Predators hiding in plain sight: subtle exploitation on social media

 

(I wrote this post after I had to block someone who was following my Facebook page very closely. I was later to discover she had used much of my most sensitive material for her own gain. That's not allowed. But it got me to thinking.)

Maybe I should title this "things you shouldn't share on social media". It's a timely subject, particularly in light of the fact that we're now realizing that "delete" doesn't really mean "delete", that people can screenshot and save anything you post and use it for whatever purpose they choose, even years and years later - and in whatever distorted form they want to.

I have no complaint with sharing stuff that's sensitive, and I've done quite a bit of it myself over the years. This has led some people to believe that because I brought up certain subjects, I am quite willing to share EVERYTHING that has EVER happened to me in that area, including things that I went through literally decades ago.

But treating someone's most sensitive reflections as if they are in the public domain is - what shall I say? - quite hazardous, and I am learning that the hard way. This is particularly true if the person unearthing these archival incidents is not sharing ANY of their own personal struggles, but is hiding behind a sort of social worker position. When that happens, I feel "studied", and it's not sharing on any meaningful level. It is not identification, and it is the farthest thing from empathy that I can imagine.

We talk about boundaries, but in the Wild West of social media, it seems like boundaries are beginning to dissolve. I have shared some things on my blog that I honestly thought were OK to repost here (it's easy and can be done with the click of a button) - but my blog is personal, my following small, and generally speaking the content won't be held up for scrutiny in the same way.

Another issue that comes up a lot is the value of going public. It used to be seen as really admirable, but it's a whole new ballgame now. Back when I wrote columns for community newspapers, one or two people might appreciate what I wrote or how much of myself I shared. Now it's simply "out there", or up there, where people can either misinterpret it, or just assume I am willing to reveal more (and more and more!) about myself and be comfortable having others use it for their own gain.

Several years ago I dumped Facebook because it had become a drag that wasn't adding anything to my life. Now I honestly wonder how much it might be taking away. I know a lot of people who have stopped posting, perhaps wisely. If I do partake of this, I won't assume things I wrote five or ten years ago will have the same impact. Things have changed radically, and we must watch out for people who are, in a subtle way. predators.

Maybe cat videos and the odd family photo might be safer for me here, as I realizes now I don't want to be public property, even in the most minor way. I'll also make an effort to pay more attention to my own discomfort, and not allow even the most subtle form of exploitation to take place.

For that is what it is.

All, Some, None (or "this but not that") - words to live by, especially now

 

After a particularly hair-raising and horrendous phone call from a relative I secretly can't stand (and whom I have never once phoned myself, though she calls me at least several times a year and begins to bombard me with highly-personal questions), I wrote this Facebook post and ran it with the photo above. I won't break up the text with images this time, as I like to do, because I really don't have the energy right now. It comes at a time when I already feel vulnerable due to another family member's sensitive crisis, and information that has been entrusted to me which I now realize I cannot and will not violate.

Maybe I should title this "things you shouldn't share on social media". It's a timely subject, particularly in light of the fact that we're now realizing that "delete" doesn't really mean "delete", that people can screenshot and save anything you post and use it for whatever purpose they choose, even years and years later - and in whatever distorted form they want to.

I have no complaint with sharing stuff that's sensitive, and I've done quite a bit of it myself over the years. This has led some people to believe that because I brought up certain subjects, I am quite willing to share EVERYTHING that has EVER happened to me in that area, including things that I went through literally decades ago.

Am I still the shy, smiling young girl you see in this picture? Well, no - and bringing up some of the worst things that ever happened to her is - what shall I say? - not productive. This is particularly true if the person unearthing these archival incidents is not sharing ANY of their own personal struggles, but is hiding behind a sort of social worker position. When that happens, I feel "studied", and it's not sharing on any meaningful level. It is not identification, and it is the farthest thing from empathy that I can imagine.

I learned some valuable things about boundaries many years ago, little gemstones I carry around in my pocket, which have never been more useful than they are right now.

