be ashamed! Because most people I spoke to saw the end of the Blog Era from a mile away:

“Saw it coming.”

“I was being asked why I was getting into a dying industry before I even started my post-grad journalism training circa 2011, so I don’t think I can claim it was a surprise!”

“I was told it was likely coming. The 2008 recession happened, one of my superiors was abruptly let go, and I was only fired later because I was so low on the rung the higher-ups didn’t really know I worked there.”

“I had to fire 12 people in my department. Or rather, walk them to their firing. My boss fired them, but I had to escort people into the fire. I watched the woman who hired me get fired and she collapsed into my lap afterwards, hysterical.

I don’t know if they saw it coming but I definitely did. We were in corporate marketing and ad sales for the websites and print, and eyeballs were shifting elsewhere. My male boss was always anxious. And I always looked at the data he received, which basically showed slowing readership and other scary shit. When I told him I was considering other career paths and had two distinct ideas, he even help me beat up which was better for me. He told me to go into sales at a startup, which changed my life! He was right.”

“Surprised, [but now find it] very logical as feminism and progressive politics themselves pivoted in 2019.”

But a few folks did join me on the H.M.S. No Idea This Was Gonna Happen:

“I was naive and didn’t see it coming. I thought it would last forever.”

“I left my job to go to grad school for more opportunities. I often wonder if this was a bad decision. In the short period of time I was in school, the entire landscape changed. I assumed I could go back to the kind of work I was doing in the 2010s, but I was surprised to see that that no longer exists.”

“Devastated lol.”

As you may have noticed, it’s tough to try to pin any trends on people’s actual lived experiences of the Blog Era. And the same goes for people’s feelings when the whole thing collapsed. One group was fairly relieved to leave their blog jobs:

“I was so happy, I posted a picture on Facebook of my desk, which was in a lonely isolated corner, like, #byebitch”

“Relieved.”

“I was relieved — because I quit and was leaving a workplace I was really unhappy in. However, I was also really scared, because I had no idea what I was going to do next, and enough self awareness to know I didn’t have the hustle or experience needed to move straight into freelancing.”

“I ended up leaving on my own accord at the start of 2020 so it all feels surreal. It felt a little like that passage in the bible where you shouldn’t look behind your shoulder at the burning city or you’ll turn to salt.”

And another group was…the opposite of relieved when things ended:

“Awful. Empty. Angry at myself for too long before realizing the problems were systemic.”

“Devastated lol. Complete loss of identity.”

“Bummed. It felt like I had finally convinced myself and my family that I could make it in New York, in media no less, so I felt pretty deflated filing for unemployment.”

“Like my home had been destroyed and I’ve been aimlessly drifting ever since.”

Whatever Happened to the Class of 2014?

52% of the people I surveyed thought they’d keep working in media after their first blog job ended…and 40% still do! So maybe reports of a total media apocalypse that nuked the careers of all us bloggy idiots were overblown.

Or maybe people who still have media jobs were the only people who felt like filling out my dumb survey — who’s to say!

A sampling of what people are up to now:

“I’m still slinging this shit while (somehow) having spent almost a decade as a corporate writer.”

“I stayed a reporter but I knew it was never going to be somewhere as fun or ambitious. RIP.”

“Kept at it. Stupidly.”

“I went back to grad school for design.”

“Copywriting in house for a DTC brand.”

“The freelance work I do now pays a fraction of what it would have in the 2010s. I still freelance for the website that I was once full-time for and I constantly expect them to close their editorial staff. The website has just adopted AI usage, so I think the writing is on the wall.”

“Trying to help a fading legacy brand die with dignity.”

“Make perfume.”

“I sometimes still freelance, but I’m primarily a screenwriter like I wanted to be!”

“Worked in product marketing for a few years but that has now been totally displaced by AI.”

“Substack writer, essayist, writing books when I can get them!”

“I work as a clinical healthcare chaplain focusing on patients with serious life-limiting illness.”

“I don’t know if I ever thought it was a career so much as something I was lucky to do and that could be taken away from me at any time?”

In retrospect, I feel a little silly having thought there was a Blog Era career path — can you really call something a “career path” if its existed for, like, 5 years? And yet, I feel like there was a distinct moment in time when it, whatever it was, ceased to exist. But when exactly did the folks I surveyed realize it ended?

“2015.”

“When I left my cool publication for a giant corporate magazine and realized all their traffic came from SEO. The worst, most formulaic stories were getting all the traffic. The fun, voice-y stuff never got read. Suddenly I understood why most publications are bad, and it was sobering.”

“The pandemic, but I feel like I was late cuz I was established.”

“When I noticed that once-established bloggers were suddenly scraping for work & money.”

“I don’t know if I ever thought it was a career so much as something I was lucky to do and that could be taken away from me at any time?”

“It hasn’t ended, baby. We all on Substack now.”

“It’s ended? I still see bitches getting jobs at The Cut.”

And how did the realization that the free-La Croix, open-plan-office era ended make people feel? Again, a mixed bag:

“Great. It was my choice.”

