Guess what?! Today is Blag Hag’s first birthday! I’ve officially been blogging for a year. Woooooo! Let’s celebrate! Crazy internet party! Yeah!
Or maybe you could just like, say what posts you liked the most in the last year. That would work too. Still think a crazy internet party would be more fun though.
On Wednesday, March 3rd I’ll be hopping on another plane to my grad school interview at Stanford. The Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics (AHA!) at Stanford have been nice enough to invite me to give a little talk! I’ll be discussing my experiences as an atheist blogger, touching on my thoughts about the atheist blogosphere, how my blog rose to popularity, and what it’s like being a woman in a male dominated community.
When: Wednesday, March 3 at 7 pm
Where: Old Union 201 at Stanford University
Who: Me!
It’ll probably be pretty informal (ie, I will probably only have time to work on it on the plane), so come with fun questions to ask me. I won’t be able to hang around afterward since I’m off to an Official Grad School Dinner, so try to make it to the event!
Thanks so much for inviting me, AHA! I feel pretty special to have my own bio and everything. Let’s just pray to the FSM that my flight doesn’t get delayed…
One of my readers asked if I would look and see if there was any correlation with age and the types of non-theist labels my readers used. Here you go (click it for a larger image):
Sample size:
<20 = 68
21-25 = 139
26-30 = 103
31-35 = 54
36 – 45 = 61
46< = 42
I’m not sure the best way to test for statistical significance, and I’m too tired from my trip to figure it out, so let’s just look at some general trends.
First, it seems like young non-theists use more labels than older non-theists. They had the highest percent of responders for every single term. One hypothesis as to why could be that young non-theists are still trying to figure out which labels best describe them, so a lot apply right now. It could also be that a lot of these terms have just recently become popular labels, and older non-theists don’t identify with them.
The most glaring difference that I see is that young people love to be silly and call themselves Pastafarians. Oh, and that pretty much everyone hates the term Bright equally. No big surprise with either of those.
I’m not sure if I feel safe to make any more interpretations without some stats. Any older readers want to throw in their two cents?
By the time this post pops up, I’ll be on my way to the Indianapolis airport for my interview at Harvard. Wish me luck!
Don’t worry, I have some posts ready during my absence. Though if you really miss me and you live near Seattle, I’ll be there this Saturday the 20th. I have that Saturday to myself before my interview at U Washington on Sunday, so come hang out with me! I’ve made plans to meet up with two readers so far, and you should totally join us. We’ll be meeting at the Pacific Science Center at 2pm, and then go to McMenamins for some delicious food and drinks at 5pm. If you’re interested, please let me know in the comments so I can get a general idea of who’s coming and how we should all find each other.
Hooray for Seattle! I have to have more than two readers there, right? …Preferably who aren’t axe murderers?
Next time I make a survey, I’m putting an “Other” option on every question. Seriously, nearly everything someone wrote in was insightful, heartwarming, or cracked me up so much that I probably scared my roommate with my intermittent laughter. That’s why I think some of my favorites should get a post of their own, so I can address your anonymous comments.
But before I say anything else – seriously guys, you are all so fucking nice. Some of your comments made a tear up a bit. I started this blog as a fun hobby, and I never thought so many people would enjoy it, let alone see it as influential and important. I just hope that I can live up to your expectations! You all rock!
Just continue chronicling your journey and sharing your growth as you stumble towards intellectual maturity. I find your naivete and occasional hypocrisy both refreshing and nostalgic. Had I kept as extensive a journal when I was your age, I doubt I could be as proud of it as you will be when you are my age, looking back. You’ll also be embarrassed as hell, but that’s life. I really love your work.
Usually someone calling me naive and hypocritical would get me cranky, but I just can’t in this case because I know it’s so true. I already have things that I disagree with from my older posts, and it hasn’t even been a year. My views on atheism were very different even just a couple of years ago when I was a freshman. I often make posts where I don’t know the answer because I’m trying to figure everything out. And I know I’ll be embarrassed when I read some of these again. I’ve kept a LiveJournal since middle school, and sweet Jesus – I went back and read some of my posts recently, and they were so freaking embarrassing. Seriously, you should all be glad that I don’t finish every single one of my sentences with an emoticon anymore.
Don’t video blog! Make people read!
A sentiment held by many readers, usually in all caps. I actually prefer reading, mainly because I can go at the pace I want. Skip parts, skim…can’t exactly do that with a video. I honestly rarely watch tv or youtube videos – just isn’t my thing.
Videotape yourself kicking all those chauvinistic trolls in the balls.
