Just imagine turning 14, getting your first laptop, googling your name and discovering more than a decade of your most personal moments and photos all over the internet, and your parents are responsible https://t.co/y6LZgzrneP
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) January 4, 2019
Since it’s Saturday night, and we need a fresh thread… Reason #2,349 why I’m glad I never had kids. There used to be a saying in sf fandom: Never try to write other peoples’ personalzines. It makes me squirmy just to listen to my friends describe their offsprings’ more personal moments in front of those kids, and that was only party chatter. But this Very Internet Parent finds a whole new-to-me grotesque rationale:
… Promising not to write about her anymore would mean shutting down a vital part of myself, which isn’t necessarily good for me or her. So my plan is to chart a middle course, where together we negotiate the boundaries of the stories I write and the images I include. This will entail hard conversations and compromises. But I prefer the hard work of charting the middle course to giving up altogether — an impulse that comes, in part, from the cultural pressure for mothers to be endlessly self-sacrificing on behalf of their children. As a mother, I’m not supposed to do anything that upsets my children or that makes them uncomfortable, certainly not for something as culturally devalued as my own creative labor…
My daughter didn’t ask to have a writer for a mother, but that’s who I am. Amputating parts of my experience feels as abusive to our relationship as writing about her without any consideration for her feelings and privacy…
“Amputating parts of my experience…” Lady, you’ve not selling your favors so your daughter won’t have to slave in the match factory. You’ve been monetizing your Adorkable Kiddos because that’s what you’ve got to market. And now you’ve made a few more bucks whining about those poor kids’ lack of appreciation. Very on brand!
p.a.
There’s a position for her somewhere in the Drumph admin. She’ll fit right in.
Major Major Major Major
Eeewwww.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
she wrote out that sentence, presumably reread it at least once, and decided she wanted people to see it in a major national newspaper
Viva BrisVegas
She needs to realize that that part of herself is toxic self regard and if it is a vital part of herself then she is a very sick puppy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Charlie Pierce made a meme for the internet.
Gex
Thankfully my cat and my dog will not have to go through this same thing. No kid pic posting by me. But almost a pathetically sad volume of pet pictures.
laura
As a mother, I’m not supposed to do anything that upsets my children or that makes them uncomfortable, certainly not for something as culturally devalued as my own creative labor…
Talk about a pay later plan…..
I’m imagining my mother’s response to this blather, starting with pursed lips and ending with a comment about the complete abandonment of shielding a child from subjects not appropriate to age to generally defending the right to a private life.
sukabi
I hope she’s prepared for her daughter to shut her out of her life, cuz that’s what’s going to happen.
What a stupid selfish woman.
Major Major Major Major
OT: I’ve had this imaginary version of Jolene kicking around in my head for a couple hours.
JanieM
Jaysus. We’re all introverts and very private in my family, not to mention paranoid (uselessly, I’m sure) about the internet. I’ve never had a Facebook account…others near and dear to me use theirs only sparingly. I understand the urge to talk about your kids, and about parenting — my kids had to train me out of some amount of it when they were young, but I respected their wishes and their privacy in the same way I hope they’d respect mine. I second @Viva BrisVegas:
without even bothering with the qualifiers.
Interestingly, just today I started reading Tara Westover’s Educated for a book group. It’s not a book I would have picked up on my own, and having read 30-40 pages of the beginning, and skipped around in the rest, I’m troubled by similar issues of how and whether to tell family stories. I’m not saying Westover shouldn’t have written the book — and it wouldn’t be fair to make a judgment one way or the other without reading more of it anyhow. But it’s a messy business, telling your story — when your story (anyone’s story) is also so many other people’s story too.
I wonder how this woman is going to react when her daughter writes a tell-all memoir of her upbringing in ten or fifteen years.
eemom
For a minute there I thought it said Political Non-Weirdness Open Thread. And I am totally NOT shrooming. #wishIwas
eemom
@Major Major Major Major:
Damn Cole for posting that shit on FB. ?
Frankensteinbeck
Holy shit, what a self-absorbed statement.
