I wanted to kill a streak of optimism I’d been on lately, so I logged onto MySpace.

I perused profile after profile of unreadable text, elementary school drop-outs begging for dates, urgent bulletins informing me that 98 percent of teens don’t stand up for God and asking if I will be among the 2 percent who does (though as an omnipotent being, does he really need humans to stand up for him? What sense does that make? Seriously? It sounds to me like what you really want is for everyone to validate your beliefs), attention-starved girls groveling for new comments on their pictures, and the always popular auto-loading media files that crash my browser. Little-by-little, my optimism fell, and as it sunk to newfound lows I noticed a comment posted by one of my friends who recently had a baby.

Upon first glance it seemed normal — a lot of stuff that could easily be covered in a simple phone call. But, since I love to indulge in online stalking, I studied the comment further and discovered something odd: At the end, she had signed her newborn child’s name.

Huh? I studied the comment again. There it was, her newborn child’s name at the end. Needless to say, I was a bit stupefied. Here was a message written by her purporting to be from her newborn child. If you’re curious, he misses his aunt and wants to see her soon. He’s also hungry and has the sneaking suspicion that the drugs the doctors gave Mommy during labor have rotted her brain, but shhhh, don’t tell her that; he still needs her to live.

Since some last vestige of hope for humanity remained, I finished my transformation into a misanthrope and did the one thing no sane man should ever do. I logged onto Facebook.

There I came across another profile. It seemed normal, upon first glance, but I noticed the main picture was that of a baby. All the pictures were of a baby. It was then I discovered that the profile was the profile of a newborn child, complete with imaginary interests, imaginary thoughts, all centered around an imaginary personality.

This is very disturbing.

I know you self-absorbed mothers think it’s really cute. It’s not. Repeat: it’s disturbing.

What is the deal with these creepy, shut-in mothers? The kid cannot talk. Do you understand that? Can’t talk. Or walk. Or write. Or do anything other than serve as your object of heavenly worship.

So far, I’ve only seen this online trend with one kid — what about other kids? Does each additional child receive a separate page or do they all receive one page? Or do you have one kid, craft a page, wait until he’s old enough to operate it on his own, and then have more? Or perhaps you stop at one? It’s a bit confusing, so feel free to get back to me with your plans.

Better yet: Will the child be allowed to maintain the page on his own? Will you continue to maintain it in his name? Will other parents do the same, and will we soon see an exclusive network of overbearing, strange parents crafting personalities for their children that don’t exist and will never exist, setting playdates and finding babysitters?

These same people tend to buy into the media hype concerning online child predators. Actually, they tend to buy into anything they hear without question, which is a really nice example to set for your children by the way. But if you are concerned about child predators being “everywhere” on social networking sites such as MySpace, then why put your child out there? Why essentially dangle your kid out there in front of them? These questions assume you want to be a parent. Judging from your behavior, you prefer to tote your children around as prizes. Look what I can do! Look at my accomplishment!

Human reproduction is not an accomplishment. Just thought I’d make that clear.

It doesn’t stop at children. Some people make profiles of their dogs and cats. They sign Rover up for Facebook and put him in the network labeled “Mentally Handicapped Dog Owners.”

People, you need to understand something: Your pets cannot talk. Do you understand that? Can not talk. OK? At least your newborn will eventually be able to talk … to the therapist he will end up seeing one day.

— Travis Lee is a senior in French. He can be reached at [email protected].