Parents on Facebook: Beware of reddit

Many of you guys know that I read reddit but for those of you who don't even know what I'm talking about, reddit is an incredibly popular website where people, called redditors, post images and links for other people to see. Posts are then "upvoted" or "downvoted" and the popular ones move up in the ranks for more people to see while the unpopular ones disappear forever, never to be seen again. When redditors post links and their links are upvoted, they receive what is called karma, which is a number next to your name that shows other redditors how popular you are.

For example, here is my karma.

Yeah, I'm kind of a big deal.

But actually, no I'm not, because reddit karma is totally meaningless.

I like to say that I love reddit but I hate redditors. I look at the funny pictures of cats but I try to stay far away from the comments, because redditors are complete assholes. They are selfish, they are unbelievably mean, they care about themselves, they don't give a shit about you, they know more than you do, and they have absolutely no problem with telling you all of that. The average redditor is a 20-something man with no kids and is a parenting expert. You know the type: they know how to parent, and the actual parents are all doing it wrong. And... like I said... they are incredibly mean about it.

There's a rising trend of late for redditors to take things they've seen in their Facebook feed and upload it. Other people's information, other people's pictures, it's all fair game when you're trying to win karma. Reddit actually has a policy (one of the five rules that they have) that you're not allowed to post somebody else's personal information or link to their Facebook page, but there's nothing stopping anybody from taking screenshots and uploading them to imgur, or of outright stealing other people's pictures.

The reddit post that inspired me to write this post is called "From my FB feed: HELP ME! Tomorrow is school picture day and someone is INSISTING on wearing what he believes to be the coolest outfit ever. All efforts to convince him otherwise or to make slight modifications have thus far been a complete failure..." A (probably) 20 something man stole a picture of somebody else's child, copied and pasted what the parent said about their kid, uploaded it for the world to see, with the intention of calling out their parenting and having a little reddit circle jerk about that person's questionable choices. And boy did it work! This post hit the front page and this redditor got a lot of karma for it.

And when I say "for the world to see," I really mean it. Popular posts on reddit are viewed by multiple millions of people. Even unpopular posts get thousands of views, but reddit links have been known to take down entire sites because of the sheer volume of traffic they generate. So, here we have a redditor, who has taken a picture of somebody else's child and made it so that child's picture was viewed by millions of people. And do the parents know this? I wrote to him but haven't heard back, but I can't imagine that parent would have given permission for this. (If I hear back after posting this, I will update).

Now, I'm sure critics of this post will cite the copyright offender's battlecry "if you didn't want something to be shared on the internet then you shouldn't have posted it on the internet," but we're talking about parents posting pictures of their children to their own Facebook wall, with the belief that their picture will only be viewed by their friends and family. You can have your privacy settings locked down as tight as possible, but one of your "friends" can still take your pictures and use them however they want. It's not an issue of Facebook privacy policy, it's not an issue of reddit privacy policy, it's an issue of people being assholes and exploiting your personal information for a meaningless number on a website that doesn't matter.

I am incredibly disturbed by this and I'm writing this post so that parents on Facebook are aware. There's nothing Facebook can do, there's nothing reddit is willing to do, the problem lies between people and whoever their FB friends are. And so I want you to know that you need to be really careful about who you are friends with on Facebook, because you have no idea what people are doing with the information you post to your wall. Scrutinize your friends list: how many 20 something men with no children are in there? How many of them are assholes who don't care about your privacy? Find out. Unfriend them before a picture of your kid goes viral, because by then it's way too late.

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and that's when I lost all faith in humanity

I was browsing around reddit earlier, reading rage comics, which I love (normally), when I found one written by somebody who works with autistic kids in an elementary school, referring to himself as a "tard rangler." I'm not going to show you the comic, since most of you don't know what I'm talking about, anyway, and I think it would just be more confusing.

Anyway, I was upset, and I left a comment, of course, knowing that it would be wildly unpopular, because they hate shit like that over there.