Is ‘telling stories about your child’ the vital part of yourself, or just ‘doing whatever the Hell YOU want’?
Let me guess, it builds character? This will hurt you more than it hurts them?
Made by her, since ‘I won’t tell internet stories about my child’ isn’t particularly difficult.
You’re going to sprain your arm, patting yourself on the back like that.
WRITE SOMETHING ELSE. You’re like someone complaining that you should be allowed to drive drunk because you need a car.
Then fucking act like it. You have literally just quoted an argument for you to put her needs first.
Holy. Fucking. Shit. Grandiose, much?
No one thinks you have NO consideration. You just have so little consideration that your own amusement is more important than her feelings and privacy.
…sorry, folks. I get very intense about bad parenting.
FlyingToaster
That woman should not have custody of a goldfish, let alone a human child. I can’t even… given her narcissism and irresponsiblity, I’d ask the other parent to take over as primary, since she’s clearly not qualified.
***
[slightly santimonious rant follows]
I’m a parent. WarriorGirl is now 11 years old, and has a iPod, iPad, and now a Chromebook. Next summer she gets a phone, because that’s the only way we’ll be able to coordinate where to fetch her from, and when. She knows EXACTLY what pictures and videos have been posted, where I posted them, and everything uses the handle WarriorGirl and never her actual name. She has a pretty clear sense of why we’ve made these choices, why I use a handle, why I expect her to use one, what we and her school consider “responsible” online behavior, and what consequences might be. It’s not been simple, or easy, but it’s absolutely nonnegotiable.
I have a Twitter account, but not (and never) Facebook. I upload videos of performances to YouTube, and then get permission from her to send that private link to various people (Grandma, her teachers, etc.). Otherwise, she has the link and she chooses who to share it with. In two years, she’ll have greater freedom, but I have to have the passwords to her accounts while she’s under my roof (or I won’t pay for the electronics). I made her read COPPA, so she knows why I won’t let her upload anything to YouTube until she’s 13, and after that, I’ll be all over her ass for any copyright violations before publishers get wind of it. Her god(less)mother’s an intellectual property attorney, so I have expert backup who she’ll actually listen to.
HerrDoktor and I both agree that Facebook’s off limits (due to security concerns about their handling of damn all), so she can wait for college if she wants to tangle with that mess. At that point, she’s entitled to fuck things up for herself.
It’s never been my right to put things out there about anyone but me. I’ve been incredibly circumspect online, clear back to my FuckedCompany and alt.slack days, because I have family and friends and clients and frankly, all of those are hostages to fortune. I don’t understand how someone can be this callous about the other people in their lives, and especially about their own children.
delk
I’m sure the daughter will be thrilled when future employers google her.
Major Major Major Major
@FlyingToaster:
hardcore
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Frankensteinbeck:
She better be careful. She might accidentally amputate her fingers on that edge.
She’s definitely mother of the year material.
Aleta
The kid asked her not to do it.
She in effect answered ‘That wouldn’t be fair to me. So I will do it even though it’s against your will. But I’ll follow some boundaries that I thought up, and that will be enough.’
Way to violate the kid’s trust and ability to protect herself. Good lesson about communicating with her mother: it doesn’t work, and don’t tell her anything you don’t want the world to know.
The mother needs a dog to write about. Or the kid could write a few posts of her own.
Such bull about the needs of a writer coming first. How to respect privacy is a decision writers have to make — there’s no universal right.
Kid’s safety and peace is at stake and her mom turns around and uses that too.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@FlyingToaster:
Out of curiosity, without prying too much, how do you enforce that? Honor system? What if your daughter wanted to get an account on a forum or something? If you don’t want to answer, I understand.
JanieM
I do wonder about all the parts of her experience that she has amputated by not writing about them. Her religious beliefs? Her sex life? Her own upbringing? Or would she say some things can be kept private after all….without “amputating” them.
What an idiot.
