The day after I wrote the post about becoming a blog writing machine, I posted a video that I made for Finn's third birthday. It had his full name in the beginning of the video, but I decided to post it anyway. The next day, I got a comment on my family blog where I post nonstop pictures and videos and commentary about the boys. Someone left an anonymous comment on a very old post of Finn that shows him naked from behind. The comment was nasty. It called us disgusting parents for "tarting" out our son to the internet, and then alluded to what they would like to do with my boy. I did some investigating with my stat tracker and found that someone from Sweden left the comment, after doing a Google search for "naked boy". Because that was the name of the actual picture that I had saved on my computer, it somehow led them to that post.
The first thing I did after reading that comment was to take down the video on this blog. Even though it was "just" a comment, I felt somehow violated and scared that I was opening up my kid to risk. I'm generally pretty trusting of the internet and world in general. I pay my bills online, I don't shred every piece of paper I throw away, I do social media. So perhaps I'm just naive. Or maybe I'm just a wimp, and if I'm going to put my life out there online, I have to be prepared for everything.
Well, I'll tell you that although I did poke my head in a hole for a couple of days, I won't retreat indefinitely.
But where is the line? How much can I be open without opening myself to risk? Is this an impossible task?
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