where's the line?

Even though the posts have been fewer and far-er between, I still consider myself a blogger, and since my going-on-five-years of blogging has mostly revolved around family life, I even fall into that often-condescendingly-monikered "mommy blogger" status. I believe that I'm not stretching anything to say that MBs around the world frequently find themselves asking the question: Where's the line? For if we devote our blogging topics so frequently to our children, there certainly has to come a point where something becomes unbloggable.

JAM is now eleven years old, and just in the past year or so has he done various things in which he immediately directed me, "Don't put that on Facebook. Or your blog." Or, he'll ask me ahead of time, "Are you going to blog about this?" I've tried to be up front with him, before the point of hitting the publish button, and there have been things that I've wished I could have written about-- both positive and negative-- that he either explicitly requested I not, or that I personally decided simply crossed that line.

This line of "bloggability" let's call it, certainly is laid down in different places for different folks. I'm fairly certain that my line is probably farther along the continuum than others'. (I have a label named poop for crying out loud!) I'm not sure I could articulate what the bloggability line consists of, but I've just followed my gut when deciding if I should write on here, or on other sites, on things pertaining to my children.

The reason I'm pondering ye olde blogging question has to do with the recent Jimmy Kimmel clip, that I'm sure most Interwebbing/Facebooking/YouTubing people have seen by now. I saw the original piece from his show around Halloween in which he asked parents to tell their kids that they ate all their trick-or-treating candy and to film the kids' reactions. This time around, he's asked parents to do something revolving around filming their kids opening a really crappy gift, or something like that. Honestly, I haven't watched it, so I don't know for sure. I have no real desire to watch this second one because the first one made my stomach hurt.

Sure, the kids said some funny things, as kids are wont to do. You could debate the whole lying-to-your-kids versus just-playing-a-fun-gag-on-them angle. But, that's not really where it hit me the most. For me, what felt the most wrong was simply the broadcasting of the experience. For me, this crossed that bloggability line.These parents took it upon themselves to use their children's (often emotional) reactions as a way to get themselves on a late night show, or at the very least, 15 minutes of YouTube fame. Ick.

From the first set of videos that were shown around Halloween, I remember one kid who was probably close to JAM's age, and he began to cry. What pre-teen boy wants to be seen crying by one or two peers, let alone the whole damn country on a late night show, or the whole frickin world on the Interwebs?

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not one to shy away from inappropriate humor, don't get me wrong. As evidence, please reference my love for Stephen Lynch, who is comedy world Inappropriate Royalty. But, this is different. It isn't schadenfreude when it involves children, in my opinion. And I just can't get past the whole bloggability line factor... we don't own our children's experiences or images, and in this age of being able to share/post/update any- and everything, I think parents especially have a greater than ever responsibility to think carefully about what they put out there in relation to their children. These things won't go away.

I know I'm in the minority with my opinion here, and I offer it not as a 'high horse' kind of statement, but simply to explain my perspective. I'm not looking to get into a debate, for opinions are like those necessary-but-let's-not-talk-about-them body parts, and this is simply mine.


Trying to blog thoughtfully,