“By that point, I was so tired and burned out that I mostly felt resigned. Also freed, in a weird way? Now that I have a dumb corporate job, I don’t feel bad about my work/life balance. I have friends outside my industry. I spend more time with my kids. It’s been liberating, oddly.”

“Mildly bummed, but happy I was able to be part of it.”

“::Insert Birdcage quote:: ‘Hurt! Betrayed! How am supposed to feel?’”

“I have a lot of regret that I didn’t do it better/set myself up for more success, a lot of genuine sadness over something I really loved disappearing, a lot of worry about what I’ll do in the future etc etc etc.”

“Sad for my friends who worked in media, and a little like the last season of The Wire where every week more people get laid off from the newsroom.”

“This was my backup after college failed to secure a job. It was kind of like flying a plane destined to crash, and building a second plane mid-flight, and then they both crashed anyway.”

“A sense of loss and grief.”

“Incredibly sad and too young to feel so irrelevant. I’m only in my mid-30s and I already feel like the world has passed me by.”

“Did that all really happen?”

I’m pretty sure we’re on the precipice of a lot of media depicting 2010s blog culture — people online are so enamored with romanticizing the Hannah Horvath of it all, it’s inevitable.

When those skinny jeans and MacBooks start flooding our TV screens, how will actual 2010s blog survivors react? Here’s how some of them feel about their time in the trenches now:

“I feel genuinely blessed to have worked in that golden era of digital media no matter how doomed it was. This era fucking sucks. Young people deserve actual reporting and that’s been lost.”

“Proud of it, wish I had known heterodox feminism and liberalism, but it was impossible in my circumstance.”

“It was a glimmering spark of joy in the abyss that has been my ‘professional life’.”

“It traumatized me but I loved it. I felt really important and chic going to work and the boredom showed me I’m really not meant to be bored.”

“It feels kind of innocent in hindsight, like the kind of job people don’t have any more. I have to stop to remind myself how miserable we all were during the Son of Bush years.”

“Glad it happened, glad it’s over! I think it made me a better writer, and I still have that purse that I bought, but I’m happy that I’ve been able to move into what I wanted to be doing all along.”

“I’m really glad I spent the almost three years I did working in media during that era, even though I was miserable and hated it at the time. It taught me a lot — and I can’t imagine what else I would have done instead.”

“I feel grateful for the interesting work I did, but also very sad for my younger self who honestly believed that hard work and good ideas were the paths to media success.”

“Wistful in a pathetic way.”

“Ripped off and deceived.”

“I’m grateful that I was able to work as a writer during the blog era and that it led to so many amazing opportunities for myself and for my friends, but I don’t know where people like us are supposed to go now. It seems like all of my friends are struggling to find a place in the world and all of them are only in their 30s and 40s, most of them with incredible accomplishments under their belts. I feel the same. Since I was in graduate school, I get a lot of younger people asking me how I became a working writer. I tell them that the way I did it doesn’t exist anymore. Despite having a decade of experience over them, I feel like I’m in the same boat.”

“Did that all really happen? How is life so boring now.”

And if they could turn back time and tell their 2010s self something about the Blog Era?

“I would recite ‘It’s not your fault’ scene from Good Will Hunting.”

“Go back in time to your early 2000s self and tell them to not get into media.”

“This won’t last, don’t trust anyone, and you may want a backup plan.”

“You are smarter than all of them steal their money.”

“SAVE YOUR CLIPS they will soon disappear.”

“Either play the political game better or move into corporate work even sooner.”

“Don’t let it take up so much of your time. Enjoy the perks but don’t worry so much about Facebook traffic, like we are literally all going to die one day!!!!!!!!!! Also, don’t buy your stock shares, they’re useless.”

“Not sure. Become an editor? Really try to become a reporter with expertise on a topic? Try to get it through my head that the majority of people are not huge successes and that’s fine?”

“Enjoy it while it lasts bitch!”

This survey was, on some level, an excuse for me to try to sort through my own Blog Experience. Am I mortified that I didn’t do as much with it as I could have? Or thrilled that I literally supported myself by just writing about my random thoughts, a privilege I would have never known if I’d been born 10 years earlier? Do I think I was foolish? Lucky? The unfortunate answer is: yes to all of it! And maybe that was the ultimate purpose of this survey: to show that nothing’s as simple as Jennifer Garner clacking down the sidewalk in heels, or Lena Dunham cowering in front of a laptop. Work is messy. Dreams are messy. Hope is messy. Maybe we can all gives ourselves some grace when we try to process an experience that involves equal parts humiliation and gratitude.

And maybe I’ll have my feelings more worked out when we hit the 20th anniversary.

Further reading

-The personal essay era is back, but also, is it? I would also recommend this great accompanying podcast, featuring the ever-fabulous Leigh Stein.

-I was surprised by some of the people left out of this Gawker retrospective, but hey, maybe I’m not the only person who doesn’t have my blog feelings in order!

-Now that media is in the toilet, what will become of the ”genre of Glamorous Young Woman Working at Manhattan Media Job” film?

-My hot take on the end of Jezebel