A US woman with a popular blog has commemorated her son's sixth birthday by describing how he's less popular online than her other children.
Katie Bower is a mother-of-five from Atlanta, Georgia with more than 50,000 Instagram followers. She also runs a lifestyle blog, where she writes gives home maintenance tips and posts photos of her several houses.
She gained notoriety earlier in the year when she revealed that she didn't know people had died in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
On Sunday (local time) her son Weston turned six, and Ms Bower celebrated the occasion by posting a photo of him on Instagram. But it's the lengthy caption she wrote alongside it that's raised eyebrows.
"Guys I am gonna be perfectly honest," she wrote.
"Instagram never liked my munchkin and it killed me inside. His photos never got as many likes. Never got comments. From a statistical point of view, he wasn't as popular with everyone out there."
Ms Bower went on to list the various reasons why photos of Weston might not do as well as those of her other children, speculating that the pictures "just never hit the algorithm right".
Other theories for his disappointing online performance included the boy's "squinty eyes" and the fact that people prefer photos of babies to older children.
"I say all that because I want to believe that it wasn't him... that it was on me," she wrote.
"My insufficiency caused this statistical deficit because obviously my Munch should get ALL the love and squinty eyes are totally adorable."
She implored her followers to show more love for Weston, and said her marriage, house and children are "1000000000x better in real life" than on social media.
In a follow-up P.S. that was added once the backlash began, Ms Bower clarified her remarks about Weston.
"I revealed this feeling, because I know one day he will see the numbers and have to learn that his value is not in online approval. This is a hard lesson for anyone to learn and I'm thankful I have learned it.
"I hope you all can be understanding and not take things out of context or believe that this in any way affects how I see or treat my children."
- Auckland intermediate school asks parents to ban kids from social media
- High social media use causes loneliness and depression - study
- Kiwi mummy blogger gets rid of dog to 'take stress out' of 'excellent life'
The post went viral after a screenshot was shared on Twitter, with users calling her comments "horrifying" and "narcissistic".
Many people were dismayed that Ms Bower seemed to treat her children as ways to generate online engagement, and that she would tell the world that her son was unpopular on his birthday.
One user joked that Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg had set up a facility for parents to send their "underperforming social media kids".
Another said the incident had compelled her to delete all the photos of her son from her own Instagram account.
"Her kids are going to make a therapist very rich one day," a third user quipped.
Ms Bower has since deleted the post.
Newshub.
