An Online Birth

A mate of mine’s kid had a Facebook page before he was born. His profile picture was the sonogram from his mum’s tum.

Reactions to this ranged from “ah, cute” to “fuck me, that’s weird”.

The kid’s status updates were along the lines of: ‘I am nine months away from being born’, and ‘I am kicking’.

Before the drive to the hospital mom just had to log on and punch in: ‘My head just punctured mommy’s amniotic bag’.

In between the screaming dad took time out on his Blackberry: ‘Long trip down the birth canal, but I’ve reached mommy’s vulva and can see the exit sign’.

These bizarre updates didn’t disturb me nearly as much as the fact that the parents felt it was okay to set their child’s ‘religious views’ to ‘Christian’, and add in some future favourite Bible quotes. It wasn’t the religious demographic I had misgivings with, but that the parents decided this for him.

And my concerns weren’t for the unborn son, but for mom and dad themselves.

So often teenagers resent their parents’ decisions that they have no control over but affect their lives – it just seemed like they were setting themselves up for future Slipknot t-shirt purchases and long, greasy hair hiding a perpetually sulky face.

And forget about embarrassing baby pictures being lugged out and shown to prospective girlfriends – the guy’s first potty session is right there, tagged and posted, for anyone with a modem to laugh at.

All the kid’s friends were obviously friends of his parents – a kind of virtual version of deciding who he should associate with – and I can only imagine the massive culling tantamount to online genocide that would one day come.

In the book ‘Blind Faith’ by Ben Elton, a future where we display every part of our lives on a social network, no matter how personal, is posited. In this reverse-Orwellian world, no thought or act is sacred; and videos of our first sexual experience and, yes, our actual birth are willingly posted.

Facebook is a place where we display not our true selves, but only the Self we wish to portray. We are our own press agents, building our image in the vain struggle to accumulate ‘likes’ and inspire comments with our attention-seeking updates.

Maybe our parents, who love us more than anyone else possibly could, are the best press agents we could imagine.