You gotta know your own weaknesses.
One of mine, especially early on in my creative journey, was knowing what was offensive and over the line.
When I was running Scary Mommyâs Instagram I posted this meme:
(NOTE: rather than repost offensive content, I am only going to crudely describe it with text. So you get the idea but the meme is not perpetuated.)
Caption: The day after your kid stops taking naps.
Image: drug addict character from Chappelle Show âYâall got any more of them naps?â
An hour later, it was gone. I had no idea why it could have disappeared. I even emailed Scary Mommy editorial leadership asking if they knew what mightâve happened. (I assumed it was a technical issue, thatâs how tone deaf I was.)
An editor replied back to me that they deleted this one as soon as they saw it. They had actually just done coverage on a sensitive drug addiction story during mental health awareness month and were getting messages and emails expressing discontent.
YIKES!
I immediately regretted everything to do with this and apologized profusely. Iâm cringing RIGHT NOW just thinking about this.
I want to cover this topic anyway because at this point in The Dad story, we are LIVE, we are posting content, we are building an audience, and we are learning about ourselves as a brand, what we stand for, what our content vision is, and where the line is. All times are tumultuous these days. But keep in mind, The Dad started at the end of 2017. And we were growing and beginning to thrive during some culturally contentious moments.
When I was in the monthsâ long interview process leading up to The Dad, leadership at our parent company was doing due diligence, checking on my background and previous posts.
One day an executive called me up to talk through some of my The Glad Stork posts that they didnât find to be particularly âon brand,â to put it lightly.
There were several examples. At first I was like âWellll you know, the joke here is <so and so> and Iâm exaggerating for comedic effect by comparing to <so and so>.â and that kind of garbage. Eventually I said âYa know, I post whatever comes to mind on The Glad Stork. Some are quite bad and I delete. None of the content is with malice or intentionally offensive. Thereâs too much of that on the internet already. If anything offends, I delete. But I have no other team looking at stuff before it goes up. There is no editorial process or review. So itâs just me, and Iâm not the best at screening these things. It wonât be like that for The Dad.â And that was true.
When youâre cranking out jokes constantly, and trying to push the boundaries of originality, you gotta force your brain to think of all angles. Constantly brainstorming, no wrong answers, etc. This sometimes leads to crappy posts that get no engagement, bombs, and sometimes, for me, being tone deaf to offensive material. NO EXCUSES. This is on me. Took me a while to get better at it. And for me, the best way of doing this was to have multiple people looking at content before it goes live. Ideally a diverse team of people with different backgrounds and perspectives, to identify issues you wouldnât. (Sadly The Dad team was notoriously not great at diverse representation on staffđŹ. That is also on me. Weâll discuss more later.)
And yet, after we launched The Dad, we still had posts that needed to be removed immediately after posting.
One of our first memes:
Caption: When your wife has yet another shipment arrive from amazon
Image: Brad Pitt from the end of Seven looking distressed yelling WHAT IS IN THE BOX?
We were emailed immediately and told to take it down. We wanted to avoid perpetuating gender stereotypes, and in this it was the tired cliche of âwomen be shopping.â (Later, Iâd rework this one to switch the genders, which makes even more sense in my household since my wife makes more money than me. Still, not a great joke.)
This was another one posted during our first couple weeks:
Caption: When your wife asks if you find another woman attractive
Image: Stevie Wonder smiling
This is an ableist joke and totally unnecessary. I also feel itâs a tired gender generalization anyway. No loss there. Deleted!
Many of you reading this are cringing like me that weâd event post that.
Others may think, âThereâs nothing wrong with those. You shouldnât have deleted!â
Look, everyoneâs threshold is different. But you must respect othersâ thresholds. This was a lesson we learned right away and would stick with us throughout The Dadâs run. Creating content and managing a brand is incredibly difficult. Especially when social media is already a rage-filled hellscape. We did not want to throw fuel on the fire.
We wanted to entertain and celebrate modern involved fatherhood in an inclusive community that was positive and uplifting.
Absolutely no place for ableism and tired stereotypes. A dumb joke that offends is just not worth it. It advances⊠NOTHING. Does not help our vision at all.
But itâs not always as clear cut as those examples. There are judgment calls.
Early on I was told we should never use the B word, ever. (Bitch.) Thatâs not really a word I personally use so yeah of course, no problem.
We shared this meme, from my content creator friend Julie Burton (go follow her!):
Only after posting, I realized it does say the B word in there. And I was told not to use it, ever. And we were on the heels of having multiple posts taken down so maybe I should check????
I emailed my bosses and asked what they thought. One got back to me quickly and said itâs probably best to just delete.
I was surprised with this, but we did, in fact, delete it.
Later the other boss got back and said no, thatâs silly, this one is totally fine. (I agree.)
My point is: you canât necessarily have strict rules about this one stays, this one goes. Itâs more important to have a vision and a group of people who can review. But also, you have to gauge the reaction of your audience, if your audienceâs feelings are important to you, and they were to us.
The Dad was a young and immature brand, in several senses of the word. And our big sister Scary Mommy had been doing this for a while. So it was clear we had a lot to live up to, both with our parent companyâs standards but also our own.
Did we ever have to delete offensive posts ever again? Yes, Iâm sure of it. But most of those were stuff caught by us.
Or posts that were offensive to BRANDS, which is an entirely different topic weâll get to later. Dealing with brands can be a real son of a bitch.