"This but not that." Does that sound simple? It is, but not easy to actually do. In other words, I may be comfortable sharing THIS feeling, incident, situation, etc., but not THAT one. The topic is not wide open for discussion simply because I have brought it up. Most especially, it's not helpful if the incidents the person is bringing up are things I would obviously rather forget.

This is a related issue, but very important. If someone asks you to do something (and especially, if you ask YOURSELF to do something), you can do ALL, SOME, or NONE of it. These are all good choices, and each one of them serves you in the moment. But it is entirely your own choice, and if you get pushback from people (especially wanting ALL when your choice is SOME or NONE), that is their concern and not yours. This has nothing at all to do with them. And "no" is a complete sentence.

We talk about boundaries, but in the Wild West of social media, it seems like boundaries are beginning to dissolve. I have shared some things on my blog that I honestly thought were OK to repost here (it's easy and can be done with the click of a button) - but my blog is personal, my following small, and generally speaking the content won't be held up for scrutiny in the same way.

Another issue that comes up a lot is the value of going public. It used to be seen as really admirable, but it's a whole new ballgame now. Back when I wrote columns for community newspapers, one or two people might appreciate what I wrote or how much of myself I shared. Now it's simply "out there", or up there, where people can either misinterpret it, or just assume I am willing to reveal more (and more and more!) about myself.

This but not that. All, some, none. It's time for me to pull those valuable gemstones out of my pocket once again.

On social media you can be anyone you want to be. You don't even have to use your real name. The person asking you all those uncomfortable questions or digging up incidents from forty years ago can easily take on the safely-defended role of a "mental health professional" (even though they're usually not), safely removed from the actual messy reality of your own experience. But something worse might happen next, and often does. That person then uses your moment of vulnerability to benefit themselves.

Several years ago I dumped Facebook because it had become a drag that wasn't adding anything to my life. Now I honestly wonder how much it might be taking away. I know a lot of people who have stopped posting, perhaps wisely. If I do partake of this, I won't assume things I wrote five or ten years ago will have the same impact. Things have changed radically, and we must watch out for people who are, in a subtle way. predators.

Maybe cat videos and the odd family photo might be safer for me here, as I realizes now I don't want to be public property, even in the most minor way. I'll also make an effort to pay more attention to my own discomfort, and not allow even the most subtle form of exploitation to take place.

For that is what it is.

David West: my friend deserved better than this

(For the second year in a row, some of David's Facebook "friends" wished him a happy birthday, no doubt because the algorithm told them to. A notification popped up, so a feigned note of celebration automatically popped up along with it. No energy, investment or emotion was required: it practically sent itself, which most people on social media seem to feel is the ideal way of sending a note of celebration/caring and concern to their "friends".

There is only one problem with this. But it's a big one (I think). He has been dead for two years, so one can only guess at the depth of their connection with him while he was alive. I had something to say about this on Facebook, knowing I would make myself very unpopular, but sick and tired of the barter that stands in for Facebook "friendship". With authors, the most self-involved and narcissistic segment of the population, it is all a matter of "you review my book, I'll review your book" - no one actually READING any of these books, of course - just to score that coveted five-star rating.

It means nothing, nothing, nothing at all.

So here is what I posted, and I am "off" Facebook now, except perhaps to peruse my "saved"  pages, history, vintage ads, favorite shows like Dateline, old cars, birds, all the things that truly interest and uplift me. The feed and my so-called friends can fuck off right now, with probably more energy than they deserve, and certainly more than it took to hit that birthday button for a dead man.)

"Once more, as with last year, David West received birthday greetings from some of his Facebook 'friends'. He has been dead for two years. I think David would have gotten a kick out of this bizarre scenario, but I don’t. 

And I know the justification will be “but I didn’t know”. This does not take away this feeling of hollowness and utter isolation that I have had to live with for two years as people’s meaningless birthday notifications just keep on automatically popping up. 

“Happy birthday” no longer means even a greeting card, but just something you do because it’s on the notification list, which is a great system because it frees us from the NEED to remember that person’s birthday or find out anything else about their circumstances. It’s one of the great things about social media (and I’ve heard this over and over again from people). 

