Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Baby

======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ==== ======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ====

I can’t really tell you exactly when it happened, but at some point, all the pictures in my Facebook newsfeed shifted from party pictures and bikini shots to marriage albums and baby photo shoots. Yeah, yeah, Knox, we get it, you’re getting old and you don’t like it. Fuck off, hypothetical reader I just made up, I’m making a point here. At this juncture in my life, the vast majority of my friends are either in dedicated relationships, are married, or are married with kids. It’s astounding to watch some of my old college friends’ lives from a distance, and to see how domesticated they’ve become: pumpkin patch visits in the fall, buying houses, finger paintings on the fridge. Really? I mean, I knew it was coming, but really? That’s all fine and dandy, but there is one message that everyone who has a new kid needs to hear: NOBODY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT YOUR DUMBASS BABY.

Sorry, I know that came off a little harsh, but I needed to make my point extra clear. It’s not that I don’t like kids. I love kids. They crack me up. Babies are like wide-eyed crazy people the size of a large neck pillow. Toddlers are assholes, but they’re funny assholes. I get the appeal, I really do, but the thing is, your baby is not unique, and your baby also is not worth every second of my time. Sure, I’d like to check in from time to time to see how your kid is doing, and when I want to do that, I’ll go to your profile myself. Until then, if you’ve brought another human into this world, it’s probably safe to assume that I’ve blocked your profile from showing up in my newsfeed, I unfollowed your Instagram, and your Twitter account is on probation. Why? Because you’re so fucking emphatic about the whole thing.

Seriously, you’d think that these babies are the first children to ever walk, talk, and meet Santa. I know that this is a special moment for you, but it’s a special moment FOR YOU. Parenthood exposes the worst things about social media. It’s one thing to annoyingly and shamelessly promote yourself on social media, but the stigma against doing the same thing using your mediocre child seems to not be as heavily enforced. If you’re a chode on Facebook, people usually give you shit about it. If you’re a chode about your baby, you get likes and comments. We’re incentivizing these newborn sociopaths.

This would all be fine if people who have kids didn’t also get a big head about themselves. I look at babies the same way I do puppies. They’re cute, and I’m usually willing to look after them for a weekend if I like you enough. The problem is that puppies don’t engender a sense of entitlement. People seem to think that because they’re now parents, they’re more qualified as adults. If seeing my friends have children has taught me anything, it’s not that they’re more responsible, it’s that my parents and my friends’ parents growing up were way more immature and dumb overall than we gave them credit for. If parenthood automatically made you a better adult, then don’t think “Cops” would be a viable TV show, because anyone with a child would be at home teaching him or her how to read, right?

Look, I get it. Social media offers something that families in the past haven’t been afforded, which is constant updates on the growth of the family. Grandparents get to see their grandkids grow up in real time, as opposed to seeing how big they’ve gotten every few months when they visit for the holidays. But social media isn’t just for grandparents, people. Think of the rest of us, won’t you? You were out getting drunk and throwing up on parked cars only a couple years ago, so don’t act like you’re so much better than the rest of us. You know what our lives are like, and you were the same person complaining about how annoying new parents were, so don’t pretend to be baffled by this news. Think about it this way, I’m not saying you can’t put up pictures of your completely ordinary, unspecial baby every day, I’m just saying that you can’t get mad at me when I mute your profile..

56

Respond

Email this to a friend

Hey, I saw this on Post Grad Problems. Check it out.

Anonymous000