Suzanne
I read the comments on that piece, and thankfully all of the WaPo commenters said the same thing everyone here is saying: this woman is a narcissist and she is damaging her kid. Spawn the Elder got a Facebook account about a year ago, and I am glad that I stopped posting anything other than typical vacation and family photos, and the occasional funny family moment. And that’s just on my personal FB page, not a national publication. Ergh. This woman is going to have a terrible relationship with her kids, and I bet she won’t even know why.
Spawn the Younger got stung by a scorpion tonight. She’s doing better now, but holy shit was that scary and painful for her for an hour or so.
Amir Khalid
in hindsight, it’s not really surprising. People have had to learn not to share too much about themselves on the interwebs, and parents too have to learn not to share too much about their children. And as always there will be knuckleheads who resist the lesson for pureky selfish reasons like this mother.
Chetan Murthy
When I was in grad school, there was a push to get eveybody’s pic on the department notice board. One of my fellow students was nominated to run the process, and pushed-and-pushed for me to site for a pic. I refused. Eventually I relented, but then went back and stole the picture and destroyed it. I think that finally got the message thru.
In my 19-year career at Ye Old Gynormous IT Company, they eventually got the Internet version of that — an Internet corporate directory. And again, Id’ get requests to upload a pic. And I always refused. The company had my pic (for my badge) of course, but it wasn’t public, and wasn’t on the “intranet”.
Linkedin itinerantly asks me to upload a pic. I always skip.
Some people don’t want to have their private lives on the Internet. I can’t imagine if my parents had pushed me to do it. Really, i can’t.
This parent. Christ, what an asshole. Then again, I
guessknow there are worse ways to be a shitty parent. Still: Christ, what an asshole.MomSense
This means the poor kid’s friends, including the girl she had the falling out with, can also read all about her. Does mom not realize how vicious teenage girls can be? Her poor kid is going to go through hell because she feels she has the right to use her daughter for her own gratification. I’ve known some toxic stage mothers in my time and this lady would fit right in with them.
Jeffro
Just jumping in before heading to bed to say
1) I can’t believe I missed out on talking about comics (including the new Spider-Man movie) in the earlier thread, and also
2) shocked to see how much Ms. Zornio looks like Ms. Almost-Mrs.-Jeffro from back in the day
What a weird night. Also, dammit, the Cowboys won, and the Colts look like they have their s*** together, which is NOT what I wanted for next week’s Chiefs game. Ugh. Let’s go Ravens and Eagles tomorrow!
Suzanne
@Aleta: The daughter will never confide anything of importance to her mother. Mom will think everything is fine.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Suzanne:
Holy shit, glad she’s alright. I can’t imagine how terrifying that most have been.
JanieM
I read the essay so fast I missed the first line:
What in the name of all that’s holy is wrong with the word “gave”? And if she just *had* to say “gifted,” she should have said “the new laptop we gifted her with.” Maybe she did, and some copy editor in a hurry came along and decided that sentences shouldn’t end with prepositions, and lopped one off. Or maybe she’s just a pretentious asshole as well as an abusive narcissist, and the WaPo can’t afford copy editors any more.
Anyhow, I think I’ll go to bed before the grammar police police come and yell at me for bringing it up.
Major Major Major Major
@JanieM: That’s a fairly common usage of ‘gifted’ in my experience.
eemom
@Frankensteinbeck:
As any decent person should.
Suzanne
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Scorpions are an unfortunate part of desert life, though we’d avoided any stings in the house up until now. My cats are falling down on the scorpion-hunting job. The hardest thing is that there isn’t anything that really helps, the pain just has to dissipate on its own. Her foot still feels numb. So she got a treat of hot Cheetos and gets to stay up late watching Harry Potter.
Amir Khalid
@JanieM:
I’m with you. As a working journo I had no great love of copy editors or their job; but I do recognise the need for it, and I think publications are worse off for having done away with it.
Ruckus
Something weird?
It’s raining in Pasadena. It’s also 48 degrees. How weird is that?
FlyingToaster
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Not honor system, alas.
Both HerrDoktor and I are computer professionals. He makes his living in the ‘net security industry; I’ve been programming educational software since 1987.
