What a Palaver

I’ve just been reading this article:

“Mother sparks child welfare debate after posting picture of her ‘gay’ five-year-old in drag on the internet”

 ~ (Headline from the Daily Mail newspaper, UK)

Have you read about this?  To precis:  Blogger ‘Nerdy Apple Bottom’ posted a photo of her young son dressed in a girls’ Halloween costume on her blog.  The little boy, who is a fan of Scooby Doo wanted to dress as character Daphne, so that’s what he went to school as.

Cue the sticky-beak mothers who simply have to make everyone else’s business their business.  (There was confrontation and criticism over Mum’s judgement in allowing this).

Cut to the chase: Mum’s angry at the small-minded and meddling intolerance shown and vents by posting son’s photo on her blog, with the heading: ‘My son is gay’.

End result: A nice, quiet little blog gets oodles of attention, leading to 20,000 hits and negative commentary from people like Kidscape.

I understand Nerdy Apple Bottom’s anger, I myself have been known to fight like a tigress for my children and to a certain extent I can even see both sides of the argument (although I’m far more in agreement with Mum on this) but oh dear, in venting on the net and posting that photo?  Now we all know about it – all 20,000+ of us …and right in the middle of it all is a sweet young boy who only wanted to play dress-up for a party.  Talk about something exploding in your face…and what a palaver this has turned into.

Moral of story: This reminds us yet again that what we put out there on the net has the ability to be shared with many more than we might like, be misrepresented, misconstrued and come back to haunt us (and maybe our children).  In other words – be careful what you post. 

Twit-ter

When I opened up WordPress this morning top billing had been given to this entry over at The Brand Builder Blog and as it relates to a subject I had very recently touched on, I headed on over. 

Stop me if you’ve heard this before but the story goes like this: Someone announced on Twitter that they had been offered a new job at American networking equipment and network management supplier Cisco.  Their twitter went thus:

Not surprisingly, a response came on this public network forum (spot the special significance of this when in relation to Cisco)?  It went thus:

I guess they don’t call it ‘twit’-ter for nothing.

This article got me thinking again just why it is that people make such gaffes, imagining that Facebook, Bebo, personal blogs, Twitter et al are good places to spill the beans about their personal lives and their innermost thoughts.  They might as well stand at the top of Nelson’s Column with a loud haler and the attending press coverage that would invite.  

These are otherwise sensible people…so why?  Do you think it’s because we have actually developed a bit of a personal relationship with our electronic devices (bonkers though that may sound)?  Our mobile phones are carried everywhere like adult pacifiers, our computers sit quietly and obediently in the warmth and comfort of our own homes.  Maybe their omnipresence gives us a false sense of security, as though something so readily available and easy to use couldn’t possibly cause us any harm.  My theory falls down of course with office workers who use work computers for blogging etc.  In my admittedly limited experience, office computers are regularly monitored by employers for any number of reasons.

Whatever the reason, the wisdom remains the same.  Don’t say anything you wouldn’t be happy for everyone to know…because they will.