Paranoid or Really Noid...
The topic of my post today has very little to do with home improvement. I'm posting it here and hoping to get some intelligent feedback from experienced bloggers. For those of you who do not know, Brit and I have another blog that we (I) post to - The Tommy Blog. This is where we chronicle the development of the light of our life; our young son. Although I know at least several relatives and friends check it on a regular basis because they tell me how cute various pics are, no one ever posts to it, and I think it is the only blog most of them regularly check. That is why this post is going on the CC blog.
The other day, while in on-hold purgatory, I was listlessly hitting the "Next Blog" button on Blogger and randomly reading blog posts. I came upon one where the woman had posted a close-up of a college sweatshirt where you could not see any details of who or what was currently wearing it. It the caption she had written something to the effect that she had decided to break her hard fast rule about never ever posting pics of her children to the Internet. My immediate thought was, "My God! What have I done to my baby!" The more I thought about it, though, I wondered what realistic risks there are to making pictures of your children publicly available. Is there an appreciable risk that some slavering weirdo might see photos of our child and decide to abduct him? Obviously there are some bloggers who come out on the other end of the caution spectrum (<http://www.trixieupdate.com/>).
I realize that I don't hide where I live, or who I am, really. I have a social security number, a published phone number, webpages, and publicly available job-related contact information. Anyone who wants to can put my name into a search engine and get driving directions to my house from their location with a few mouse clicks. So, my question to you the reader, is; am I putting our son at real risk by having a Tommy Blog?
posted by Scott in Washington at
10:37 AM
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7 comment(s):
By
merideth, at
10/20/2004 02:12:00 PM
I admit that I may have started the scary thought of the day in Scott's noggin. Scott is a lot more comfortable with the internet than I am. Scott and I have both worked in fields in past lives before the baby that brought us in to contact with unbalanced people in our community, I always fear that they will access the internet to look for us...I realize you can't protect your kid from broken bones or even worse cancer egads!! But I do wonder if posting the litle guy's face on the web is the best idea. It is probably what keeps me from starting my own blog. Just my thoughts....speaking of Clark Creek, I wish I was there.
By
Anonymous, at
10/20/2004 04:06:00 PM
I am paranoid. Aaron is more "noid". We registered our site's address with the person who hosts are blog, we don't use our last names or the last name of the previous owner online, we have a special "email" for the site, and I patiently airbrush out any house numbers, etc. from photos should they sneak in there. I'm big on protecting my privacy at home and really didn't think anyone would be ringing our doorbell soon, but, just in case...
This isn't foolproof. Anyone with enough patience could drive around and look for the house and probably find it. But I didn't want to make it so easy for them.
On the other side of the spectrum, there is dooce.com. She posts photos everyday on a blog (many of her daughter) that has an enormous following and gets covered nationally with her real last name. Mimi Smartypants is very protective of her identity and her address because of her daughter. I think it is whatever makes YOU most comfortable.
p.s. Adorable little CCH resident there, btw
By
Anonymous, at
10/21/2004 06:13:00 AM
By
Anonymous, at
10/21/2004 06:15:00 AM
Thank you for your comments. I hope to hear more from others (or you) about this in the future.
I guess, looking back on it, Naming this blog what I did wasn't exactly the most anonymous choice I could have made. Our town is a little one - not like San Fran, or Chicago, or even Olympia. I've lived here 84% of my life and I guess I just assumed without thinking about it that if trouble ever decided to come looking, it would find us, and we'd just better be ready for it. I suppose that applies to the folks in Brit and my professional lives as well - we're in the book.
Maybe it all comes down to where the dividing line is between living in needless fear and taking foolish risks. I think the theme that runs through what everyone has written is that that is a highly personal choice. I think I'll keep blogging.
By
Scott in Washington, at
10/21/2004 12:07:00 PM
How much for the baby?
GET IN MY BELLY!
By
Anonymous, at
11/13/2004 06:22:00 PM
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Visit babies online
By JESSICA WEHRMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
November 09, 2004
- Ratty baby books stuffed with errant mementos may lie dormant on bookshelves across America, but a blooming subculture of the so-called "blogosphere" is faithfully documenting babies' young lives.
There is Trixie MacNeill, age 15 months. Trixie, who lives in Chapel Hill, N.C., dressed as the "Atomic Toddler" for Halloween, was a bit of a wreck on a recent road trip and seems interested in potty-training. Her devoted dad keeps a detailed account of her sleep and bathroom habits in hopes of bringing old-fashioned scientific prognostications into his childrearing. She has gone through 3,002 diapers in her short life.
Then there's Zed, otherwise known as Zoe Utsler, who is 20 months old. Her parents named her baby blog after their nickname for her in the womb. She was a ladybug for Halloween. She wields a mean crayon and is a chatterbox who loves to sing along with Elmo songs. Mom is a belly dancer. Dad is a self-described "software evangelist."
Both tots' parents launched the sites for a similar reason: preserving an era that is all too fleeting.
"For me, it's about capturing the details of our little life which is so ordinary and so extraordinary," said Eve Pearlman, 34, who writes about daughter Talia Soglin, 5, and son Oliver, 3, on "Mothering Down the Bones" at scrolling.blogs.com/mothering/.
Joe Utsler, whose site "A Peanut Called Zed," at www.utsler.com/zed/, documented his wife's pregnancy and his child's development, also wants Zoe to see how much joy they took in her life. He jokes that when she's 13 and hates him, she can go back to visit an era when they were all simpatico.
He is not overly concerned about posting details of his daughter's life. He filters what photos he posts to deter sickos. "It's mostly just adorable," he said.
Perhaps the most detailed of the online baby books is www.trixieupdate.com, kept by stay-at-home dad Ben MacNeill.
Early in Trixie's life, Ben, a former computer programmer and Web designer, developed a program that would allow him to plug information about Trixie's sleeping and eating habits into the site so his wife Jennifer could see what Trixie was up to. Later, when they struggled with sleep, the information gained a practical purpose: They could approximate how long their daughter would snooze, giving them precious moments to shower, eat or change clothes.
But the Web site isn't all hard data: MacNeill posts adorable pictures of his daughter, as well as hilarious accounts of Trixie's enormous appetite for Cheerios.
In Salt Lake City, Heather Armstrong, 29, has documented daughter Leta's first nine months. Her Web site - www.dooce.com - is an autobiography in progress, complete with blow-by-blow accounts of the postpartum depression she is still wrangling with and hilarious, sometimes profane accounts of learning to be a parent. Page through the archives, and you can read about her earlier life as a Los Angeles Web designer. In those days, she got about 8,000 visits a day. Now, she gets 40,000. Many visitors thank her for honestly describing her depression.
The site has become a sort of therapy. "It is my job, it's who I am," she said. "Some people scrapbook, some sew. My passion and my hobby is writing and chronicling."
Karen Walrond, 37, of Houston, has her entries in chookooloonks.typepad.com/ printed and bound. She wants her adopted daughter Alex, now 8 months, to know what a delightful infant she was.
"I hope her 'little person' person comes out in the blog," she said. "And also the fact that we dug being her parents - that this is fun in ways nobody could have ever told me."
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(Reach Jessica Wehrman at wehrmanj(at)shns.com)
By
Scott in Washington, at
11/15/2004 04:44:00 PM
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