Consider the kid.
I have a number of friends from high school who have since reproduced. Facebook is fun for this sort of thing, you can compliment the cuteness of the child with no danger of actually having to hold or entertain said child. Oh sure I’ve met a few off spring. Emma’s baby was only 6 weeks old at the 10 year reunion, and Joanne has brought her boys into the library a time or two. All good.
Thankfully, my friends are the kind who seem to understand that while people might want a peek at the kids, we don’t want the entire story. Most have at least a few pics of the kids at the zoo, playing in the mud, reading with grandma or first days at kinder or school. Very cute! We don’t want to see pictures of bathtime, potty training, full nappies etc. Frankly, the first person on my friends list who posts a photo of their naked child will be removed from my friendslist post haste.
There’s a couple of things about posting pics of your naked kids online. The first, and maybe biggest issue, is that once you upload that photo you lose all control over it. You don’t know how many copies are out there, you don’t know who has it or who is passing it on. Certainly you can hope that your friends are not a concern, but you don’t know. This doesn’t just apply to facebook, in fact you could say it applies more to blogs, but the fact is it’s just NOT a good idea to upload pics of your kids naked.
A friend of mine once directed me to a blog belonging to a friend of hers (and mother of her daughters best friend). Amongst the holiday snaps was one of their 8 year old in the shower. Seriously. Out there, on blogger. I left a comment suggesting they remove it, and found my comment deleted and a note added to the blog saying “Damn commenters think they know it all, don’t you tell me how to raise my child!”. I ended up reporting the image to Google and having it deleted because, hello? If I can see your blog, anyone can. Locked down accounts are one thing, but public accounts are so incredibly not the place to post these pics.
The other problem is that you’re basically removing your kids right to privacy. If someone took a photo of you on the toilet and posted it to facebook or anywhere else you’d probably be furious, so why is it apparently okay to post pics of kids like this? I understand potty training is a very exciting step in parenting, and sharing it with your friends is understandable, however no one needs pictures. In my day a photo was probably taken maybe once a week, these days you can upload 400 almost identical photos to Facebook in less time than it takes to get a roll of film developed. It just seems to me that some of those photos would be better left unshared with the general population.
I’m not knocking parents, I seriously DO understand that having kids is a fantastic thing (for most people) and wanting to show them off is natural, but on behalf of your kids – it’s not cute splashing their naked butts all over the internet. Edit your photos before they go up, and take out the ones that you wouldn’t want posted of yourself.
PS. For more scary parentstuff on Facebook, I quite like STFUparents. That’s what inspired this very effing profound post.
What happened to my Second Life?
When I started Second Life back in 2004, it was a small unstable 3d world populated by people with diverse interests and skills. Now, in 2009 it’s a large unstable 3d world populated by people with diverse interests and skills, but it also bores me to snores. For a long time I would spend easily 6 hours a day or more in world, making things, talking to people and bopping around the grid. I embraced my avatar and registered all over the place with her name and likeness. I enjoyed the process of slapping blocks together to make stuff and I liked to hang out in pretty places with fun people.
Now I’m just – whatever. I can’t even muster up the interest to log in for 5 minutes. Messing around with blocks to make stuff, which was a time sink in the past, is now a tedious chore. I recall when I started it was totally overwhelming. Even then the help files were out of date and so much of my learning was cobbled together from forum posts and experimentation. For a while there, it was pretty much smooth. I wasn’t a famouse designer, but I was doing okay with teddy bears and various other random things I’d hack together for fun. Now? God it’s not even a world I know.
Drama wore me down of course, like it does most people who don’t thrive on it. Having opinions in world that differ from the mainstream is a surefire way to get yourself abused and harrassed. Yeah I reported them, but that became something I just couldn’t do for a while. Log in and hear how someone wanted to shit on my head or wanderoff and read a book? I’ll take the book thanks.
I also found that spending all my creative energy in a virtual world was sapping my will to be creative in the real world. Since I stopped logging in as much, I’m crocheting, sewing, writing, sketching. Making pretty messes and enjoying every second (even the stupid skirts that won’t hem. Bastards). I find the SL creative process incredibly frustrating. Partly because of the bugs and poor tools, partly because it’s dangerous to look outside your own back yard without getting discouraged. In the real world you can draw the worst thing ever, and it doesn’t matter so long as it was fun. The emphasis on money making in SL was tiring, and the feeling of never measuring up depressing.
I’m not saying I’ll quit SL. I have too many friends in world. I currently keep up with them on Plurk, and as Faery will tell you it’s about the ONLY way to get me anymore. I do think however it’s time to accept that I won’t be running a store/rentals/making/creating. Ziggy isn’t ready to die just yet, but she IS ready for a long nap. Saying I’ll be back to making things at any point is frankly a lie. I don’t enjoy the process anymore, and therefore it’s time to stop.
If you need me, I’ll be in at the sewing machine making tangible things to play with.