I hold the admin passwords to all of her devices (and to all of the household network accesses, and next year to her phone). I learned how to track what she’s doing on her iPad, which is why I noted that it’s not been easy (and boundaries have been crossed, and accesses have been curtailed). School can do the same with their Google accounts.
Could she do this if she’s careful enough to use her Chromebook and not leave tracks? If she’s successful, and doesn’t get into trouble, more power to her, but I doubt she’s that careful. At least, not yet…
Amir Khalid
@Major Major Major Major:
Yeah, but it’s not really necessary when “gave” can convey the very same meaning. And compared to “gave”, “gifted” has at least a faint whiff of the highfaluting.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Wow. What a load of solipsistic horse manure.
Some folks concerned with privacy have developed the legal concept of the right to be forgotten, the right to have information about you scrubbed from the Internet. I think this is problematic and rarely successful.
But people can better control some of what they put on the Internet, and I think this mother blogger is nuts.
At an extreme, I wonder if a child could sue a parent for invasion of privacy.
Also, people are finding that an Internet presence has a value, and also creates a persona or a kind of reputation. This parent might unwittingly damage the kids reputation by posting something she thinks is cute, but which is judged negatively in the future.
Major Major Major Major
@Amir Khalid: I was merely saying I wouldn’t flag it as wrong per se.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
Yep. I agree with you big time. I really enjoyed reading a lot of the comments.
And I enjoyed the new Spider Man movie. It deserves to be seen in the theater or at least on a big home screen.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Suzanne:
That sounds fun!
@FlyingToaster:
Sounds like you’re doing what you think is best for your kid. The internet has always been a scary place, but it can also be wonderful to explore at the same time. Hope WarriorGirl makes good choices in the future.
FlyingToaster
@Major Major Major Major: Only when we went trolling at alt.scientology…
Actually the more fun times were FC mobs going after Stormfronters. That was fucking epic.
And one time I sent one misogynist dickslap a 20 MB educational video on neonatal resuscitation techniques via penet.fi, as part of a group of women sick of his “girl’s can’t program” shtick. His employer was, um, both confused and very disturbed that he was attracting that kind of abuse. Hundreds of megs of educational videos that women had worked on, anonymously arriving in his company’s servers. When IT figured out he was using his company time and account on USENET, well, he stopped being our problem.
Yeah, I’m old. Yesterday (it’s after midnight in Bwahstin) was my birthday, and once we finished with music school, it’s been a lovely, quiet, restful day. And a new iPad, and and old hard to find CD. And cake.
Mnemosyne
On the flipside, some celebrity parents go to great lengths to keep their kids out of the media. John C. Reilly is probably on the extreme end of that because he refuses to say for the public record how many kids he has, much less reveal their ages/genders. I saw a photoshoot with Sandra Bullock where her kids were playing while wearing superhero costumes and masks. Lin-Manuel Miranda will put up audio files of his kids or photos of them from behind/with their faces obscured. Because, again, none of these kids asked to have famous parents, so their parents think it’s unfair to use them for publicity.
This woman sounds like she’s taken “living vicariously through your children” to a whole new level.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: 49 here in Glendale, looks like most of the storm has past here.
FlyingToaster
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
We try. I have the advantage of my SIL and her 5 boys, so when in doubt, I ask her. And most of my same-age friends have college-age kids, so I can learn from their flaming disasters…
The internet is the Information Superhighway, not the Information Kiddie Pool. There’s a lot of “we don’t do X because of this vulnerability”, like have wireless thermostats or Facebook accounts. Same as not riding a bicycle on the MassPike, or swimming in the Charles below the Watertown Dam. It’s mostly just learning not to do things that will hurt yourself.
Suzanne
@FlyingToaster: Happy-ass birthday!
@Mnemosyne: I find it weird when celebrity parents put their kids in their movies.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
I have to admit, that was always one of my biggest fears when I would visit Arizona. Arachnids freak me the fuck out in general, and knowing that they could be lurking in your bed or your shoe just made it worse.
