News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by dsnuh on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @03:10PM (#16109508)
Hi, please don't take this the wrong way, but as a father and stepfather to 4, I find this so sad. Have you considered therapy? It may help with this anxiety so that you can learn to let go a little and enjoy the ride. I know this is just a single comment you made on a website, but if this response of anxiety and fear really your view on raising your child at the point of 2 months experience, I can tell you it only gets more challenging as they grow. Good luck to you and your family.
Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by dsnuh on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @04:06PM (#16110074)
Some general advice to fight the pressure to be a perfect parent to a perfect child -

1. Forget the term "playdate". Don't schedule your kids' time to play with other children. I know it sounds strange, but adults used to have adult lives and people would just go visit each other. Their kids would play together while the adults did their thing.

2. Don't post pictures of your kid all the time on social media. No one really cares. Sorry. Send those pictures to your parents or friends directly. Better yet, go over to visit them and show them pictures in person. If you can, drop social media as much as you can stand, and just enjoy the fact that you love your child as much as every parent without turning parenting into social signalling and narcissistic indulgence.

3. Remember that your kids will leave you. They will go away to preschool, grade school, maybe college. And then one day, they will leave for the last time to set out on their own. Yes, you need to protect them, but if you are fearful and see the world as ugly, your kids will sense that growing up and most likely feel the same way. Do you want to send them out to the wide world with a viewpoint that the world is a scary place? Is the world a scary place? Why did the world turn ugly and scary when you had a child?

These are just my opinions, and there is no wrong way to do it. There's all sorts of ways of living. I just hope you find something that gives you some faith in your ability to raise a child that will turn out just fine. Because he or she will.

Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by PhasmaFelis on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @04:43PM (#16110407)
> 2. Don't post pictures of your kid all the time on social media. No one really cares. Sorry. Send those pictures to your parents or friends directly.

For many people, social media is how you send things to parents and friends. It's more straightforward than managing an email list, and needn't be any less real a connection.

I don't deny that ubiquitous social media is deforming our interactions, but I think a lot of people don't understand why Facebook et al got so popular in the first place. It's not just email for idiots. It's a tremendously useful tool for maintaining connections with a large and changing group.

Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by 5ilv3r on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @05:34PM (#16110791)
Facebook is notorious for making those connections impossible when they are truly needed most. It's a marketing tool with aggressive filtering, not a family message board.
Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by dsnuh on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @05:46PM (#16110893)
Agreed. I wish that I could get my family and close friends to join a Mattermost server I host, but so far, FB has a stranglehold on everyone it seems.
Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by paulryanrogers on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @06:25AM (#16114159)
XMPP had federation. Sadly it didn't last long at the big providers.
Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by PhasmaFelis on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @07:48PM (#16111638)
Unfortunately, it's both. Wal-Mart is a good comparison--their policies are awful and they blight the communities around them, but they provide real value to individual users. It's how they maintain their hold.
Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by dsnuh on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @04:51PM (#16110475)
Use whatever app or medium you choose, my advice was simply that sending directly to specific people is a better than flooding your IG or FB with photos of junior every day.
Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by Dramatize on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @07:02PM (#16111378)
90% of my Instagram content is my kid. Though I use it as a way to record highlights for me and my wife, rather than for outside consumption.
Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by ImSkeptical on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @08:27PM (#16111839)
I'm not sure why. My sister has an Instagram where she takes a couple of pictures of her kids a day, and has for the past five or six years, and I quite enjoy it. I know many of my family members do too. I visit a URL that just shows me her posts once a week or so, and just scroll to see what my niece and nephew have been up to.
Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by dsnuh on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @08:35PM (#16111892)
How often do you call or visit your sister? Or your nephews? Just saying that I think we lost something when we could just become low-effort voyeurs.
Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by PhasmaFelis on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @08:02PM (#16111712)
How is emailing photos to specific people materially different than posting photos to a Facebook account followed by the same people? (Particularly if the account is otherwise private.)
Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by dsnuh on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @08:33PM (#16111880)
How many people really care? Seriously? I love my kids as much as the next guy, but unless you are talking about a small group of people, yeah, in my opinion that amounts to narcissistic oversharing. I mean if you catch something hilarious, sure, share it. But it seems to me that those kind of posts should be few and far between. We've entered an age where voyuerism == friendship. No one really cares. Do you care about some high school pal's post of their kids activities?
Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by icc97 on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @05:40AM (#16113956)
I personally think there is a significant difference. The birthday messages I get on FB are worthless, but if someone sends me an email or a card that is worth something.

The connection via Facebook is so trivial and transient but it is better than no connection to people I'd have no contact with otherwise.

The people I email photos too will probably look at them a few times and may want to print them and will send an email response. Via FB it's all seen and then forgotten in 30s

Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by soperj on Thursday January 11, 2018 @02:51PM (#16127193)
I actually enjoy all the birthday messages I get on FB. Not because they say happy birthday, but because I actually respond to every single one of them, and catch up with people who actually made the slightest effort to wish me a happy birthday.
Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by icc97 on Monday January 15, 2018 @04:18AM (#16149459)
Fair point, I enjoy them too. But the amount of thought it takes to say Happy Birthday via Facebook is so trivial. FB reminds you, puts it at the top of your feed and reminds you the day after.

For me to send a birthday card to my friends I have a reminder that goes off a week before their birthday so that I find the time to go out get a relevant card. Then writing something of purpose inside the card and sending it with enough time to get there. So it's a week's worth of remembering their birthday vs the 30s that occurs in FB before reading all the other news.

So not worthless, but certainly worth less, to almost zero.

Re:The day I accidentally killed a little boy by dm319 on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @05:22AM (#16113867)
Yes,I have three kids, and I'm rarely on Facebook because I find it a toxic place.

But I was recently at a wedding, and was prompted to post a few photos up (more to share the photos with the bride/groom in a way that can also be seen by their friends too). It surprised me the number of messages I got saying how people loved seeing pictures of the kids and how they'd grown etc etc.

I don't have time to keep up with a lot of these old friends (many live far away) so I count this as a positive interaction on facebook.