On the day of the climate strike last year, my mother proudly shared a photo of my sister and me holding our picket sign on her public Instagram account with a couple of hundred followers. We didn't think much else of it, until my Facebook feed began to blow up with notifications: SBS News had picked up the photo and posted it to its Facebook, with more than a million followers. It was soon inundated with comments labelling my sister and me everything from "uneducated" to "virtue signalling little turds".
去年，在为气候变化而罢课的当天，我的母亲骄傲地在Ins上发了一张我和姐姐举着罢课牌的照片（她有几百名粉丝）。我们没有想太多，直到我的脸书账号开始不停地发出通知：SBS新闻挑中了这张照片，并在其脸书账号上公开发布（拥有百万名粉丝）。没过多久，铺天盖地的评论席卷而来，给我和姐姐贴上了各式各样的标签："没文化""释放道德信号的小崽子"。
It was a social media blow-up that we had never asked for, and could never have imagined. But mum had asked for our OK to post the photo, so while it was far from pleasant, we were able to withstand the abuse because we both felt confident in the way we were portrayed. I couldn't imagine how the same situation would have gone if I hadn't given permission for mum to post that photo, and watch it subsequently be plastered across the internet.
这是一场不找自来的社交媒体刷屏，难以想象。但发布这张照片前，母亲的确征得了我们同意。所以，尽管事情不尽如人意，我们仍经受住了网络谩骂，因为我们对自己的塑造方式十分自信。我难以想象，如果当初没有同意母亲发照片，没有放任这张照片在网络上流传，事情又会变成什么样子。
My mother, like an increasing number of parents, is no stranger to posting what seems like every event in the lives of me, my sister and our dog to her social media followers. (Mostly our dog.) Family friends joke that the weekend doesn't start until they've seen at least one photo of my dog failing to spot me out on the water at rowing. When we go on holidays, relatives back home await reviews from the "hot chocolate critics", where mum will share our ratings on our beverage of choice, a theme for some years.
我的母亲，和很多家长一样，并不是第一次将我、姐姐和狗狗生活中的重大事件分享到社交媒体上。（多数都是狗狗的照片。）朋友们都笑着说，一看到划船时狗狗没能找到我的照片就知道周末来了。外出度假时，家里的亲戚都等着看"热巧克力评论家"的评语，母亲会分享我们对各种饮品的打分情况，这已是多年来的传统。
This is all harmless, and will be nice to look back on one day. But as my sister and I grow up and get social media profiles of our own, the debate over whether mum can photograph, post and tag us has become much more contentious. When I saw Apple Martin's annoyance at her own mother's unauthorised photo sharing (albeit, with 5.3 million followers to my mother's few hundred), it felt like deja vu.
这些都无伤大雅，某一天回顾过去时也能让人感到欣慰。但随着我和姐姐慢慢长大，有了自己的社交媒体账户时，关于母亲是否可以给我们拍照、分享我们的照片并@我们的这一话题也变得越来越有争议。当我看到爱波·马丁（Apple Martin）对母亲在未经其同意的情况下发照片的行为而感到恼火时（尽管她的母亲有530万名粉丝，而我的母亲只有几百名），我也深有同感。