I own four older kids so I consider myself fairly seasoned.  While little sends me into a complete tailspin, I have to admit, keeping up my façade as a hipster mom is tough work. (You feel me, bruh?)

I understand silly practices and passing fads and cultural missteps.

But there are some things I just do not get.

Crazy, controversial pop stars?  Oh, I totally get them.  Please.  Hard as she tries, little Miley and her rebel tongue can’t hold a candle to my generation’s bat biting Ozzy, or our Milli Vanilli mega-scandal – even our evil Madonna and her hairy armpits (and hey! her unruly pits are back – and she’s like, 70!  You go gurl!). So I get the nutty need for spotlight and notoriety.  Twerk away, you silly, silly children.

What I don’t get is  the svengali-like hold Tik Tok influencers have on, well, everyone.  I mean, a herd mentality of being okay with fake designer duds isn’t necessarily a bad thing, sure.  But getting all the kids to chug Tide and dangerously lethal Doritos?  That’s  just generational embarrassment.

I get the craze of do-it-yourself projects (declares this DIY reality TV has-been) … but I don’t get Pinterest.  To me it’s merely a junk drawer of activities and recipes that will never see the light of day, kinda like my own little failure cupcake frosted with optimism.

I get helicopter parents (because I personally know a ton of teenagers that couldn’t place a coffee order correctly let alone apply to college without help) so I really don’t get the entitlement that comes with some of these coddled dum dums. Kids are meaner than ever to each other, they’re ruder than our parents ever would’ve tolerated and their parents are all over social media defending bad behavior, blaming EVERYONE else and acting just as bad.  I don’t get this at all, whatsoever, not for a minute.

I get that the internet has become this gigantic billboard for personal achievement and in-your-face braggadocio and honestly, I’m fine with that. I’ve been known to post some good news — or better, the elusive I-don’t-look-fat–in-this photo so up it goes! once or twice.  Over the top bragging isn’t a crime and some days it’s downright hilarious, thanks to all the folks who haven’t yet realized their kids aren’t nearly as cute as they imagine, so I’m a fan. No harm no foul.

But.

And this is a might big but.

I do not – and can not – and will not – ever understand the act of average people using the internet to post unbelievably awful and (wait for it …) NAKED pictures of themselves.

Funny story about how I might know this:

Being of a certain age, I’ll be the first to admit social media is a herculean task.  The tweets, the shares, the posts, the blogs, the tumbles, the hashtags, the pictures, the OhMyFreakingGodEnough! staying visible and relevant on the damn inter-web is a full-time job.  For a generation that wasn’t born sucking on an I-Pad, mastering all this techno wizardry is really the pits.

Still, I trudge on, every month or so trying to tackle another little tidbit of cyber success.  I get myself on Twitter or set up a Tumblr account, whatever I can learn on my own (because hello, there’s only so much once can ask her kids before losing massive amounts of street cred).  So yay me.

But the problem is, I’ll do all this techno trailblazing and then sorta forget about it all for awhile.  So I basically have no idea what’s going on with any of these social media feeds for long stretches at a time.  Shamefully, my hipster-meter drops into the danger (aka lame) zone during these times.

But every now and then I’ll become inspired and will check on all my accounts.  At first I’d simply chuckle at my X-rated Twitter followers.  Why HotCumDelight would want to follow Eyerollingmom is a mystery to me, but hey, a follower’s a follower.  Why should I care?  Woo Hoo, my 49 fans just jumped to 50?  Let’s go!

One day (out of boredom?  curiosity?  a bathroom break?  can’t remember) I actually clicked on a follower from one of my accounts and was shocked to the point of revulsion.  Porn site, you ask?   Nope.   Worse.

It was a place where average women posted naked selfies of themselves.  I’m talking naked and knowing – as in smiling at the camera – in all states of lewd poses.  Women of all ages (shudder, a grand amount of Golden Girls included) happily allowing another person to take their nasty naked picture.  Then posting it onto the world wide web.

Yikes.  It scarred me so deeply I had to stay off my laptop for almost 30 minutes.

If seeing granny’s gems or Aunt Sylvia’s stretch marks is going to keep me hip, sorry folks, it’s back to Nerdville I go.

Ick, ick, ick.

Tina Drakakis blogs at Eyerollingmom and has been featured in Huff Post.  She appeared in the Boston production of “Listen to Your Mother: Giving Motherhood a Microphone” presenting her popular essay The Thinking Girl’s Thong and her work has been featured in NPR’s “This I Believe” radio series. That said, she still places “Most Popular 1984” on top of her list of achievements (next would be as the $100,000 winner on that home improvement reality TV show of 2003 but her kids won’t let her talk about that anymore). A witty mother of four, she takes on cyberspace as @Eyerollingmom on Twitter and Eyerollingmom on Facebook  &  @Eyerollingmom on Instagram.  Her collection of essays, A Momoir, can be found  here (agent interest ALWAYS WELCOME!)