My parents used to have an exterminator come and spray the perimeter of their house to keep them away — maybe it’s time to do that? I think they had to do it a couple of times a year.
Steeplejack
– I, Dracula: The Lost Chapters
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
I once had a Pilates instructor who also did commercials on the side and her experience made it all make sense as to why actors would have their small children in their movies: young kids generally act much more naturally with their own parent than they will with a stranger. So when you see a baby or toddler with an adult in a TV commercial, they’re almost always a parent/child pair that was cast together. It’s just less stressful for everyone that way.
Actor parents who put their middle-school or older kids into their movies are usually being stage parents who want their kids to become actors, and that can be fucked up.
FlyingToaster
@Steeplejack: ???
smike
@Suzanne:
The last time I was stung, a wet compress of non-herbal tea worked well. A tobacco-chewing landlord I had used to crawl around under his pier-and-beam houses while working on them and was often bitten by scorpions. He told me that he would slap some of his chaw on the site and he was fine.
Bobbo
How is this “negotiation” supposed to go?
“Mom, please don’t humiliate me and invade my privacy by putting me on the internet.”
“Sorry, dear, that’s not negotiable.”
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: We had a natural exterminator come out monthly for a while, and they use food-grade diatomaceous earth. We stopped paying the pros and Mr. Suzanne orders it and does the treatment himself. It’s very easy (just sprinkling the powder in a line). There is only so much that exterminators can do about scorpions, though. The pesticides don’t kill the scorpions directly, but it kills the smaller bugs that are scorpion prey. The scorpions themselves have to be smashed. None of the services will guarantee that you’ll ever be totally scorpion-free. My cats typically do a pretty good job keeping the house clear, but it is just a part of life in this part of the world.
Bruuuuce
The most succinct comment I can find on the horrid parent from the WaPo is straight out of The New Yorker cartoon section: CWAA.
On a whole other non-political weirdness and assholery note,
Chetan Murthy
@Suzanne:
Damn! That is fascinating! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth#Pest_control
bemused
@Suzanne:
I’m clueless about scorpions having never lived in an area where they are common. Do cats, dogs or other pets get stung by scorpions and if so, are they affected by the stings? How do cats clear house of scorpions, kill them and eat them? Our cats stalk moths, flies, other bugs in the house and sometimes eat them.
Suzanne
@bemused: Cats hunt scorpions similar to how they would hunt rats in a barn. Due to their reflexes and the fur on their paws, they don’t get stung. Occasionally, I will see one of the cats stalking or concentrating in a corner. I follow them and almost always find a scorpion that they have cornered or killed. They don’t eat them, but they can mess with them (crunch or smoosh) until they die. They usually leave me a corpse. So kind.
Ang
I think I see a strawman on stage in her martyr passion play.
“As a mother, I’m not supposed to do anything that upsets my children or that makes them uncomfortable”
Really? Since when? I seem to remember saying a lot of things like ‘Yes you have to get your vaccine shots’ and ‘No you can’t stay out until 2am every night when you’re 14’ and even the dreaded ‘You have to at least try the new vegetable before you can say you don’t like it’
What a spoiled little brat – and I don’t mean her kid.
bemused
@Suzanne:
Happy to hear they are too skilled to get stung. For cats, the thrill of the hunt is everything.
Bruuuuce
@Ang: Yep. That biological mother is failing her kid multiple ways, it sounds like. The primary rule of parenting, as I understand and tried to live, is to do right by one’s kids. Give them what they need, restrict things that will harm them, and teach them how to make good choices.. This one sounds like she’s failed in all three respects, and the daughter learned to make good choices despite her.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Oh, I know. Did I ever tell you about the time my parents arrived in Arizona for the winter and discovered that scorpions had built a hill in the middle of their living room over the summer?
