Once Something Is On The Internet, You Have No Control Over It

I read an interesting article in the New York Times titled “A Baby Photo Becomes an Internet Meme” where a father uploaded pictures of his newborn baby approximately 10 years ago and found that this picture had become an Internet meme. To give you an idea, here are some of the ways he found this image of his son used:

He was surrounded by cartoonish word bubbles filled with Japanese writing: “Don’t call me baby!” they read. “Call me Mr. Baby!” And there were other images in which the photo was transformed further: Stephen has a pompadour in one, a head full of snakes in another. His face was pasted onto Kurt Cobain’s head, carved into Mount Rushmore and tattooed onto David Beckham’s torso. He was an eight-bit video game character. He became a three-dimensional sculpture.

Obviously, these are harmless enough uses but, without going into details, you can see how this picture can easily be (and probably was) used for “less tasteful” pictures. The father understood these risks:

[The father knew] there was nothing he, or any parent, could do to prevent the use (or misuse) of an image of his child, once it was uploaded to the Web.

Which goes to prove the point that once something is online, you have no control over it. We have already seen how careless postings people make cost them their jobs and employment opportunities, but this is just another thing to be aware of.

This simply hammers in the point everyone should know by now: once you post something online, you really can’t take it back.