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I enjoy a site that talks about real issues, but flame bait is should be beneath a mega parenting site.
I use to like visiting Babble.com and reading the wide variety of articles they offered. Then they started giving some of their staff writers a bit more wiggle room when it came to their opinions. Even that isn’t bad, in and of itself. However, some of the writers took that privilege and ran with it…right into “Kiss my Butt and Shut Up” land.
One specific writer – we’ll call her Lala for the purpose of this article – seemed to enjoy jabbing at any set of mothers that didn’t agree with her grass roots approach to parenting and life in general. She seemed to enjoy being as snarky and transparently rude as possible; even going as far to speak of homosexuality as a ‘normal’ thing for kids to tease each other about because (paraphrasing) that’s just how it’s always been. But one of her favorite topics was circumcision; often referring to parents who didn’t agree with her view as dumb, stupid and abusive. Over and over commentors called for her to be removed from Babble because of her horribly mean approach to writing. (Coincidentally, she recently resigned her position for maternity leave)
But, she isn’t the only one. Babble has several writers who like to dip into riot inducing topics on a regular basis. And Babble likes to spotlight them. In one day alone Babble posted 3 different anti-circumcision articles on Facebook by three different Babble writers. Not a single alternate viewpoint was ever shared. That’s just overkill and rides the line of soap-boxing. Even the parents who agreed with the articles were commenting that enough is enough and they were tired of reading about it.
It’s not an isolated incident at Babble. The circumcision issue is the easiest to spot, but it happens with other controversial topics as well. Babble loves to kick a dead horse to see if angry bees will fly out. They speak of being tolerant of all view points and not allowing negative interactions on their site, but I have yet to see one of these argumentative articles moderated to any respectable degree, much less the comments they create.
Let me be clear: BOTH sides of any debate should be treated equally. I would feel just as strongly if the opinions were reversed. Bashing groups of people because they disagree with your style of parenting is wrong – no matter the topic. Giving that type of writer a national platform from which to do their bashing = even worse.
Today one of their writers has again stoked the circumcision fire and, yet again, people are commenting hateful, ignorant things about anyone with a differing viewpoint. It won’t be moderated. It won’t be apologized for. It’s creating traffic.
I feel they’ve crossed the line between free opinion and favored opinion. Odd considering they claim the site is ‘for a new generation of parents’. I’m not sure what generation they are referring to, but I don’t want to be a part of it.