They didn’t do any environmentally friendly scorpion exterminating stuff after that. It was all about eliminating those bastards with extreme prejudice no matter how nasty the pesticides were.
sm*t cl*de
@Bobbo:
Don’t worry, mother will write at great and detailed length about the entire process.
divF
@Major Major Major Major: I’m now hearing it in Dolly Parton’s voice.
joel hanes
@FlyingToaster:
Warlording
Kibo
Canter and Siegel, the green card lawyers
divF
@?BillinGlendaleCA: 46 in Berkeley. The rain has paused, but it is supposed to start up again in the morning.
bemused
I’m kind of shocked that the writer didn’t carefully consider how her kids would feel about what she has written and posted about them when they were older. I’d think most parental advice writers have. It should have been a no-brainer.
Sab
@Amir Khalid: “Gifted” is a construction that should only be used in the context of tax accounting. It’s a legal term of art, not a normal usage. And this strange mother who values her writing more than her child cannot even conjugate a commnly used English verb properly.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Words fail me….
More to the point, you find out about this at your first job because HR did some web search about you.
opiejeanne
@Major Major Major Major: Yes, ewww! That mother is one sick woman.
Mike J
Wind storm is here. My house has these gimungous pines that block most of the wind (but pelt the house with cones). I can often look out the front door and see my neighbor’s flag flying straight out in the breeze and the anemometer atop my house will read 2mph because of the trees.
Right now the anemometer is reading 18. Cones are bouncing off every skylight. Noisy.
NotMax
Don’t grok why anyone would want to Google him or herself.
Certainly never occurred to me to do so because I know who I am.
Anne Laurie
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I’m hoping it’ll turn out to be like marijuana use among us Boomers: If HR automatically disqualifies every first-gen social-media candidate with an “unfortunate” incident or twenty in their past, they’ll be reduced to off-the-grid cult escapees and sociopaths with superior web-scrubbing skillz. At which point, Enlightened Tolerance will become the new talking point!
opiejeanne
@divF: Yes! Dolly Parton’s voice is in my head for Jolene, but the rest of this thread I’m hearing in a thick Scottish accent because we’ve been bingeing a show shot in Edinburgh.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
You have an idea of who/what you are; but do the Intertubes have the same idea?
opiejeanne
@Mike J: Oh geez, we’re starting to get the wind over here now. I think the rain has stopped for a bit on the east side, but we just got the greenhouse patched back together. I wonder how long the power will be out this time.
sukabi
@NotMax: but are you a teenager?
Sab
@NotMax: About 15 years ago I googled myself, and discovered to my horror that my new employer had posted about my hiring along with way too much biographical information about me, right there on the internet where my abusive ex could find it. I’d moved 2000 miles to get away from him.
Useful to me to know that info was out there. Useful to the kid in this story to know her mother knows no boundaries.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Still no interest. If it’s something important will find out about it anyway; if it’s not important then don’t care.
YMMV.
Chetan Murthy
@Sab:
I think you’re giving her too much credit. It’s somewhat normal that someone might find their writing to be really important to them. Maybe such a person shouldn’t have children, but hey, lots of men do that every day. Every day. So I can’t fault her for that. What she’s doing, is valuing a particular -schtick- that she’s found, a perticular “patch” she’s found where her writing thrives. If she values writing, she should find something else to write about, other than her children. B/c if it’s about the -writing- , well, writing is a craft. You find out that the tree whose wood you’ve been using for your carpentry is going extinct, you switch to a different tree, ffs. Doesn’t change that you’re still a carpenter.
Chetan Murthy
@Anne Laurie:
I have been told that this is where the inspiration for Snapchat came from. That, basically, kids of a certain age were scrubbing their FB profiles in preparation for college, and one of them realized that there might be a business there.
H.E.Wolf
@Mike J:
@opiejeanne:
Us too. It woke me out of a sound sleep, half an hour ago. I hope nobody gets caught in a down draft and blown off course….
Sab
@Chetan Murthy: I agree. Every writer has to strike a balance between what they want to write about and the privacy needs of those around them. It should be difficult.
This mother doesn’t seem to feel that tension.It seems to be all about her. Add the weird “gifting” usage, which is legalese and not standard English, and I wonder if her writing “gift” is worth the personal cost. Not very good writer with not much of a moral framework. What is the point of writing outside her own personal journal. Just to be an object lesson in awfulness?
