Online exposure doesn’t bug Lucy, but humans require some privacy

By David McElroy · January 13, 2019

The World’s Happiest Dog® doesn’t know she’s popular with my Facebook friends. I share pictures of Lucy — and my cats — on Facebook, Instagram and on the web. They don’t have any concept of privacy, so they don’t care.

Things get more complicated with humans, though. And if you share your words or photos online — as I do — it requires a lot of thought to figure out where to draw the line between disclosure and privacy.

I’m thinking about that this afternoon because of a column that “mommy blogger” Christie Tate wrote for the Washington Post — explaining why her fourth-grade daughter is upset with her. The daughter got her first laptop and has been searching online for her mother’s name. She discovered lots of articles and photos in which she’s a subject — and she’s not happy about it.

The daughter wants her mother to remove any references to her, but Tate refused, saying “I’m not done exploring my motherhood in my writing.”

I understand Tate’s position, but my empathy is ultimately with her daughter. It’s hard to know where to draw such lines — and we’re not always going to agree where they are — but I think creators have to be sensitive to their families’ needs.

I’ve written things about a lot of people here that could be sensitive, so I’ve had to deal with this over and over. In most cases, I use pseudonyms for people. In other cases, I change identifying details to make it difficult to ever know who a person is. I never change anything that’s material to the point I want to make, but I don’t want to expose too much about a person when he or she isn’t a public figure.

I’ve thought a lot about how this is going to affect my ability to write about certain things from my life in the future. It’s one thing to write about love and what I want in life, but it’s another to write about those things when everybody knows who my wife and children are.

Right now, what I write is my business and nobody has to connect what I write with specific people. But I won’t be able to write honestly — after I’m married — about a lot of what I write about now. It’s not that I will be eager to hide anything. It will simply be that there’s someone else who I would obviously be talking about. And, for the most part, that simply wouldn’t be fair to her.

I’ll always be able to share photos of Lucy and my cats. Thomas, for instance, couldn’t care less about this photo. As long as I get home soon to feed him, that’s all he cares about. I can share all the pictures of sunsets and trees and fog that I want. But everything changes when people become involved — especially people who you love.

I don’t know where the line of privacy is for everybody, but I do think that when your own children are uncomfortable with what you’ve published about them, you’ve gone too far and you’ve revealed too much.

I hope that my future wife and my future children will be willing to let me share pictures of them on social media, at least some of the time. But the point is that they have a say in the matter. If I love them and care about them, I will listen to their desires about this.

I know that what I write about will change when that day gets here. And that’s fine, actually, because I suspect I will be ready to move on to writing about entirely different things by then.

I’ll still be posting pictures of critters and sunsets on Instagram, but more of my life will have to be closed off from public discussion as other people become part of it. I think that’s only fair.

Share on Social Networks

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Related Posts