Being born into the lap of luxury is by no means without its perks, but there’s certainly a price to pay with inherited fame (or infamy). As Mark Zuckerberg’s daughter will soon find out, chief among the cons of instant celebrity is the lack of privacy. But unlike some famous families who’ve attempted to shield their children from the spotlight, Zuckerberg appears to be taking the opposite approach, and is relishing the opportunity to thrust his daughter into the public eye by way of virtual reality. At the recent Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit, the Facebook CEO said of his unborn child’s first steps, “I’m really looking forward to being able to capture not just a photo but to really capture the experience” by way of Facebook’s foray into VR.
Last year, Zuckerberg raised quite a few eyebrows when he bought Oculus VR for a cool $2 billion, and prompted a number of questions about what a social media company could possibly want to do with what seemed to be a tool used mostly for video games. But virtual reality has come a long way in the last several months, and now, Zuckerberg is looking forward to the days when he gets to strap a headset on to capture precious moments with his daughter. Funny, isn’t it, that the invention of each new gadget seems to take us a bit further away from actually living in the moment?
Friends and family (and most likely anyone else in Facebook’s 1 billion-plus user base), Zuckerberg says, should be able to “be there and feel it and see what it’s like not just in a photo or video” when it comes to his unborn child. And while oversharing information about your kid’s life is nothing new, the mechanisms by which we can now do so are a bit frightening. Of course, this is all coming from a man who declared that privacy is dead, or at the very least, a “social norm.” Unless, of course, you can afford to make it so — back in 2013, it was reported that Zuckerberg bought four houses “adjacent to his own” to ensure he was pulling all the strings when it came to his own personal life.
So share away, Mark. After all, your kid can’t sign anything telling you not to.