Bostonian
Her daughter has it easy. She also wrote a book about her group therapy. And the other therapands didn’t really appreciate it.
“The first draft is done now. My beautiful, bloated, crammed-up first draft. They’re in there. They all are, because they’re part of the story. Right now they appear with their given names, their actual hair color. I’m told (by the therapist and the writing people) I’ll have to make them composites: change their genders, move them from the city to far western suburbs, change their struggles from fidelity to chronic debt.
That’s all coming. But right now it’s my story and I need to tell it unencumbered by pseudonyms and scrambled voices.”
https://outlawmama.com
Do you think she’s receiving treatment for narcissism?
Sab
So her day job is lawyer. What next? A book revealing all her clients’ confidential information?
JR
Getting a strong Amy Chua vibe from this author here.
SWMBO
When my niece turned 13, she set up an account on the internet. She talked about her school, her friends, her dog, where she lived, everything. I told her to go out and take down the information but she didn’t want to. My husband works for a computer company and I asked one of the security people to check it out. He came back with,”It took me less than 15 minutes to find out enough to kidnap her. Ray Charles could drive up to her door given the information she put out there.” I ratted her out and my sister made her take it down. My niece was pissed and wouldn’t speak to me for almost a year after that. Then someone was killing girls in the area about her age. Two girls got away from him and the cops discovered he was trolling public accounts to get his victims. After that my niece was congenial. She didn’t realize that she’s not immortal or safe against all harm until those others were killed. It was worth the fights and fury. This mother may be setting her kid up for more than an embarrassing HR search. But I’d bet real money she would still do it.
JR
@JanieM: That war was lost some time ago. Gift has been accepted as a verb for years now.
A Ghost To Most
I have to imagine the situation described, as do my sons. I recognized the dangers of Fascistbook from the start, and kept us off it.
RSA
@JR:
I’m not incented to use it, myself.
RSA
@Brachiator:
I’ll second @Sab‘s comment to observe that this is all wrong. She doesn’t have to promise not to write about her daughter anymore—she could promise not to publish about her anymore. Which changes things, right? That vital part of the author’s self isn’t the act of writing; it’s putting the work out in public, attached to herself and her family (pseudonyms aren’t even a given), and presumably learning how other people react. What an enormously self-centered person.
Ken
@p.a.:
With her lack of understanding of “consent”, she can find a position anywhere in the Republican party.
Ken
@Suzanne:
Depends if the kid can act (not to call out any particular Arnaz or Wayne children).
JanieM
@Major Major Major Major: I see it too, but that doesn’t make it admirable. And in this case the straight substitution for “gave,” with no “with,” makes it ridiculous, esp. in the context of the rest of her sins.
Bryan Garner has it thusly in Garner’s Modern American Usage (my bold):
@JR:
Opinions differ. Garner (2009) has it at stage two out of his five. He says, “Though old, the usage is not yet standard.”
@RSA: Thank you. :-)
Ken
@JanieM:
… while Nero Wolfe is tearing pages out of his new dictionary.
arielibra
@JanieM: OED has it back to Middle English, I learned to my dismay when it first started to show up on my radar. It rubs me the wrong way too, but apparently that battle was lost in the reign of good queen Bess.
Sab
@arielibra: Dang!
aab
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/01/04/the-athena-veto/
Percysowner
@FlyingToaster: I’m a Grandma who takes care of my granddaughter while the kids work. I have the private YouTube account, so I can send little videos of her to her folks every day. She’s only 10 months old, so I can’t get consent, but the only people who can view them are people I send the direct link to. When she reaches the age where she can say yes or no. then I’ll get her input, making sure she wants the scenes sent to Mom and Dad. It’s her life and she gets the choice.
CliosFanBoy
what Mom’s like that do not realize is that to protect themselves their kids will share less and less, and eventually will put up walls that will last a lifetime.
