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Making a living and a name for yourself as a blogger is hard work and has a way of skewing the way you view the world.
It forces you to track people's opinions of you in terms of likes, clicks, upvotes, etc. Valuing your work life in those terms can lead to valuing other aspects of your life the same way—it's one of those things that professional bloggers/vloggers need to be careful of.
Unfortunately, this mommy-blogger, bowerpowerblog, didn't get that memo.
She posted in "celebration" of her son's 6th birthday with something that has people cringing. Mom did eventually take the post down, but for a little while there some poor little boy got the gift of mom talking about how Instagram doesn't like him and then twisting that around to essentially beg for likes on his pictures.
Happy birthday, kiddo?
The post was a picture of the little boy smiling brightly. So far so good. Cute picture, cute kid, happy birthday post—we're on the right track.
Even the first half of the caption was going beautifully. She posted about how thankful she was for the child, she described his personality with love and talked about how much she adored him.
Then she went with this:
His mother devoted a whole two paragraphs to how much Instagram doesn't like him, how his self-esteem could be damaged because nobody likes or comments on his pictures, but how she hopes he will learn that his value isn't in online approval.
Go ahead and take a moment to process that.
Twitter was horrified—to say the least.
@chrissyteigen @stephemcneal @umairh This is some dystopian Birthday shit https://t.co/KPq3msGEEc— Marjie Cunningham (@Marjie Cunningham)1542667764.0
@stephemcneal 😂😂😂 https://t.co/bORSy1lApL— Kelly Pangell (@Kelly Pangell)1542655326.0
@chrissyteigen @stephemcneal @umairh if you ever visit the forums where people complain about ~influencers~ you’ll… https://t.co/E0jIqtTwIn— Amy Hoy ✨ (@Amy Hoy ✨)1542656675.0
@stephemcneal Nothing shows a parent’s love more than their careful scrutiny of their kids’ web metrics as a proxy… https://t.co/RWqRjh5nNi— The Hoarse Whisperer (@The Hoarse Whisperer)1542667736.0
@chrissyteigen @stephemcneal @umairh ... and she is using this opportunity to guilt people into “liking” more of HE… https://t.co/CSvLoXqEkz— Anvita J (@Anvita J)1542659244.0
@stephemcneal Every night at dinner, I show my children their performance metrics on social media and we discuss ho… https://t.co/orSPyQzCW3— Avi (@Avi)1542656132.0
@TheOnlyKrystan @chrissyteigen @stephemcneal @umairh https://t.co/jhz9HzR0vJ— The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Nikki Nicole (@The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Nikki Nicole)1542708233.0
One person even reached out to the blogger directly to talk about how it looked like she was exploiting her kid for social media engagement.
@stephemcneal Grab some popcorn, we got the tea https://t.co/69zKzVHm2g— jchebs (@jchebs)1542650945.0
Read it all here:
Yep, that conversation ended up with the blogger begging for social media engagement!
@stephemcneal What’s worse is she ends the conversation by literally asking for more engagement. The world we live… https://t.co/KaAbvpgBM0— jchebs (@jchebs)1542653073.0
@_absintheparty @stephemcneal HAHAHA “only you can help my son. For only 1 like a day, & at least 1 retweet a week,… https://t.co/YghFECYZKT— BananaBoat (@BananaBoat)1542654002.0
@ashleydevane @stephemcneal Alexa, play “in the arms of an angel” https://t.co/CLX5evhDD9— jchebs (@jchebs)1542654513.0
This isn't the first time the blogger has found herself at the center of worldwide side-eye. She once posted a picture of her boys sitting on a bale of hay wearing cowboy hats.
Again, she went off the rails in the caption, where she talked about not knowing what the deal was with 9/11 and how she didn't realize people died.
Yeah.
As we said earlier, she ended up removing the entire post rather than editing her caption, but she did announce via her Instagram Stories that she would read any birthday wishes to her son.
@_absintheparty @stephemcneal It’s really sad, but this is becoming so much more commonplace. Babies/kids being use… https://t.co/wfsJ8DSEmF— Alex (@Alex)1542753819.0