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.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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