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SXSW panel: Airing Your Dirty Laundry Online: Therapy or Revenge?
Panelists: Alix McAlpine, sorry-mom.com
The gist: Alix McAlpine started a Web site called “Sorry Mom, I Bang The Worst Dudes,” airing her own dirty laundry about bad relationships and dating mistakes as a self- deprecating joke. Turns out dirty laundry is a guilty pleasure. The site blew up overnight getting 2 million page views in the first few weeks. Soon she found herself with a barrage of user-submitted stories. A year later, the stories on the site fall into two basic categories bitter ex-girlfriend tales or drunken mistake stories. The stories, that often include thinly disguised pictures of the offending guys, are all anonymously submitted.
So is it therapy or revenge? Probably a little bit of both. McAlpine tries to keep a humorous tone to the site, but acknowledges there’s a certain level of vindictiveness to some of the stories. Nonetheless, for the women who submit stories, and the women who read the stories she feels like there’s a certain amount of cathartic release, knowing hundreds of other women make the same dating mistakes.
Quotes: “It’s 2010, there should be no slut shame.”
Takeaways: If you own the incriminating pictures and the stories you tell are true then you can’t be sued for Internet smack talking, regardless of the intimacy of details shared. However, if you say something on the Internet it is going to get back to the person you said it about. Odds are impulsive airing of dirt might lead to regret. A lot of sorry-mom stories are rescinded by the authors.
—Deborah Sengupta Stith
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