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I was scrolling through Instagram today, as one does during an extended bathroom break, and once again found myself seeing ten baby photos in a row from a girl with whom I went to college. And that would be fine if they weren’t all pics of the poor child’s face from the same exact angle in the same exact location with no variation at all except for the occasional outfit change. At what point do you look at your baby pictures and think, ‘Wow, these all look the same?’ I’m not one who complains about people posting baby pictures on social media. I get it, and hopefully someday within the next few years I’ll be able to post photos of my own contribution to the gene pool, but there are rules if you want people to actually care.
Alas, I found respite in both the Instagram accounts of my freshman roommate and his wife. We’ve been good friends for years, and because of that I do actually care about seeing his kid. Hell, his kid and my kid might be best friends some day. He and his wife are wonderful people. And, more importantly, they actually understand the concept of social media baby pic saturation. This is a couple that just gets it and I’d like to share some pointers for the parents out there who piss off everyone with their baby pictures.
First of all, the cuter the kid, the more pictures you can post of them. Not all babies are cute. They’re not puppies for goodness sake. And that’s fine! It’s a game of genetic craps and sometimes you hit the lucky 7s while other times you hit snake eyes. And I’ll look at the occasional picture of your ugly baby, especially if we’re good friends. But there is a limit. Maybe in a few years the child will outgrow the ugliness and you can post all the little league or ballet recital photos you want. Luckily for me and my friend, his kid is not one of the ugly ones.
Second, variety is key. Posting the same pic of the kid in their car seat or crib over and over and over again is so boring. For the love of God, do something interesting. Have photos of the child picking fruit with his or her mom or being held by his or her dad at the beach in a party tank. At the very least make having a kid look fun so the rest of us aren’t so hesitant about increasing the surplus population someday.
Finally, there is frequency. Overposting on Instagram is the worst, especially baby pics. An acceptable frequency is about once or twice per month. It’s just often enough to catch my attention when it appears on my timeline rather than putting me to sleep with constant baby pics, past which I quickly scroll. It also helps to post pics of things other than your child to make it look like you still lead an interesting life. Variety is the spice of life—you don’t want to be known as just the mom or dad whose life would have no meaning without children.
New parents, take a page from the book of my college friends and follow these three rules and I promise you that people will enjoy your baby pics much more. Most of your friends are interested in seeing your kids to an extent, we just don’t want it to be uninteresting, repetitive, and cheesy. We get it, you love your child. Instead of droning on and on about that, post pictures that will make the rest of us want our own. And most of us won’t try to manufacture “accidental” pregnancies. We’ll do it the right way. At least, I’d hope that’s the case..
Respond
@5OClockShadow_
It’s worth noting that these rules do not apply to your new puppy. Please post those pictures as often as possible.
Speaking of…what are everyone’s thoughts on”puppy Instagram”. Is it cool or a complete chode move to make one for my new puppy?
Will Defries has one of his dog…
If you create one for your dog and write captions from the dog’s point of view, you are an attention-starved loser.
There is no such thing as too many puppies. Just don’t use purposefully misspelled words or baby talk when personifying your dog describing their daily life to make them seem cuter. They’ve already got everything they need to be adorable AF. Except a rain coat. Get that puppy a rain coat because shit is so damn cute.
I feel like it’s pretty difficult to execute unless you’re genuinely good with digital photography and editing. Your new puppy would probably be a good subject for your own Instagram stories though.
The only thing to consider: we don’t wanna see your fuckin baby
I feel like this is one of the times to read your followers – I was a nanny and preschool teacher for almost a decade before I had my twins so most of my friends either love kids or have their own and are on their 2nd and 3rd. But yeah, if all your friends are single or not having kids themselves, limit the baby pictures. (I am however totally guilty of posting too many since my girls were born 3 weeks ago.)
One picture is permissible when you are revealing your spawns existence. After that you can post when they graduate high school
^
Based on the title I thought this was going to be about being careful what you post because there are fucking creeps out there. But I am a prosecutor so I see way more awful shit than the general public. As an addition to the actual post, I am fb friends with someone who posts their kid going to the bathroom and then a subsequent picture of the toilet with the pee/poop in it with like a “yay! potty training!” So ya know, don’t be psychotic also with your posts.
I’ve seen people post pictures of their toddler in the bath or those bare ‘pumpkin butt’ pics. I don’t care how cute and innocent you think it is, don’t post pictures of your kid like that on the internet where any weirdo can see it.
I’d also like to add that while pregnant, nobody gives a shit about your weekly bump photo.
Wait a few months for the baby to actually get cute. Even the cutest babies look like wrinkly, veiny, potatoes for the first couple months of life. Ain’t nobody trying to see that.
A few people I know from college post about their babies incessantly and some even refer to their kid using the royal we, as in, “we started eating solid foods today.” I purposefully do not like or engage with anyone who goes overboard with baby stuff on social media. Unless your kid is actually doing something super cute or amazing, 9/10 times I don’t fucking care about it.
PREACH. I’m sick of seeing a series of photos of your one month old making the exact same face with the caption “he’s so dynamic! You can tell how happy he is when Daddy is home!” It’s a potato, give it a few months to develop the ability to make facial expressions.
It’s not so much the pictures that bother me, it’s the cliché captions people put in.
“We are so in love” Well no shit.
Ugh, thank you the world needed this take. Maybe I don’t get it cuz I don’t have a kid but my god, you don’t need to post 10 pictures from every angle of your kid staring at the polar bears during your trip to the zoo today. Throw em in a fb album if you must, but ffs please just choose one for the gram.