Let’s bash mums earning a living

That’s basically what this thread amounts to.    And to be honest, I am sick of it.    Sick of people having a dig at other people who are going about their lives, living it how they feel works for them, asking nothing of anybody else, only to find themselves being bashed and bullied by strangers on line.

This thread on Mumsnet now has over 1000 replies and to be honest I haven’t read them all to see if they are agreeing or arguing with the original poster as I really can’t be arsed.   But as you can tell the original post alone has wound me up.

First of all, Instagram is a social media platform that you choose to join.  It is not compulsory that you join, nor is it obligatory for you to follow certain “large follower accounts” once you have joined.   You pick and choose who to follow, and your followers will have done the same, they either follow you or they don’t.  At  any time after following an account you are free to unfollow.

Unlike Twitter it is harder for content to be shared on to your timeline that you would rather not see.  There is no easily accessible share function on Instagram, if you want to “re-gram” something you have to exit the app and use another app and then come back and, well, it’s a faff.  So by and large the only thing appearing on your timeline is stuff you have chosen to see from the accounts you wanted to follow.

Chose to follow.

It’s not like on Twitter, where for instance I have chosen to not follow Frankie Boyle as I don’t find his humour funny, yet his tweets sometimes appear in my timeline as one of his followers had re-tweeted it onto my timeline.  That doesn’t happen so readily on Instagram.   So you really can curate your own timeline much more easily.

So hello if you don’t like what an account is posting, why the chuffing hell are you following them?

It reminds me of the letters to Points of View

Dear Sir

I watched <insert random TV title> for an hour on Sunday night and I am appalled.  From the outset I knew I would hate it, and I was right.  It was drivel. 

Yours, Outraged of Tunbridge Wells

To which my response would have been

Dear Outraged

Does the “off” button on your remote not work?

Similarly I have seen articles in the papers where Shock Horror people have sex in a park, or in front of an office window.  Or behind the bins of a chippy.   The accompanying articles is usually peppered with quotes:

I was so appalled by it that I videoed it on my phone for 20 minutes before forwarding it to all my mates.  Dave, 26

Seriously, what is wrong with people that they feel they have to be indignant and shout about it, and in the case of the Insta-Mum (a phrase I hate with a passion, by the way) thread bully women who are doing nothing other than working.    Yes, they might be on “yet” another holiday but they are working, they are creating blog posts, videos, instagram photos, sharing this online.  And yes, in the hope that their followers might see the pics and be inspired to book the same holiday which would delight the holiday company that offered the trip in the first place.

It’s called advertising and I don’t understand why people are so affronted that mums are doing this.

You spend £5 buying Tatler and you have to get to about page 40 before you get an article, all that proceeds it has been advertising.   Should we be outraged?  Don’t be ridiculous.

The mums that are mentioned on the thread and in the resulting newspaper articles are hard working women who are supporting their families.   They are earning a living.  They have worked damned hard to get their following on social media.  Nobody starts off with 200,000 followers.   Dedication and hard work get these women those sorts of numbers, and beyond.

Which is why advertisers want to work with them.  Want to have their brand message shouted by these women.

So why do some people feel it is appropriate to bash these women?  To belittle all that hard work?

If you don’t like it, how about you just don’t follow them.  If you can’t relate to somebody living on £100K a year in a Farrow and Ball home why do you follow them?    If you aren’t following them then I fail to see how they can be appearing on such a regular basis that it causes that much anger.

Just because you can’t relate to these women or their accounts and life styles doesn’t mean you have to berate them publicly.