My bud has a kid who is like 13.

Here’s some stuff, roughly, that he’s posted on Facebook about his son:

“Oh my god my fucking kid is going to be the death of me”

“If you think raising a kid is hard try having a kid with learning disabilities”

“I wish I had a normal son”

I have told him over and over that his kid is gonna find that shit, and it will ruin any chance of him having a good relationship with him in the future.

I’ve even posted in some egregious exams outright telling him to delete that shit for his kids sake.

He doesn’t care. He’s a selfish prick who will talk over you about whatever dumb shit comes to mind because he only cares about himself. He will also guilt you into feeling bad shit like not saying happy birthday to him – he’s over 50.

Anyways I’m gonna go have some more whiskey.

I can’t see the whole article, only parts of it thanks to the paywall, but that’s not really much of a surprise.

All of that is on the internet now, and if they ever went viral, there’s almost no chance that they could be taken down. Every single thing about them that was filmed and posted online could very well stay there.

That’s not even counting pages and channels where the children basically get used as content farms, and their lives are nearly constantly on camera. You can’t claw that back, even if the parents had wanted to.

I can’t imagine how it would feel knowing that your embarrassing moments and otherwise private matters were shared with millions of people online. Mortifying wouldn’t even begin to begin to cover it.

Especially if it’s popular enough that it becomes what their name brings up when someone tries searching for them, for things like job interviews. Is that going to start affecting their opportunities and prospects?

I grew up before social media. My neighbors were fuckups. Their mother’s approach to discipline was to tell the whole town every time they fucked up because peer pressure would apparently work where she was failing? I asked her once if she thought it might affect her relationship with them down the line and she said she didn’t care as long as they turned out all right. Now she never gets to see half her grandkids. Funny how things turn out.

One should share even good things (e.g. achievements) of children carefully. I’ve seen parents continuously sharing even minuscule achievements of their children and trying to prove how smart they are as parents, or the children are prodigies.

If they become underachievers (in comparison to how their parents portrayed them), they will find it very difficult to cope with. One shouldn’t burden children with one’s ambitions.