Heather Armstrong, an explosively widespread net author and entrepreneur who, underneath the identify Dooce, was hailed because the queen of the so-called mommy bloggers for giving tens of millions of readers common intimate glimpses of her joys and challenges in parenthood and marriage, in addition to her harrowing struggles with melancholy, died on Tuesday at her residence in Salt Lake Metropolis. She was 47.
Her dying was introduced on her Instagram channel. Pete Ashdown, her boyfriend, advised The Related Press that the trigger was suicide. He mentioned he had discovered her physique within the residence.
Ms. Armstrong, a lapsed Mormon from Salt Lake Metropolis, rose to prominence on the daybreak of the non-public weblog craze of the early 2000s. Her baptism within the area got here after she graduated from Brigham Younger College in 1997 and transferring to Los Angeles, the place she taught herself HTML code and took a job at a tech firm.
She began Dooce.com in 2001, christening it with the nickname she had earned after committing a typo for writing the phrase “dude” in an AOL On the spot Messenger chat with a pals, in response to certainly one of her tales.
Early on, she mined her experiences as a tech drone for materials, firing off tart salvos concerning the absurdities of start-up tradition within the swelling dot-com bubble, publishing, say, bro-ish pronouncements overheard at an organization Christmas social gathering. (“Ruben, dude, you’ll be able to’t stand on the desk. Or on the bar.”)
A 12 months later, her weblog candor received her fired, an expertise that impressed a well-liked web phrase, “Dooced,” referring to individuals who discover themselves scanning job listings after posting ill-advised feedback on-line. The time period even discovered its method onto “Jeopardy!”
At first, Ms. Armstrong felt guilt.
“I cried in my exit interview,” she recalled. “My boss, who served as the topic of a few of my extra vicious posts, sat throughout the desk from me unable to look me within the face, she was so harm. I had by no means felt like such a horrible human being, although in my thoughts I assumed that I used to be simply being artistic and humorous.”
However that profession setback opened up huge alternatives for fortune and fame. In an period when numerous folks, ladies specifically, have been beginning private blogs — usually only for the pleasure of family and friends — Ms. Armstrong glimpsed industrial prospects.
Because the running a blog growth approached its zenith in 2009, Ms. Armstrong was a breakout star, showing on “The Oprah Winfrey Present” and attracting 8.5 million readers a month whereas tapping a gusher of revenue off banner adverts, sponsored posts, books, talking charges and different sources.
As famous in a 2011 profile in The New York Occasions Journal by Lisa Belkin, Ms. Armstrong was the lone blogger featured that 12 months on the Forbes listing of essentially the most influential ladies in media; she was ranked No. 26, one slot behind Tina Brown of The Each day Beast. The article quoted a gross sales consultant for Federated Media, the corporate that bought adverts on her web site, who referred to as Ms. Armstrong “certainly one of our most profitable bloggers,” including, “Our most profitable bloggers can gross $1 million.”
A full obituary will seem quickly.
If you’re having ideas of suicide, name or textual content 988 to achieve the Nationwide Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/sources for an inventory of further sources.
