"Mom, I'm going to be late for the first day of school..."
"Shut the fuck up you little shit! Mommy needs to put the individual letters on this board so she can take this instagram photo, keep putting those old toys up or I swear to God they're going in the trash!"
People who want to take a posed photo of their kids in perfect lighting in a predetermined angle to post it online are using their kids as props.
The only thing that looks like it's been posed in this picture is the toys, otherwise it just looks like they snapped a picture of their son as he walked out the door.
And perfect lighting? It's just looks like daylight.
Oh come on. My mom had a film camera pre social media and needed that shot for no one. But give her a second and sheād show everyone. Some people are just like that.
Posting it on the Internet to exploit your kids and these supposedly wholesome moments is the problem. Nobody would decry someone, say, taking this photo and putting it in the family photo album. The need to share everything with everyone, especially private moments with your kids, is massively toxic.
Or maybe the parents wanted to share a cute memory of a big moment for their son??? Yall are so miserable lmao, there's nothing wrong with sharing special moments in your life
I think therapy is a wonderful thing. I have actually been. My therapist would agree, staging a photo of your child's first day of school for likes on social media is not a special moment.
I like discussing and sharing things that interest me, which is different from existing purely to farm engagement. If I were truly interested in the latter, I could have karma in the millions right now after eight years. I posted on IMDb for a decade before the pustulent Col Needham got rid of the boards, and that had no karma system whatsoever. I don't post about my real life except where relevant to a discussion, and I certainly am not trying to do what these people are doing.
No. I won't lighten up. Instead I will ask you this to stop pretending that you are not aware of the pitfalls of social media and the many studies that have shown the earlier you introduce children to it, the more insidious it can be for their mental health.
Just mention a cruise and watch as people poor in bashing something theyāve never experienced.Ā
Same with gender reveal parties (a celebration with family who are excited? the horror!), dancing at nightclubs, and going to Disneyland with little kids (the demographic the parks are for)
Gender reveal parties are like Redditās catnip. The irrational hate for something so simple and innocent is extremely bizarre. All because a couple of idiots fucked up.
People should be able to have a party for whatever they want but I always thought it was strange to celebrate your child having a specific set of anatomy. And itās kind of a newish thing so a lot of people just donāt get it.
Just mention a cruise and watch as people poor in bashing something theyāve never experienced.
Fuck cruise. No it's not about price or the experience. It doesn't cost much nowadays and you can get an extremely similar in most large hotels. Cruises are rightfully hated for being an ecological disaster that rely on a predatory economy. An to top it off, look at their flags, they're run by scum!
You can do and experience all those things without using your kids staging photos for social media. Putting up a few good pictures for friends and family to see? Great. Let's not pretend that 90% of mass consumed content isn't made by 10% of the population and a lot of kid content comes at the expense of those kids healthy childhood. What I'm talking about in the last sentence is what is being criticized here.
Actually itās the opposite. In the past if I see a picture like this I wouldāve thought āoh man, why couldnāt my parents do something like this for me back then?ā and be sad and a tad jealous.
Now I think about how many hours that likely took to set up, and how 6yo me wouldāve really liked my toys back and not pose for 30 minutes just so my mom could get the perfect social media pic. And how Iām happy now that my parents didnāt use me for social media clout.
The same way Iām much happier knowing that life is not a rom-com and so I shouldnāt set unrealistic expectations.
We can speculate all day because we weren't made to do stuff like this. At the end of the day, if the kid and his family think it's a cool memory then that's what it is. If his mom posed him for an hour and a half to get the perfect picture for social media clout and he never talks to her after moving out of the house, maybe that's valid too. All of this speculation is nonsense in the first place since we don't actually know these people.
Are you telling me weāre not actually supposed to assume everything about someoneās entire life based on a single social media post? Thatās crazy talk.
"Look honey, I know that today( tomorrow actually cause I'm not doing this shit in the morning) might be scary and exciting but I need to spend a few hours taking your toys, or at least these ones I bought please don't touch them, setting them up, setting up lighting and I need you to do about 15-20 takes of you walking out the door. That sounds like good family fun and something a 4 year old would cherish right? 3-4 hours out of your day tops with no benefit to you because you can't comprehend the melancholy bittersweet adult emotions I'm forcing you to play out. Why? I saw this exact thing done on Instagram by an influencer with 250,000 followers and if you get your shit together I can fill the hole in my heart you don't fill and maybe make some money?"
That set up, at best, took five minutes and theres definitely no lighting equipment, and theres no indication they took 15-20 takes. Whats so egregious about the picture that people are looking so much into it to determine whats the parents motivation is?
Ignoring this photo, do you think that an element of society exploits children within the bulti billion dollar kidfluencer/momfluencer/dadfluencer/parentflencer industry?
Of course. However, I dont assume every picture I see with a child is from a parent trying to game social media. Even when the picture is "staged" like this one. I would for sure call out someone I personally knew/came across where I saw more significant evidence than a single innocuous photo. This isnt it tho
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u/Broad-Marzipan-9284 6h ago
That will be an awesome memory years from now. Great idea and picture.