If you know who Grimes is then you’re probably fully aware that she is more than a little eccentric. Her pregnancy announcement earlier this month featured a CGI foetus, this week people began to speculate that she had created a social media account for said foetus.
Personally, I fully understand the desire to reserve some social media space for your child ahead of their arrival. When I was pregnant last year, considering the names that we would give to our future offspring was one of the only things that I really enjoyed doing. I would flick through a Penguin book of baby names, scroll the Mumsnet baby naming forum and yes, I would check the SEO and social media potential for any combinations I liked. Had my pregnancy continued I would have created accounts on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Snapchat under the name that we chose, bought their domain name and created a nice neat Gmail address for them.
During childhood those accounts would be used as private accounts to share photos with anyone who is interested, rather than overloading my friends with constant baby spam. Then, when my (hypothetical) children were older, they’ll be handed the accounts to do with as they please – maybe delete all the baby photos and start again, continue to share their lives with friends and family, or ignore entirely. By doing this they would have total control over every photograph of them on the internet.
It might sound mad, but is it really any odder than putting your child on the waiting list for a school while they’re still in utero? The internet is the second plane on which we now live. Why wouldn’t you start carving out online space for your child?
I was born in the 90s, before any of this was an option, and it has proved frustrating. I share a name with an American actress who was in the show New Girl, and I wrote a book that has the same title as a song by Lizzo. So surely it comes as no surprise that I want to spare my future that experience? I wouldn’t go so far as to give them extraordinary names (Psalm? Reign? Apple?) in order to get a unique Instagram handle, but it’s something I would keep in mind.
Reserving some space on the internet for your child doesn’t obligate them to use it. If my future progeny don’t want any of them, then we’ve lost nothing but the tiny fee it costs to have a domain name. But there is no question that having a google-able name is an advantage for anyone who is attempting to, well, make a name for themselves.
So while I don’t have much in common with Grimes (no billionaire boyfriend or recreational sword fighting for me), I will be following her lead when it comes to making social media accounts for my future children. And if that’s a bit bonkers then honestly, I’m okay with that.
READ MORE: Grimes is pregnant and her announcement is quite something