Masterfile
Proud parents may be forgiven for thinking snaps of their offspring are calendar-worthy. But their pals may not be as enraptured by their baby’s changing expressions. In fact, there appears to be a mini-war raging between parents who clog their friends’ Facebook news feeds with pictures of their kids, reports the New York Times’ Austin Considine.
Fed up with all of those adorable snaps, many are turning to a web tool called Unbaby.me, which reportedly replaces those highly offensive photos of cherubic innocence with images of “cats, sunsets and bacon.”
The software seems to have struck a nerve with the easily annoyed. The New York Times quotes two Twitter users responding to the joy of being un-babied. “They fixed the internet,” wrote @KelseyFrazier. “Unbaby.me makes endless hours of looking at my Facebook timeline nearly bearable,” wrote @lauryncharles.
Even Forbes magazine chimes in appreciatively, declaring: “If you are a childless 20- or 30-something whose friends are all popping babies like muffins, you don’t need me to tell you why this is a brilliant, and sanity-preserving, idea.”
So far, Unbaby.me has been downloaded 19,000 times. Chris Baker, 29, one of the tool’s three co-creators explained the thinking behind the application, as a (juvenile?) reaction to parental oversharing. “It’s like a certain part of the brain gets activated where they feel this crushing desire to share with the world their little creations,” Baker told the NYTimes.
That “area of the brain” Baker is referring to may be the amygdala, the part of the brain associated with emotional responses such as love. Oddly enough it’s also the area of the brain associated with anger and irritability. Maybe Baker and the 19,000 other people who chose bacon over baby snaps have more in common with those obnoxious parents than they think?
Do baby photos on Facebook annoy you?