Hmm, okay, maybe I’ll have to make an exception…
Okay, I know your busy so this is kinda harsh and all. In fact I honestly cant see you doing it but if you can by some miracle find some more time to blog even more regularly do that.
What really keeps me coming back to any blog, regardless of topic, is daily posts. I wake up and run to the computer and know there’s going to be something new for me to learn about on BlagHag!
Oh great, because I didn’t feel guilty enough when I skip a couple of days, haha. I’m not sure how much more I can post – sometimes I just don’t have anything else to say, even when I have time. Quality over quantity, everyone!
Less focus on negative news stories. It was getting a bit depressing there, for awhile.
Oh man, I totally agree. The problem is twofold: 1. News coverage of negative stories is a lot better, so I see it and get linked to it a lot more often. 2. I usually have nothing insightful to add to positive stories other that “Yay, that was cool.” I’ll try to be better though!
Fix the bug that makes me enter comments twice (and no, I’m not even using IE).A ‘remember me’ function would be nice, save inputting name and URL manually each time. Get some spamtrap software, or at least delete shills and ‘bots.
These are all annoying Blogger problems that I have little control of (I think?). If anyone has any solutions, please offer them in the comments, because I have no idea. Sorry! I’ll try to be better about deleting spam, I’ve gotten a bit lazy.
I think you are better when you write about what you know; atheism, science and generalised social issues to do with your age/gender. While I sometimes enjoy your articles on religion/ Christianity/theology, I think that your knowledge on these matters is too influenced by the stand you have taken (being an ‘out atheist’ in an atheist club) and is sometimes prone to being quite shallow (sorry for being harsh, just trying to be honest).
I know theology isn’t my strong point, which is why I generally don’t discuss it. Whenever I talk about religion, I try to focus on its affects on society and individuals, rather than actual debates against theology. To be honest, debating theology just isn’t interesting to me, and there are plenty of other blogs who do a great job at it. If I ever say something stupid, feel free to call me out on it.
I’m looking forward to seeing what grad school you get into and reading about your experiences there. Hopefully you will have time to engage the local community and blog about it like you have done while at Purdue. Take care.
A lot of people indicated that they were looking forward to me blogging about getting into grad school and my experiences there. Don’t worry, I plan on continuing blogging, assuming there isn’t some university wide ban on it (which would go into my decision…). Right now I don’t want to talk about it too much, since I don’t want my posts to possibly affect my odds of being accepted. Because you know, benign posts about grad school questions would totally scare professors away more than rants about religion. I may post a bit about it retrospectively, once I know I’m safe.
Speaking of rants about a religion, some people mentioned I get a little too cranky/mean when I’m ranting. An equal amount of people said they loved it and that I need to rant more. As a compromise, I will not change my level of ranting, though it may fluctuate monthly (hmm, I think I have a new statistics project…)
I think you’re in a position to really apply feminism to science in both theory and practice. These two positions don’t seem to overlap much in your commentary, and I find that a bit odd.
To be honest, I’ve been lucky enough to have a wonderful experience as a female scientist at Purdue, so I don’t have many personal anecdotes to talk about. I definitely try to keep an eye out for relevant articles. Maybe I’ll have more to talk about once I become a “real” part of academia, but hopefully not!
Focus a little bit more on feminism. There are a bazillion blogs out there and the online atheist blogging community needs a popular young female – of which you are no doubt qualified for.
Popular Young Female Atheist sounds like an awesome superhero. Give me a cape and I’m totally in. Seriously though, I think finding a niche is important, which is why I usually don’t repost popular stories unless I have my own unique comment to make about it. A lot of people asked me to keep writing about feminism, and I definitely will!
A lot of people also mentioned that they enjoyed posts about the Purdue Non-Theists and other local atheist events. I’ll definitely keep it up, no matter where I go – all of the schools I’ve applied to have active atheist groups. I think one of my niche’s is being a young person on “front lines of the atheist movement,” doing a lot of the actual activism rather than passive blogging or writing.
Aside from the crude suggestion of ‘show us your tits’- I genuinely, as a man, appreciate a lot of the feminism displayed on your blog. It is novel in its approach thanks to its use of what I would describe as being ‘sensibility’, but perhaps I’ve simply been biased by radical elements of feminism and their blatant use of ridiculous appeals to emotion. The Sagan/Dawkins recounting of some descriptions of, say, Isaac Newton’s Principia as a ‘rape manual’, or derisive reference to hypothesis as an ‘invention of rich white males’. These people are farrrrr too polarizing in their approach, so hooray for the BlagHag voice of reason. Turning to freethought is such a comfort, especially when I find my self at a loss for words at a lot of the student initiatives at my university to favour in no uncertain terms the ‘radical’ or ‘revolutionary’ perspective– in itself, is not a bad thing, but that it comes at the cost of a comprehensible and rational backing! Uch! Keep up the good work, Jen. You’re an inspiration to the female atheists (especially the one I’ve been dating for the past 3 years!), and a great place to find an utter facepalming at the day’s irrationalities. Kudos. Also: Show us your tits!
