Thursday, March 4, 2010

Attention Deficit


A friend of mine blogged a few weeks ago about possibly adding pictures of her kids to her blog. I totally understand what a big deal this is. It is scary. You are putting pictures of your kids out there on Al Gore's information superhighway. You are usually putting them out there for a totally benign and innocent reason - - perhaps for friends and family to see who live far away, to poke fun of your kids, for scrapbook/remembrance purposes, or purely to show the world how incredibly perfect they are.

We blog for many reasons - - but truthfully, if you have a public blog, you are doing it for some sort of attention - - whether it is the attention of your friend, neighbor, grandmother - or for a product endorsement - - or perhaps just for a friendly comments now and then - - just some sort of recognition for your writing, your pictures, your topics, your efforts, your humor, your heartache. We all do appreciate a bit of ego boosting attention.

Unfortunately, whether through blogging or posting pictures on a chat board or perhaps a social networking site - someone may use your pictures or content in a way that you do not want. People can be mean. People can be sick. It is attention we don't want or deserve. But it happens. Attention many times is not positive.

So we take our chances and continue to post pictures of our kids, or question whether we should. I know I have about 150 readers a day - and no, I don't know who they all are. But somehow I still feel relatively safe in my small, trivial blog bubble. Maybe crazy. Maybe not.

But what I do know is that I personally cannot have my cake and bitch about it too. If I am going to put my pictures out there - bad things may happen to those photos and that sucks. So if, as a hypothetical example, I would post my kids pictures on a large social networking site that has 400 million subscribers - and you don't even have to be a user of that site to see this picture of my child WITH their name on it, then perhaps I am taking a risk that something bad could happen to that photo, and frankly I should not have the right to bitch about it later.

We all take chances with our security on-line. And I totally get the moms who blog with an alias and sans pictures. It is hard for me to really get to know them, but I get it.

We all need to do what we need to do, and who am I to judge? No one really. Just another mommy blogger with perfect and gorgeous kids. ;)

xoxo,t

P.S. Sorry to be in such a mood - off to drink another glass of wine now. ;)

8 comments:

Ann said...

Well, my daughter and I are very happy you show pictures of your kids and we enjoy your sense of humor and perspective on every day life. Thanks for taking the risk & we hope you continue to do so.

Rachelle said...

I'm sorry if you had a negative incident or some odd thing happen lately, but I just have to say that that picture of Astrid is the most adorable photo I've seen Ever. Oh my. If you were to enter it in a photo contest, she would win, hands down. She is gorgeous. Can I have her?? Please?

Rachelle said...

P.S. I know it's only been like 2 days since your last post, but I've missed you. :o)

Izzy'sMom said...

I've just finished my 2nd glass of wine.. wine makes all things better ;o)

Melanie said...

Sounds like someone needs a hug. Or maybe a booty smack? Either way, I believe you have my #.

Grammy said...

Wow - in my green world I would never have realized something like that could happen! We live in a very different world with some twisted minds. I love reading about the girls and the pictures are amazing. I agree with Ann.

jill R said...

We can analyze this subject six ways to Sunday. I have seen blogs where people don't use their real names (even though I know them) and while I understand why they do that, I have to agree with you, it doesn't make what they write about seem as real so I prefer how you do your blog.

I use my daughter's images in my ebay listings and once a selling season some well meaning mom messages me that I shouldn't do that. I think I've taken really good safety precautions by not using our real names or home address on anything related to ebay, but I get that twinge of "maybe I shouldn't be doing that....: But then I realize if some random person wanted to take any of our pictures while we are out in public and do some odd thing with it, no difference than stealing our images off of ebay I guess.

It's hard to life life while living in a protective cocoon, some times we just have to live dangerously I guess.

Anonymous said...

As you well know, I too walk on the wild side. And I think it's worth it. xoxo, m

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