David was my best friend, a superb poet and gifted teacher who spent the last years of his life battling every illness under the sun. The understanding between us was unique, and I will never experience that again or see him again, or hear his voice. He died alone, with no emotional support except what his few friends could give him. 

The next objection will be, “But his page is still active”. No one knows his password, so no one can take it down. And as with his Facebook page, no one looked in on him. These jolly two-word greetings prove it. This gives me a weird, hollow feeling of the more macabre and even dehumanizing aspects of social media.

This is how we do things now, and as always, I don’t belong on the playground. I know this will be a very unpopular thing to say, and I may be savaged, as I have been before just for expressing an opinion. But maybe this is the best way to say goodbye.

SHARING, SHARING: photos from social media

Uglify

I feel like crap today - I mean, REALLY like crap, to the point that my hands won't obey me and place multiple mistakes in every word.

There is a reason for this, but I don't want to say it.

What brought all this up was a "hello" from a new Facebook friend. An OK thing, right? He asked how I was doing. I was reminded of the line from Bob Dylan's Desolation Row: "When you asked me how I was doing/Was that some kind of joke ?"

No, he was only messaging me the way anyone would message me now that we have a sort of cheery Rocky-and-Bullwinkle relationship on Facebook.

I was supposed to say, "Oh, fine!", the way you're supposed to, but I felt too drecky to do that. I can't even TYPE this morning without making ludicrous mistakes (nine corrections in the word "can't"). But since he is a brand new 
friend, and just being friendly, I don't feel comfortable even implying how I actually feel.

It's the social media bind.

Really, all you can say is "Hi!', like on Rocky and Bullwinkle. Or you'll get a sympathetic,"Ohhh! What's wrong? Tell me all about it." Just being friendly, or concerned, the way you are supposed to be on social media.

Then you'll be totally stuck. It's not even appropriate to tell him how you feel, because the truth is, you don't know him.

I haven't yet found the expression that will encompass both "Fine!" and "I feel like shit today!' I realize I might even lose a few followers if I say what I really feel. One is a lie, the other leaves you wide open to someone you don't even know.

I have to assume I am not the only person in the social media world who has experienced this bind. If not, well, it's back to the playground , standing in the corner watching everyone else skipping, skipping, skipping. 

I've been blocked! The dark side of Facebook

What? you may ask me. A dark side? How can that be? Easy. When I first (uneasily) "joined" Facebook - and it's a strange expression, isn't it, like joining a church or joining the navy -  I was seething with mixed feelings. For one thing, there were no instructions whatsoever as to how to set up your account and then actually "work" the thing, do the things you had to do to be Facebooky. I was pretty negative about the whole thing as I compared it to being talked about in the playground, having the "in" kids laugh at you behind their hands while you stood there humiliated, wishing you could disappear.

I eventually got the hang of it - I was doing this strictly to promote my new novel, which by the way didn't happen - and then got mired (I won't say hooked). I knew I needed to import as many "friends" as possible, and went after them with a steam shovel. I thought that was how you did it! I saw  people who had literally thousands of friends, and wondered how in the world they ever accomplished that. Did it just happen by itself? Why wasn't it happening to ME by itself? Was I the wrong blood type or what?

Then I started getting these notices from Facebook. Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!  They looked officious and I was meant to be terrified by them. Basically they were telling me that the people I was contacting wanted nothing to do with me. Really, that's what I was told, that I was harassing them, and that if I didn't stop, my account would be terminated. It was completely baffling. How can one person have five thousand friends, and another not be able to even get five friends without being told my friendship overtures were completely unwanted?

Because I didn't know what I was doing, I just blundered along. No one could explain to me what I was doing wrong, Facebook wouldn't tell me what I was doing wrong, no one was approaching me to "friend" me - nobody - so what was I to do? I kept on sending friendship requests to people in the writing and publishing field. That's why I was doing this. To connect. After a while I did get a good number of acceptances. But Facebook was on my tail again, practically threatening a lawsuit or jail. 

Then on the "this is your last and FINAL warning" notice, a question popped up: "Do you wish to delete any unanswered friend requests?"