Can I check more comics 10,000 times? Love your art, Jen. Community building sounds neat too – we have all met very interesting people through your site, and that’s just awesomeness. And, you know, sexy pirate stuff. Since you put it there. hurrrrr girl atheist has boobs hurrrrr
I really appreciate knowing there are guys out there who enjoy my feminism posts. But I think what I appreciate even more is guys who know how to appropriately use boob humor. I lol’d.
More sexy ninja outfit pictures; remember that you should teach the controversy so that everyone can make an informed decision. Only posting the sexy pirate outfit pictures is so one sided. ;-)
While I do have a sexy pirate outfit, I would only be able to pull off a shirt ninja, which wouldn’t be very sexy.
Not really, just a thank you for your time helping keep us entertained and out of trouble. You know, if we didn’t read this we may end up as satanists. Or worse, Mormons.
Ha.
Eat plenty of Vegetables
You know, I really should. My eating habits are so bad. My parents never instilled good habits in me – we’re a meat, potatoes, and corn family. I’ve been thinking of trying to drastically improve my eating and exercise habits this summer so I make it my routine when I “start over” at grad school. I figure if I don’t get fit now, I’m going to doom myself to a sedentary, unhealthy life.
Personal suggestion: Do something with your hair! I know, I know…fashion and vanity are not your thing. But take it from a guy who has had to intelligently critique his spouse’s hair beyond ‘it’s fine, dear’ for 20+ years. The lank, center-part, just let it hang doesn’t do anything for you. Spend some time & money with a decent stylist & you could be a Lab/Pirate Goddess!
SO TRUE. I have always hated my hair. It used to be a giant frizzy mess, but years of fiddling with hair care products made it only a semi frizzy mess. I’m really low maintenance, so the idea of doing something more than blow drying my hair and brushing it doesn’t appeal to me at all. I had bangs until I was 12, and I loathed them so much that I’m afraid to give them a chance ever again. As a result, I’m rocking the boring middle part. My hair is longer then usual now because I’m waiting to donate it to Locks of Love again. But if I have readers who are actually knowledgeable about hair and can suggest a low maintenance style that will turn me into a Lab Goddess, I will totally do it when I donate my hair.
Torture communion wafers, it worked for PZ. Or even better, write a whole series of really popular books, it worked for Dawkins.The wafer one is probably easier.
I think I’ll go for the popular books one. Not only have I always wanted to do that, but it’s also the option that’s less likely to get me lynched.
And the winner of the night:
PZ Myers. Sorry, had to. :P
I think I would have been disappointed if no one did.
Again, thanks so much to everyone for their input! Some people had more detailed comments that are worthy of their own post, so I may pull them out in the near future.
I want to thank everyone who participated in my Blag Hag 2010 Census! 467 people filled out the survey (before I closed it due to eagerness to crunch the numbers), which is absolutely amazing. I was expecting something like 50, but I guess you guys like data just as much as I do. Considering that I have slightly over 1000 subscribers (holy crap!), we did almost as well as voter turnout for the US Presidential elections! Feel special, or maybe depressed, depending how you interpret that.
Because I got a decent sample size, I actually felt safe doing some statistics and trying to interpret the results. Now, as a warning, it’s been a couple of years since I took a statistics class. It is highly probable that I screwed something up, that there was a more appropriate test to use, that one of the first five commenters will correct me, etc. I think we can see some interesting trends here, but it’s no scientific study. Also keep in mind these results don’t necessarily apply to atheists as a whole, just the atheists who read my blog and like to take surveys. Take it with a grain of salt!
Before we get started, here is how I indicated statistical significance on graphs:
* P-value less than 0.05
** P-value less than 0.01
*** P-value less than 0.001
**** P-value less than 0.0001
As always, click the images for a larger, nicer version.
We had 335 males, 135 females, and 7 transgendered readers. This actually surprised me a bit. As you can see, male readers vastly outnumber my female ones. People always ask “Where are the female atheists?” and I usually reply “We’re out here!” I know a lot of female atheists aren’t outspoken enough to want to go to club meetings or be visible, but I would have thought there would be more equal ratios on a blog written by a female atheist that often talks about feminism. My ladies are still drastically outnumbered!
