or..."reason 12,345 my family will never be on reality TV (reasons 1-12,344 being we're too boring)"
"Jon & Kate plus 8" is a TV show on some cable channel (TLC? Having DVR means never having to know). Soon after they got married, they had fertility treatment, and had twin girls. A couple years later they wanted to have 'just one more.' They had sextuplets. Now they have a TV show.
It's pretty popular. And when that happens, you get haters. There are websites out there dedicated to ripping into the family (the parents really), based on (among other things, like Kate's hair cut, her tummy tuck, or Jon's hair plugs) the theory that the parents are exploiting the kids.
I honestly haven't read these sites, but DearWife goes to them from tiem to time and tells me what people are saying. So this isn't a diatribe against the sites perse, it's more of a general commentatry on the Streisand effect. But there are two things I don't really get.
First, if the point is that you want to save the kids from exploitation, contributing to a site that promotes the show is bad. Every comment on these sites, positive or negative, raises the profile of the show. People happen on the site, get worked up, and watch the show more often because they're so worked up about it. Which means higher ratings, which means a longer run. Which means if you blog about how a show is exploiting the kids, you're contributing to the exploitation.
Second, what is going on in your life that it is so damn important to be so negative publicly. Is Kate bitchy? Sure. Hell, she has 8 kids- how could she not be bitchy from time to time. Are you so perfect that you can afford to be the first to throw stones?
If you were to tape any house in America for two weeks, you could edit it to show the family to be great or horrible. Lighten up people.