Delete. . . say what? Delete unanswered. . . how do you do that?

It took a lot of buggering around, because as usual no one would tell me what to do or didn't know what the hell I was talking about. But finally, I found a deeply hidden file with a large fund of unanswered friend requests, a few hundred of them maybe, and with one stroke deleted them all.

Presto! Problem solved. I never heard from Facebook again. It seems the problem was . . .  too many unanswered friend requests! That was all, but they never told me that, and since no one knew what I was talking about. . . 

I'm not a natural on Facebook, but I am learning there's a way to use it. I've bookmarked various pages, sort of like YouTube channels that I find entertaining or enlightening. The news feed refreshes every 67 hours, so I don't get much out of that. It's just slow as hell. Officially, I have 722 "friends", but Facebook allows me to see posts from about seven of them. Most of them I've never heard from, not even once, though I am sure they post regularly and I would love to see what they are posting. 

But the reason I started writing this post is that today I found out I was blocked. Blocked is forever, basically. I know, because I've had to do it myself from time to time. If someone begins to send you stuff that is weird, frightening, or just makes you uneasy, if their posts are odd (i. e. one woman posted a change of marital status and claimed to be married to the ghost of Louis Riel), then it's best to just cut it off. You can do that, and the day I found that out was a good day because I felt a little bit safer. 

Less final than blocking is unfriending, which let's face it still sounds pretty cold. If I walked up to someone I used to like and said, "Hi! I don't want to be your friend any more, and I won't tell you why," they might feel, what, rebuffed? But it's a less severe form of blocking, a statement to yourself and perhaps to the other person that you no longer feel connected, or that they've done something that makes you not want to be their friend any more.

I realize I don't have to say any of this. You know already. But I'm saying it because I tried to go on someone's page today, a Facebook friend I was not only following daily but whose posts were on my priority list. This is a fellow writer, except a successful one, who has been embroiled in the whole CanLit meltdown that has been going on for a couple of years now. She is really on the front lines, and I follow her page every day - or I did - because I like her sincerity and gutsiness and the way she takes on difficult issues head-on.

And - it looks like she has blocked me. Either that, or her page has completely vanished, and I don't think that's how it happens.

I did post a few comments on her page in the last couple of days, but I can't see that they were incendiary remarks.They expressed frustration at feeling like a failure because none of my novels sold. It was weird, because HER post seemed more incendiary than mine. The whole reason I follow her page is that she is such a champion of free speech. She believes everyone has the right to be heard. I can see having my comments deleted, I can see being unfollowed or unfriended or even being messaged and told to can the remarks before I did any more damage. But this??

Then I checked the page of another Facebook friend, a very brave and gutsy lady in the CanLit field who has been publishing some blazing articles about the current literary debacle. She has unfriended me, apparently. We are no longer friends, and I don't know why.

Just like that. It's over.

I know there's such a thing as Facebook envy and social media stress. Young people are especially prone to it. This is not the right environment for a person like me who hates impression-management and frantic accumulation of likes, who hates to feel like she's the only one on the playground who can't speak Ish-kabibble. Yet I haven't closed my account yet, and I still check it daily. And I am not sure why.

Yesterday I joined a group - hey, ME joining a group! - of troll fanciers. Yes, a group of people like me who collect trolls, because they remind me of my childhood, of being ten and watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and playing trolls with my girl friends. Right now it is the only good thing I can see about Facebook. I've been blocked by one friend - someone I really admire - and I don't know why. I've been unfriended by someone I really don't know, but who used to be my friend, and I don't know why.

It feels like my fate to get lousy results, whether from my three novels (awful sales, all of them, in spite of very good reviews), or my Facebook page or my YouTube videos (some of which get no views at all, ever). If I used these things to define my worth, I would be in so much trouble I might not get up tomorrow morning. I might not be breathing. So I don't.

And yet, for all that, I feel bruised. I feel bruised that someone I don't even know personally has blocked me, doesn't want me even seeing her page, and does not want to see my page ever again. I just don't get it. Others have quietly bailed on me, I am sure, as I have quietly bailed on others. But this is a little different. 

