Facebook Hates Joel Stein’s Baby, But Not as Much as His Baby Hates Him

Joel Stein had a clever idea: Instead of posting pictures of his baby Laszlo on his own Facebook page — where all of his friends would have to see the inevitable stream of pictures (not to mention a few witty baby comments, e.g. “I’d hit that,” on pictures of another baby) — he created a profile for his baby. That way, grandma and grandpa, and anybody else who was curious about the little tot’s progress could stay abreast of the latest photos, and all of Stein’s friends who didn’t care would be saved the depressing reminder that other 30-somethings are having babies.

But this week Facebook, which mandates that users must be at least 13 before they can have their own account, put the kibosh on Laszlo’s page (he’s only three-months-old). Stein asks “Why Does Facebook Hate Babies?” in an online column for TIME this morning:

All I wanted was to avoid being one of those annoying parents who post photos of their kids on their own page. I wanted a place for the few family and friends who want to see his baby pictures. And now all the photos other people posted of Laszlo are gone, and I have to e-mail every damn photo to our parents and siblings. I wish Facebook had given me some kind of warning so I could have archived all this stuff or transferred it to the Facebook application Baby Book, which I found out about too late and is oddly O.K. with Facebook even though it’s exactly the same as Laszlo having his own page.

He lets his anger get the best of him, speculating that getting a job at Facebook searching for accounts to shut down would be a great job for a pedophile:

I guess some loser at Facebook is paid to look around for accounts with photos of people under 13. I’m sure Facebook does this to protect kids from pedophiles, and yet the surest way for a pedophile to find a kid would be to get a job at Facebook looking for kids’ accounts.

But forget Facebook. Imagine poor little Laszlo who’s going to have to deal with the legacy of dad’s embarrassing ventriloquism once he’s oldest enough to start social networking. Looks like Joel will have another grudge to live down once Laszlo gets over his name, which came in last place in a TIME poll with the column “Please Help Joel Stein Name His Baby!” (Actually, we think Laszlo is an awesome name.)

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