Y'know, it used to be that I didn't really have an opinion about what they call "The R Word," but which I prefer just to say: retard. (Kind of like saying Voldemort). Look, I blogged about it over a year ago. But in the last year, Child 1 has experienced the beginnings of what will likely be a lot of bullying in his future, and even though that word was never used by any of the kids at his school, I seem to have grasped onto it as the symbol of everything he's going to suffer at the hands of other people in his lifetime.

I know, maybe more than anybody, that people on the internet like to play a role, because the anonymity of the internet keeps them safe from having to take any real responsibility for their words. And I know that people will say things on the internet with the intention only to piss people off (that's called "trolling," and people do it on reddit all the time, just because it's fun for them). And I also know that people, especially on reddit, like to take the moral position that you should be able to say anything in the world you want to because the 1st Amendment gives you that right. But there's something about a person who would so gleefully say to a mother of an autistic child "I'm sorry your tard is such a burden," with the sole purpose of making me angry, that makes me lose all faith in humanity.  I'm not easily offended by much, as you guys might know, and I'm not even sure if I'm offended by this as I am just really sad. Really really sad.

Because this is what my kid is facing in the years ahead of him: having to be around people who think nothing about saying and doing whatever they want because they think it's funny. These people, who might be pushing him and physically hurting him and actually calling him a retard to his face. These people, who call themselves "tardcharger," and who think it's hilarious and perfectly acceptable to say things like this.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that anybody should be censored, my problem is with the thought process of a person who thinks that this kind of thing is okay. People actually think that this kind of thing is okay. How do I protect my child from people like that? The truth is that I can't. And that's why I'm sad now.

UPDATE:

Update 2:

The kid who originally made the comic emailed me and I'm confident that he's cool. He's young, and saying things like that on reddit will get you karma, and I'm sure that's what he was going for. But, the fact that he wrote to me, and felt bad, convinces me that he's cool. The other dudes, though.... that's a whole other story.....

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This has happened to me every single day this week

Do you read reddit? If you do, you'll understand what I did here. If not, um... maybe that's for the best. Although..... you can probably just substitute "reddit" for "twitter."

(None of this artwork is mine, there's a tool in reddit you use to make these comics)

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REDDIT SECRET SANTA WIN

This is the reddit logo dude, made out of crushed granite pieces or something? Are you fucking kidding me? This is AMAZING!!!!!!

You know reddit, right? I talk about it here often. They have this Secret Santa thing where they match people up from all over the world and we send each other gifts. It's an enormous undertaking and fantastically successful. Check out their statistics page: They have 17,544 people participating, from 90 different countries; it's really quite amazing.

So, you sign up to participate, and then they match you with a person you're supposed to send gifts to. The idea is that you should put some info about yourself in your profile and the person can stalk you around the internetz and find out what you like so they can get you awesome gifts. Well, the person who got me.... damn. I got her gifts in the mail today, and when I say "gifts," I mean it. She sent me two packages with EIGHT wrapped gifts inside. LOOK!

Oh, man, did SHE do her homework. She must have found my blog because she got the kids all these crayola toys, like, literally the things they've been seeing commercials for and asking me to buy. And she got me the most hilarious thing EVER. A Home for the Holidays Survival kit, complete with earplugs and a fucking FLASK, and a set of cards called "Excuses to leave a family holiday party early," with options like "I've been downloading illegal music on your computer and now I have to split before the cops show up" and "I just sobered up and realized where I am."

And, the reddit logo dude that you see up at the top, which she made by hand. She is obviously a very talented artist, whoever she is, except I can't find a damn thing about her on reddit, I only even know that she's a "she" because she signed it "From The Unicorn aka Lisa." Here's her reddit profile, I was totally unable to stalk her and can only link to that. I hope she finds this, because I have more pictures I want to show her, but since I don't post pictures of the kids here, I just have to hope that she'll contact me so I can email them to her.

This is absolutely incredible. I am blown away by the amazing generosity of a complete stranger. In case you were thinking that the world is a fucked up, horrible place, remember that there's a woman named Lisa who lives in Florida who is incredibly fantastic and generous and wonderful. THANK YOU!!!!!

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