SchminstaGram

The word on the young person's street is that Facebook has been taken over by old people (read: people like me) and so as not to be involved with something their parents find fun and social, the young 'uns have turned to another social network.  So as not to run into any copyright problems, I will not use its real name, but rather call it SchminstaGram.  Both of my kids have SchminstaGram accounts.  As I consider myself a Good Parent, which means that I must embarrass my children at every possible moment, as well as stalk them and their friends, I created my own account.  So as not to have any pretense, my user name has the word "embarrassing" in it.

When I was their age, popularity was a strange game, and the score was never clear.  Status was determined by an odd and subjective mix of lunch tables, classroom seating, insecurity, luck of the draw, and genetics.  Nowadays is more frightening.  These kids get actual raw data with numbers of 'followers' and 'likes'.   A lot of what determines these numbers is use of 'tags', 'shoutouts', 'hashtags', and something I think might be called 'squirrellsmushies'.  In other words, these preteens have been forced by the necessities of the pressures of social status to turn into internet marketing geniuses.  It's like a middle school version of "The Shark Tank."  Kids regularly compare how many 'followers' they have and play games to get more 'likes', such as posting a little video or picture with a caption that says, "If this video gets 30 likes I will paint my face with peanut butter and post the picture on SchminstaGram."  I mean really.  Who *wouldn't* click like on that?  I know I would.

My daughter, who is, in my humble opinion, brilliant, hilarious, a SUperGEEEEnius, and supermodel gorgeous to boot, has a SchminstaGram account.  She has a decent amount of 'followers', but the number stays in the two digit range, which seems par for the course for her age bracket..  A good friend of ours, who a) thinks ShminstaGram is as insipid as I do and b) has more time and energy than I do, created a joke account in which her Siamese Cat is the alleged 'owner'.  As of this writing, the cat has 1,810 followers.  Most of the followers are other 'cats', though there are some dogs out there who have, I guess, cat fetishes.  You wouldn't believe how many computer savvy pets are out there able to post their pictures to and type messages on SchminstaGram.

My friend's cat posts pictures about twice a day, and each picture gets about two hundred 'likes'.  Apparently the middle schoolers are going to have to find another venue because if the old folks have taken over Facebook, the Crazy Cat Ladies have taken over SchminstaGram.  This cat gets not only likes, but comments.  Comments like, "oooh, you have such pretty eyes" and "will you be my SchminstaGram boyfriend?" and "you are purrrrrrfect."  This cat has quite a few invitations to the Pet Prom.  I'm not sure what that is, but aparently it has something to do with putting bowties and tophats on cats that might otherwise have some personal dignity.  These comments are allegedly posted by other 'cats' that have SchminstaGram accounts. These Crazy Cat Ladies actually think they are speaking for their cats.  I get that they love their cats like children, but even when my children were so young they were unable to post their own stuff on SchminstaGram, I never posted pretending to be the baby.  I was always me, proudly showing the world that my babies were the worlds best, smartest, prettiest, most talented babies.  Now they are the best, smartest, prettiest, most talented children, but they can speak for themselves.

My friend's cat account is named with the cat's name and breed, very simply, "spockthesiamesecat".  Most of these other cats have names like "princessprettypaws" or "theempressmeow".  Apparently there are a lot of cats out there with royal lineage. In retaliation for this silliness, and because she thought it would be funny, my daughter made an account for her pet lizard, a bearded dragon named "Zilla".  'Zilla' convinced 'Spock' to give her a 'shout out' and ask for followers.  Only about thirty of Spock's followers (and this number includes me, Spock, my friend's children, a few cats named after snack foods, etc.) decided that following Zilla was worth their time, even though two hundred people 'liked' the picture of Zilla that Spock posted with the shout out.  What we can conclude from this social experient is that either cats don't care for lizards much, lizards don't have the same kind of technilogical abilities as cats, or, perhaps, their owners aren't quite as clinically obsessed, hence the fact that there is no such stereotype as a "Crazy Lizard Lady". 

Heck if I understand any of it.  I think Zilla's initial posting -- a video clip in which Zilla shows off her mad dance skillz while speaking in a voice that sounds suspiciously like my daughter's -- is laugh out loud hilarious.  Most of Spock's pictures -- and Spock himself will admit this, in a voice that sounds suspiciously like that of a middle aged elementary school teacher -- are you basic pictures of a cat at best, and generally pointless and not particularly special.  Zilla's laugh out loud video clip has only gotten five 'likes' so far.  I'm sure this is due to his misunderstood, cold blooded nature, because the five-fingered ninja moves Zilla does while stalking a cricket are every bit as funny as a cat trying to catch the red dot of a laser pointer on the wall.

He's just not fluffy or furry, and that, I suppose, is why he doesn't have as many followers.  I suppose the animal kingdom is just as superficial in the middle of the food chain as it is at the top.  On the other hand, I am both fluffy and, at times, furry, so you'd think I'd be more popular, as measured by 'followers' and 'likes.'  Shows you what I know.