I have a couple of hypotheses.
Oh, and to my transgendered readers who thanked me for including that option, you’re welcome! Can’t forget you guys. Though I am going to apologize now – most of my analyses look for differences in responses between males and females, and your sample size was too small to work for any of my statistics. Sorry! Please don’t take it personally.
Not surprising that most of my readers fall close to my own age (22). The one bit that surprised me was that I was expecting to have a grand total of two readers over the age of 30. Nothing against my older readers – I just still feel very young and immature in many respects, and I was surprised that so many “adults” would enjoy my blog. So, thank you! There we no difference in the age distribution of males and females.
Now, onto the cool stuff!
I think this result was so cool because it didn’t surprise me. Many studies (and anecdotes) point to females having more fluid sexual orientations and more bisexual tendencies. Our results follow that pretty nicely, with the vast majority of guys considering themselves exclusively heterosexual. Or at least, that’s how they reported their sexual orientation on the survey. Who knows how honest people are even when it’s anonymous.
Oh, and one fun observation: My friends who responded tend to be gayer than my readership as a whole. I think I’m a bad influence on people. Maybe we should see how that chart changes once I get another year to recruit blog.
Favorite open responses:
Here readers were allowed to respond with as many answers as they wanted, hence the use of percentage instead of raw numbers. Unsurprisingly, “atheist” was the most common choice. The popular choices seem to be the positive labels – skeptic, humanist, secularist, freethinker – with terms with negative connotations not doing so well. And this supports my opinion that “Bright” comes off as a kind of douchey label that not many non-theists like, since it came in last.
The gender differences here are interesting. Men are significantly more likely to call themselves skeptics, freethinkers, and anti-theists. Anti-theists sort of makes sense, since I think some men are more likely to be aggressive and in your face about things (this does not mean aggressive female anti-theists don’t exist). The other two completely baffle me, though. Women aren’t using skeptic as much, even with the delightful pun of the Skepchicks? And…I have no idea about freethinker. Feel free to come up with your own hypotheses in the comments.
Another interesting thing to note is that men tended to list more labels for themselves than women did. Men used an average of 4.4 labels with a variance of 9.3, and women used an average of 3.7 levels with a variance of 5.7 (p less than 0.01). Of course, this could entirely be from the couple of terms that men like to use a lot more than women.
Favorite open responses:
Moral of the story: get PZ to link to your blog repeatedly. Seriously though, it seems being linked to by other respected, popular blogs is the best way to get new readers and to retain them. To put this in perspective, Reddit usually gives me as many hits as a Pharyngula or Friendly Atheist plug, but those people don’t tend to stick around. Getting linked to by a great blog is a level of quality control, since that blogger is saying that they like your stuff.
I wasn’t expecting to see any differences here, but there they are! Is this because Pharyngula does have more of a male bias? And what’s up with the ladies liking Google Reader suggestions so much? I have no idea, but thank you, Google Reader!
Favorite open responses:
Women like posts on feminism a lot more than men – absolutely shocking! You guys better learn to love them, because they’re not going anywhere, haha. On the flip side, I have no idea why men like posts about me attending local atheist and theist events more than women. Hmmm, maybe because I tend to post a lot of photos when I go…
Other than that, the topics don’t surprise me. Politics is my least favorite topic to blog about since I don’t feel as well read in that area, and apparently my readers don’t love it either (not that they hate it, just that it’s not a favorite topic). Everything else I enjoy blogging about equally, and readers seem to enjoy them equally. Lesson: write about what you like!
Favorite open responses:
A lot of the free responses said that they loved the blog the way it was and to not feel like I needed to drastically change anything to improve. I didn’t consider this question an ultimatum or some drastic overhaul. I mainly wanted to know if 1. I should increase the attention I put on certain things that I already enjoy doing or 2. if I should start doing things I was thinking about doing. A couple of things:
Oh, and of course “More sexy pirate outfit photos” did really well, with men wanting them a lot more. Mind blowing. Maybe I can combine that with community building and contests, and make you send me sexy pirate photos of yourself! Much better than photos of me, right? …Right?
I’m saving the final open response suggestions for the next post, since this post is already getting massive enough. What do you guys think of these findings? Have any comments or hypotheses? Do you have any other things you want me to look at (if certain terms are correlated with each other, etc)? Just let me know, and I’ll crunch some more numbers! Data is fun!