I can't play the game, obviously, I've had so much proof it should be blatantly obvious. But part of me wanted this, wanted to be accepted as a writer, as someone who could make a contribution. It didn't happen. But it gets worse when someone who DID make a contribution doesn't want to see me any more, and I don't even understand why.

What happened to YouTube??

Nothing good. Or - too much of a good thing. Or - much too much?

Cool and creepy: the wonder of Facebook

There is so much about social media that pisses me off that I often don’t know where to start.

I don’t even do Twitter. I’m not likely to start doing Twitter because of all the negative things I hear about it, the way it has gone sour, the way people attack each other. The Steven Galloway debacle is a case in point. Margaret Atwood casually swiped at a huge sector of the literary community, calling us frail maidens on fainting couches, claiming that firing Galloway because of his chronic sexual abuse of students was a “witch hunt” and “McCarthyism”.

Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet.

It gets worse, but it’s morning and I can barely get my brain around what I want/need to say. I’ve always had problems with people cadging sympathy on Facebook: “oh well, I guess it doesn’t matter that I'll have a migraine when I pick up my Giller Award tonight”, “Sick this week, don’t know how I’ll make my five-week holiday in Greece”, etc. There follows a chorus of sympathy, dozens of comments: “Oh, Diddums, just take care of yourself and I am SURE you’ll be in those Greek isles running around in your bikini before you know it.”

And then there is the “PLEASE, everyone. I am nearly at the 5000 Facebook friends limit and need to pick those last few precious spots myself, so don’t try to friend me! You will only be disappointed. I am so, so sorry, I know it's a hardship for you. But these last few names are absolutely crucial for the promotion of my next novel and might get me a spot on Ellen.”

Yesterday I saw “why do we only get to see posts from, say, fifty of our friends among the thousands we have?” As if it would be possible to see posts from 3500 people a day.

Such problems!

I know there are other things, but the one that is bugging me most right now is “I’m taking a break from social media, guys”. I see this one over, and over, and over again, and NOT ONCE has the person actually taken a “break” of more than two days. Recently it was a woman harmed by the Steven Galloway affair – bruised by a former friend who lit into her for thinking Galloway might actually have done some harm.

I can see this, can see being hurt. I’ve been hurt over and over and over again on social media, and in life. But what she said next, “I’m stepping back from social media for the rest of the year,” was remarkable, because somehow reality changed and the months of November and December collapsed down into two days, which is how long it was before she went back to posting on Facebook every day. But these posts may not even have counted: if she only posts three or four times a day, and the posts aren’t too long, is she somehow, mysteriously, still “taking a break”? Or was it all due to that Greek chorus of voices begging her to come back? Anyway, I am cynical enough now that I kept an eye on that situation, and it went exactly the way I predicted.

Am I in a sour mood? I don’t know. In a December mood, I guess. I’ve had worse. Lots worse. But this is the time of year one’s psyche adds it all up, and - BAM. I wonder what it has all amounted to.

I don’t know why I do Facebook anyway, except to put time in. It’s grey and wet out there, lousy even for taking a walk, and I am “behind” on Christmas preparations which I do not want to make.

I have people in my life, yes, precious and few, and given my family history it’s a good thing I’m not being treated like a punching bag every day. It was unlikely I would ever help co-create something this amazing (though there are those who’ve claimed it just dropped into my lap, undeserved). In truth, I would not change anything about it, or them. But they are growing up, growing away from me steadily. I am no good at loss.

Call it reality. I can’t take a break from life (then come back to it in two days!). It just keeps lumbering along. Already, atrocious things (I won't say what, but you already know) are seemingly normal. We have to do this, I guess, to stand it, to keep trying to enjoy our lives. I enjoy what I can; I honestly do, but they are all such small things.

Facebook reminds me that I will never achieve the big things I dreamed about for so long, though others did, and do. They endlessly shimmy around in their bikinis, Giller Prize in hand, to remind me of it.  Holidays. Awards. New babies. New friends. Exotic recipes that always turn out. And never a family fight. Never an alcoholic in the family. The smooth shiny facet is always kept turned towards your “friends” - but who knows what is on the other side.

