As someone who has been an avid Facebook user almost since the site launched and whose job has included\u00a0the professional management of institutional social media accounts for the past six years, I like to think that I’m pretty good at using the Internet.<\/p>\n

Maybe my advancing age and (now fatherly?) sensibilities don’t put me on the cutting edge of the most-used social media networks\u00a0(For example, I hope to live the rest of my life without ever being on\u00a0Snapchat), but I have a deep knowledge and understanding of social media\u00a0and web content\u00a0and all of that fun digital\u00a0stuff. I’ve even managed to snag\u00a0the online equivalent of\u00a015 minutes of fame by achieving true “virality” with several things\u00a0that\u00a0I’ve posted online. The point is, I have my Internet driver’s license. I’m no idiot.<\/p>\n

So when I set up this blog in secret–a self-hosted WordPress site, no less–I prided myself on how cool it would be to have a whole blog full of “new dad” content fleshed\u00a0out and waiting for my friends and family to feast upon when my wife and I\u00a0went public with our announcement in the new year.<\/p>\n

Last week, I thought it might also be cool to create a Twitter account for this site and start following some other Daddy bloggers\u00a0and\u00a0parenting\u00a0accounts to familiarize myself with the online community of which I am now a member.<\/p>\n

As I have for various other personal and professional projects, I headed over to Twitter and began to set up\u00a0an account<\/a>. Fortunately, the username @dadhasablog was not taken. Sweet. I began filling out my profile and entered my cell phone as the phone to be associated with the account.<\/p>\n

This should have been my first tipoff that something could go wrong, as Twitter immediately started suggesting that I follow various friends and acquaintances that I follow on\u00a0my personal Twitter account. I wonder how Twitter knows\u00a0that I know all these people<\/em>,\u00a0I casually thought to myself.\u00a0Oh, well, I just won’t follow them right now. It’ll make things easier when this account is more public and I want my friends to follow it.<\/em><\/p>\n

I finished setting up the account.<\/p>\n

I moved on to other things–like trying to find a suitable theme for this site that satisfies both my visual urge for minimalism and my mental mania\u00a0for sharing lots of information. About 10 minutes later,\u00a0I clicked back to my new Twitter account tab, ready to tweet my blog’s first post and beef up\u00a0my profile\u00a0for eventual\u00a0later discovery by others. To my horror, I had some unread notifications.\u00a0New followers? Well, maybe some of the parenting publications I had followed were already following me back. That’s cool.<\/em><\/p>\n

But no. It was not the parenting publications. And it was not cool.<\/p>\n

Apparently Twitter had blown my cover. Since I had associated my cell phone number with the account, Twitter took the liberty of alerting all of my personal Twitter account followers to the presence of my\u00a0new account via Twitter notification and an individual email. Who does<\/em> that?! I’ve never received an email like that from Twitter.<\/p>\n

So now my followers\u00a0were starting to follow my new\u00a0account…and visiting my new blog that I had so knowingly\u00a0included in my\u00a0Twitter profile…and reading my first post, which was detailed enough to make it perfectly obvious which one of their friends was the new Dad with the new blog.<\/p>\n

I panicked.<\/p>\n

This was not at all how I had planned to share this news. I felt the kind of fear and regret that is normally reserved for situations like accidentally sending an email about<\/em> someone to<\/em> that someone.<\/p>\n

I quickly deleted the Twitter account and hurried back to my blog to make all of the posts private. But the damage was done.\u00a0In my haste, I didn’t notice exactly who had followed my new account, but WordPress statistics told me that about 15 people had visited\u00a0the site.<\/p>\n

Then I received a G-chat message.<\/p>\n

“I AM SO FILLED WITH JOY!” the message said. “And I will keep my mouth shut.”<\/p>\n

Then I received a\u00a0text message.<\/p>\n

“Lucky for you\u00a0I’m better than Twitter at secrets,” my friend texted, including the above screenshot.<\/p>\n

Then I received\u00a0another text message.<\/p>\n

“When I saw the alert, I thought my Dad created a Twitter account,” a former colleague\u00a0texted. “But when I clicked on it, I was pretty clear what I was reading.”<\/p>\n

Luckily, the bleeding seemed to stop shortly after that. Three former co-workers and a friend from college. These people now joined me and my wife as the only souls on Earth who knew about the new soul we had just\u00a0brought to Earth. I swore all of my new confidantes to secrecy and tried to lower my blood pressure.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I had texted and G-chatted and emailed my wife so I could confess this grievous sin and seek penance. Afraid that something was seriously wrong, she soon gave me a call. When I told her what had happened, she laughed.<\/p>\n

Eventually, I laughed as well, though it took a little longer for me to\u00a0let Twitter off the hook and blame myself for this debacle. Thanks to my own stupidity and Twitter’s need to drive “engagement,” this blog is now firmly password-protected and Twitter-free until we let the cat<\/del> kitten out of the bag for ourselves.<\/p>\n

In an always-on, over-connected world, anonymity is impossible\u00a0and secrets should stay offline.<\/p>\n

Just another life lesson to teach my kid. Also, don’t try to keep secrets from me, kid. Twitter will always alert\u00a0me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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