The New Etiquette: Anti-Etiquette?

Via DadWagon sibling Paul comes the following charmer from the Bay Area’s SF Appeal online newspaper. A relatively reasonable etiquette question–how do I politely ask my pal to stop tagging my toddler’s pictures on Facebook?–becomes the occasion for a marginally coherent, ostensibly humorous anti-Facebook (and faintly anti-child) rant. A sample: “Unless your child has a harelip or is actually a shaved Shitz Tzu wrapped in swaddling that you’re delusionally pretending is your human offspring, you have absolutely no reason to obsessively keep her pictures off Facebook.”

I’ll admit that the writer’s solution to this dilemma is inventive: a way to be so obnoxious to your friends that the photos are taken down in short order. Nice to see that the next generation of etiquette columnists seems to believe that being a troll is now just bein’ neighborly.

(Real answers to that question here, by the way.)

Published by Christopher

Christopher Bonanos is a senior editor at New York magazine, where he works on arts and urban-affairs coverage (and a few other things). He and his wife live smack in the middle of midtown Manhattan, where their son was born in March 2009. Both parents are very happy, and very tired.

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