Must be kind of exhausting, when you think about it.

BLOGGER'S NOTE. While thoroughly disgusted, and wondering whether I had already posted the Abbie poem and not wanting to look it up (but no one reads this anyway, so who cares), I stumbled upon something remarkable.

I cut this image out of the TV guide, the paper one I mean, back when it still existed. This was probably around 1990:

And I kept it, not knowing the provenance of the picture at all. I couldn't find anything about it, though it haunted me. It was in an ad for some sort of Billy Graham-like religious crusade. I put it in a book somewhere, not able to throw it out but not knowing what to do with it, and that was all, until it emerged again 15 or so years later, and I scanned it.

And then.

I found this, just now, just this minute! This. Is. The. Same. Puppet. It popped out at me on Google images while I searched for disaffected, desolate illustrations for this post.

Years, and years, and YEARS later, this anonymous, strange, unknown thing is now called "Cool Creepy Marionette". That is ALL I can find about this exquisite work of art. On site after site after site, the same image, replicated. 

It HAS to be the same! Even the eyes, even the mask, even the position of the hand - it's all the same. But why can't I find out anything about this except "cool creepy marionette"?

It's because the internet no longer cares about the provenance of anything. It's some sort of ultimate global Communism, everything held in common, nothing owned, least of all works of art that someone actually made - carved - imbued with a soul.

All I know is, this marionette, which looks fairly new, isn't new. In fact, I don't know how old it is.  It means something. Maybe if I keep digging, and digging, and digging, I'll find out - but I don't think so.

I don't know how to feel about this. In part, it filled me with amazement and joy - here he is again! Rediscovered: our puppet of sorrow. But then I wondered where he came from. Another lost boy? And does anybody besides me really care about it?

Fair game: those old family photos on the internet

Blogging is an organic process, like all serious writing. (Serious! As 3/4 of this blog is satire, how can I say that? But satire is perhaps the most serious writing of all). This piece is beginning to evolve from some thoughts I've been having for quite a while now.

In spite of my general disdain for Facebook, there are a few pages that I "visit" regularly (in other words, I look at them, and read them if there's anything to read). One of them is called The Kitsch Bitsch. True to its name, the page posts tacky items, photos and videos and gifs, many of them from the '50s, '60s and '70s. There are certain themes or subjects that come up so often, it almost gets tedious. A few times a week there is a vintage recipe for a jello mold containing all sorts of disgusting "entombed" ingredients such as organ meats and canned fish. Old ads for men's fashions run incessantly, and include long crocheted vests that look like macrame, crimplene jumpsuits, mint-green polyester leisure suits, and bellbottoms that remind me of the fins on a '57 Chevy.

But the favorite is/are old family pictures, cheesy things depicting drunk people, people in wigs, goofy-looking people of all kinds.

You see this all over the place. There are posts at Christmas that show "really lame Christmas photos". High school yearbook photos are a favorite. The common theme is goofiness, awkwardness, ugliness, or the bizarre. Until very recently I was all in, eager to comment on how completely lame these things were.

Then I began to think (never a good idea, but I did): hmmmmm. Where do these things come from?

As with Pinterest, we usually don't know where pictures posted on the internet/social media come from. They just sort of . . . appear. When they do, they're apparently in the public domain and can be passed around freely, and ridiculed even more freely. Some of the comments are quite nasty: swipes, jeers, and groans. Everyone feels entitled to do this - it's a free-for-all, with no holds barred.

But lately, I have started to think: what if someone I knew, someone who used to be a close friend and had a big trove of my personal family photos, had a falling-out with me and decided to get a little revenge? What would it be like to see all my old pictures out there, including the crazy, bizarre ones, duplicated and shared again and again and again, with an ever-longer list of nasty comments appended?

I've never heard anyone say anything about this. These aren't real people! Are they? Are you kidding? Who thinks about that? They're just goofy old photos on the internet, and who knows/cares where they came from. This means they can show
drunk people, out-of-control people, people weeping or hitting each other, people with disabilities - heywaitaminute.

People with disabilities?

