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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A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

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.

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