Baby role-play, or virtual kidnapping, is the most disturbing Instagram hashtag ever

By Lulu Chang August 4, 2015

instagram hack old icon food headgear

Creating a virtual reality seems like a relatively harmless enterprise, until your fiction borrows from the actual lives of others. And in what may be the most disturbing trend to hit social media ever, some parents are discovering that their children have become victims of what is essentially virtual kidnapping, or baby role-play. While the constant digital documentation of children’s lives has become something of a mainstay in social media, the sickening phenomenon of baby role-play finds the perpetrators claiming other children’s photos as their own, and then creating elaborate backstories for them. While some are relatively harmless (though still creepy) in nature, others detail gruesome kidnapping plots that, when discovered by the real parents, can be truly traumatizing.

Hashtagged on Instagram and other channels as #BabyRP, the disturbing “game” involves its players essentially stealing others’ content, and then reposting it to their own accounts, adding a new name and a new history to the youngster’s life. According to Instagram, “This type of content violates our terms. Once a parent or guardian reports it to us, we work quickly to remove it.” But still, this hasn’t stopped thousands of individuals from participating. A cursory search of the hashtag on Instagram returned over 57,000 posts, with additional results coming in from variations of #BabyRP.

Related Videos

One mother, identified only as Dana, documented her own experience as a victim of the trend on a blog, writing, “While browsing my notifications one day, I noticed that a person had “liked” an awful lot of my photos. As in hundreds. Why was she fangirling me? I clicked on her profile and there they were. Photos of MY son. I scrolled through her feed and was horrified by what I saw.”

Not only did the individual claim that she was the mother of the child (and renamed him), but she’d also added some truly alarming captions, like “Someone kidnapped Liam, they have him tied up in their car.” Dana continued, “Other role-play accounts would jump in with comments like ‘I found the car, I’m following them.'”

While being part of the public domain always carries a risk with it, there are a few steps that can be taken to somewhat lessen the threat — for example, be sure to keep your Instagram account private, only accept follow requests from people you’re acquainted with, avoid posting locations, and watermark your photos. It’s not a catch-all to the creeps of the Internet, but hopefully it’ll keep them and baby role-play at bay.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Social Media

When is the best time to post on Instagram?

Someone holding an iPhone. The screen shows a full-screen Instagram post.

Creating viral content is only half the battle when it comes to increasing engagement on your Instagram posts -- timing is important too. Figuring out the best possible time to publish your IG posts in order to maximize the exposure they get is vital to the success of your posts. After all, it doesn't matter how amazing your photos and videos are if your audience isn't even around to see them and interact with them.

There are two ways to tackle the problem of timing: You can either rely on the research of social media experts who can give you one-size-fits-most estimates of the best possible days and times to post on Instagram (not ideal in terms of accuracy, but quicker and easier) or you can get the analytics data of your Instagram account and figure out the best possible publish times for your unique account and audience (might take longer but will likely be more accurate and effective).

Computing

North Korean hackers create fake job offers to steal important data

A depiction of a hacker breaking into a system via the use of code.

Lazarus, a state-sponsored hacker group based in North Korea, is now using open-source software and creating fake jobs in order to spread malware, says Microsoft.

The well-known group of hackers is targeting many key industry sectors, such as technology, media entertainment, and defense, and it's using many different kinds of software to carry out these attacks.

Computing

New malware can steal your credit card details — and it’s spreading fast

An individual surrounded by several computers typing on a laptop.

A new, highly dangerous malware called "Erbium" has been making the rounds over the last couple of months, and it's highly likely that it will spread to new channels.

Erbium is an information-stealing tool that targets passwords, credit card information, cookies, cryptocurrency wallets, and more. Unfortunately, it's widely available, which means that it could be used in new ways in the future.