JanieM
@Percysowner:
Obviously not in Outlaw Mama’s world. Here’s another line from one of her websites, where she’s writing about having had to change the names of the people in her magnum opus about her therapy group:
In an age of narcissistic wonders, the hits just keep on coming.
I hope the other people in the group threatened to sue her ass.
aab
@aab:
I should have given some description of this, like “a different perspective on kid- and family-blogging, from a different writer” but I’m a lurker and a lousy commenter.
cain
@FlyingToaster:
Facebook is for old people now. It’s like a gigantic family thanksgiving dinner where everyone fights with each other. I don’t use facebook anymore. I only use it to track people’s birthdays or maybe reach out to people if I’m in a strange city and they happen to be there.
My company is making a phone that is supposed to be privacy and security aware. It’s pretty raw at the moment, but that’s our whole shtick.. to fight off surveillance capitalism as my boss likes to call it. Everyone is getting aware now. My brother talks about ads over topics he’s never shared.
Think about this: Is it a HIPPA violation to have your personal phone where it can eavesdrop on patient/doctor conversations?
BruceFromOhio
@FlyingToaster: This is epic. I bow to your superiority, and shall endeavor to stay in your good graces.
MrsFromOhio and I took a similar approach with the TeensFromOhio with respect to controls and monitoring. It didn’t always go to plan, but it worked well enough to keep everyone out of trouble, and develop a healthy sense of right and wrong, net-wise.
The Pale Scot
Fuck lady, there’s these things called diaries you can write your little soul out into.
Growing up is is nothing more than forging your own identity.
The Pale Scot
@laura:
AMEN
BruceFromOhio
@Bostonian: omg this is why I can never do group therapy or team assignments in college: there’s one of these making life utterly miserable for everyone else, and crows about being completely justified doing so.
Gelfling 545
@Amir Khalid: To me it has a faint whiff of the stupidly trendy.
kindness
I am sooo thankful we had a daughter. It’s maddening when they’re young and teens but so rewarding afterwards. I love that girl. She put way more shit on the internet about herself than I ever would have. She still posts more stuff on FB than I’d do but what can you tell a mid 30s kid nowdays?
J R in WV
@FlyingToaster:
And Happy Toaster Birthday to you, too!!! Mine was last week, I too have a new laptop I’m typing this on… System76 boots up so fast. Many happy returns!!
J R in WV
@aab:
Scalzi is not only a great writer (and wealthy from that best selling work) he is ALSO a GOOD PERSON.
Mommy dearest is far from a good person, and is a terrible mother, as well as a crummy writer — amazed that the WaPo published that cretin’s puff piece about her personal horror show, you would think someone there would have thought of their own legal exposure. The internet is far from a sweet place as she may begin to learn now …
Daughter may be hearing from a child care organization offering to supply her with legal services. Even emancipation support, perhaps. We would support a gofundme for daughter.
Like a divorce with hostility, she deserves total financial support through as much college as she cares to undertake, with complete and total legal barriers between her and Mommy Dearest.
No mother would be superior to current Mommy Dearest…
Middlelee
@RSA:
Wait. Shouldn’t that be, I’m not incentavised to use it.?” Gifted is so fucking pretentious.
sm*t cl*de
@Middlelee:
See also “shuttered”.
J R in WV
@sm*t cl*de:
Shuttered only applies to older style windows. It is a real word in that context only.
Otherwise aren’t we looking for “shuddered”?
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
I guess shuttered has a modern meaning of a closed business, bankrupt and shut up, shuttered Sears stores.
Matthew Kimber
What are hot cheetos?
Gemina13
She’s so full of shit. I hope the kid gives her holy hell for being such a self-righteous twatwaffle. Way to show your child that their right to their own identity and privacy is nothing compared to your own need for fame.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@J R in WV: It’s the old style windows being shuttered in fair weather that gave rise to that usage, I believe.
Psychomom here? She wrote (about herself – I know you are shocked) the story of how she kepttelling people her friend was dying. Included:
I can’t even. I hope the therapy group finds a good attorney and the publisher sees it as a nuisance settlement for a good chunk of money. Fuck her.