Your latest deeply unnerving Internet phenomenon: the practice of “baby role-playing.” Participants generally hijack new parents’ photos and use them on Instagram to enact fantasies about adoption and basic childcare tasks—though sometimes it gets much, much darker.
Fast Company has a report on the practice, leading with the story of North Carolina mom Jenny, who discovered someone called “Nikki” was stealing Instagram photos of her son, assigning him a new name and claiming as her own, offering fabricated details about his birth weight, for instance. Obviously this freaked Jenny right the fuck out. But it’s just the tip of the iceberg:
Sometimes they create entire fake families. Others then interact in the comments of each photo, role-playing as they virtually feed, burp, swaddle, and even reprimand these virtual children. Some Instagrammers even portray themselves as virtual adoption agencies, where followers can request specific babies and toddlers they’d like to adopt.
Often you’ll get users commenting and the OP responding in character as the baby; for instance, from one Fast Company example: “Your so adorable how old are you” “Tank oo.” It doesn’t take that much empathy to understand how this might be deeply upsetting to someone whose kid’s pics are stolen.
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