Of course we have the thick glasses (and I have tons of those photos - mine were true Coke bottle-bottoms before the plastic variety came along). Thick glasses are ridiculous and stupid and something to be publicly jeered at. Never mind if the person is legally blind or has cataracts or is - OK, should I stop now? Have I suddenly lost my sense of humour?

Probably.

But I've seen some of those "cheesy" photos - and I think the feeling is "oh, we all have those cheesy family photos so it's OK" - in which it's pretty obvious to me that a child has Down syndrome or some other disability that may be barely visible. It makes the person look "different", thus "goofy" and fair game.

                                                       

If I suddenly found my family trove on the internet, on Pinterest or Facebook or wherever, I'd probably feel like I had been punched in the stomach. We can't control these things because once a photo is in someone else's hands, it can be "out there" in a nanosecond. WE aren't necessarily in on the joke.

I had another thought - oh God, let me PLEASE stop thinking. What if the image that popped up on Instagram or somewhere else was your deceased Grandma, or your father, or your brother who had been killed in an accident? What if the grief was very fresh - or not so fresh, but still taking up residence in your heart?

We make assumptions on the internet, and one is that goofy-looking things/people can be mocked with impunity.  If these were real people, surely they're all dead by now. Or they don't mind it, it's just as funny to them (no matter how savagely nasty the comments are, including calling a mentally challenged person a "retard").

I don't know about other people because I'm not "other people". But there was a time in my life when, if I had suddenly seen a photo of my father's face  jumping out at me from nowhere, I would have retreated in horror and spent the rest of the day weeping. It took five years of therapy for me to come to terms with the fact that he sexually abused me when I was a child. As a matter of fact, his photo IS on the internet in various places, and (to my horror) I was ambushed by it not long ago.

How did it get there? I don't know. That's another thing. If you are having difficulties with your family and there is a schism, people on the other side of it might start posting pictures -  post them "at" you, I mean, as a form of deliberate violation or revenge. Those pictures can get around like a (real) virus: just hit "share". You're automatically the target for whatever people want to publicly say about you.

At this point, the conversation takes a right turn and people begin to say, "Oh, don't be so sensitive. It's only a picture, It doesn't matter what people think. Just ignore them." So if someone finds and posts a picture of your falling-down-drunk father and the image makes your stomach drop through the floor, it's OK.  Especially the contemptuous hilarity that ensues in the comments section.

A photo means almost nothing now, we take dozens or scores of them a day, but forty or fifty years ago it was an occasion. Families usually posed for them, but the candid shots could be most revealing of what was really going on. People had to develop film then (remember?), and out of a roll of 24 shots, 3 or 4 might be "keepers". But people often kept the rest anyway, afflicted with that ridiculous post-war habit of "waste not, want not".

So how did those outtakes end up on the internet? I don't know, but it's hard for me to believe that the descendents of drunken Aunt Martha gleefully put them out there. Family albums even end up in estate sales when somebody dies. Deaths are messy, detritus abounds, and things like that just get lost in the shuffle.

Is there any way to stop this? Why should we want to stop something that's this much fun? The truth is, it's a blood sport now and part of internet culture. But I wonder if we shouldn't stop, once in a while, and think about those dead people, or perhaps the ones who are still alive and suffering through all those comments.

ADDENDUM. One of, perhaps, many. Or not. Aside from kitsch photos, I used only my own family pictures for this. Because I don't keep weird-looking ones, as a rule, most of them aren't very weird. But all of them have meaning.

Old photos are saturated with meaning. As saturated as the godawful old 1970s Kodachrome colour process in those prints. In gathering up a few images for this thing, I did seriously think of including one of my father, which ambushed me from a Chatham-Kent Facebook page a while ago. In it, he stares into the camera with a shark's dead eyes.

For reasons I can't comprehend, I kept the two photos I found. I just did. I was going to paste them up here, but when I went to open the file, it was like the Wicked Witch of the West trying to get Dorothy's slippers off. A big lightning-bolt shot out at me and I jerked back as if I had been electrocuted.

Not that those pictures mean anything. Why such a big deal?

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