I know my 10 Most Sexist Super Bowl Ads post got quite a bit of attention. And by “bit of attention” I mean hordes of anonymous trolls calling me a fat, ugly, lonely, humorless, overreacting, man-hating lesbian who needs to either get back in the kitchen or get back to blogging about topics that don’t make people uncomfortable. These comments really don’t phase me, since 1) Obvious trolls crack me up, 2) Misogynistic comments prove my point, and 3) My lesbian friends are super awesome, so I take that as a compliment.
To all of you who actually left civil and enlightening comments, whether they agreed or disagreed with me, I thank you.
Anyway, since the internet is way too serious of a place sometimes, I figured I would share this spoof of the Dodge Charger ad:
I’d put a bet on how many comments it’ll take for someone to call me a hypocritical misandrist*, but I just ruined that by stating it here, didn’t I? Oops.
*Sexism is bad, regardless if it’s targeted toward women or men. I’m not sure how many times I need to say that. Maybe I should put that in big bold letters above my banner for newcomers, so they don’t shit bricks every time I blog about sexism. Of course, watching them shit bricks is kind of fun.
I know my 10 Most Sexist Super Bowl Ads post got quite a bit of attention. And by “bit of attention” I mean hordes of anonymous trolls calling me a fat, ugly, lonely, humorless, overreacting, man-hating lesbian who needs to either get back in the kitchen or get back to blogging about topics that don’t make people uncomfortable. These comments really don’t phase me, since 1) Obvious trolls crack me up, 2) Misogynistic comments prove my point, and 3) My lesbian friends are super awesome, so I take that as a compliment.
To all of you who actually left civil and enlightening comments, whether they agreed or disagreed with me, I thank you.
Anyway, since the internet is way too serious of a place sometimes, I figured I would share this spoof of the Dodge Charger ad:
I’d put a bet on how many comments it’ll take for someone to call me a hypocritical misandrist*, but I just ruined that by stating it here, didn’t I? Oops.
*Sexism is bad, regardless if it’s targeted toward women or men. I’m not sure how many times I need to say that. Maybe I should put that in big bold letters above my banner for newcomers, so they don’t shit bricks every time I blog about sexism. Of course, watching them shit bricks is kind of fun.
I like data. No, really. Whenever there’s something I can measure or perform statistics on, I do. I like to graph my weight over time, find correlations between silly variables like doucheyness vs. time spent dating a guy, and create networks that diagram which of my friends have kissed each other (it’s a frightening web).
Don’t worry, you don’t have to make out with anyone against your will. But I would like you to complete a short survey!
I’m mainly curious about some of the general demographics of my readers, what you guys like about the blog, and what I can do to improve it in the future. I figure now is a great time to start collecting this sort of data. My blog is creeping up on it’s first birthday, and I think it would be pretty neat to have a regular data set throughout my years of blogging. Wouldn’t it be cool to see how it changes over time? I didn’t ask as many questions as I could have because 1) I’m limited to 10 and 2) I didn’t want to annoy you guys. But I still like getting a general idea!
Feel free to post comments and complaints in this post as well, though I have allotted you a free response question on the survey if you’d like to make a completely anonymous comment. I promise this isn’t a nefarious scheme to sell your demographic information to some mega corporation – at most the data may be posted anonymously as a couple graphs in a later post.
Hey everyone. This is just a bit of a warning that I’m going to be busier than usual during the next couple of weeks, and thus posting may temporarily slow down. How busy? I’ll be out of the state on graduate school visits approximately 40% of the time during the next four weeks. Here’s my slightly insane schedule:
2/16 – 2/18: Cambridge, MA
2/20 – 2/23: Seattle, WA
3/3 – 3/7: Stanford, CA
Yeah, at this point I’m glad I decided to only apply to my top three schools. Can’t imagine having to do more than this, like some of my friends.
Problem is that not only am I out of the state and busy interviewing, but I also don’t have a lap top. That means I probably won’t be able to make any significant posts even if I get a minute to breathe. So consider this a preemptive apology for my likely absence. Sorry guys, my future is just a tad more important than blogging at the moment.
On a related note, a couple of people have asked me if I’ll have time to grab a coffee or something. I won’t at Harvard, I probably won’t at Stanford, but I will definitely be available in Seattle. I have all of Saturday the 20th to explore and goof off. I already know a couple of my readers (hopefully not axe murderers) are keen to hang out; so if you’re in the area and interested in an informal meet up, let me know. I’ve already seen the touristy stuff in Seattle, so it would be nice to do something different.
Alright, back to work!
