Note to the reader
This is a living dispatch from the theatre of online absurdity. Fresh horrors, delights, and cringe-worthy spectacles will be documented as they unfold. Grab tea. Perhaps a biscuit. And steel yourself for the latest in performative parenting meets spiritual commerce.
Welcome, dear reader, to the age of the “conscious parentpreneur”. A breed so rare, so audacious, that it manages to combine Instagram aesthetics, pseudo-psychology, and a healthy dash of narcissism into one unholy smoothie. Their primary tool? Not meditation. Not insight. Not experience. No, they wield the child.
Indeed, the child has become a humble instrument, a prop, a living emoji of virtue, creativity, and “alignment.” The higher the likes, the purer the child. Or so it seems.
Observe: a ten-year-old meticulously constructing a ‘wooden iPhone’ with a saw and a drill. Mum proudly declares she first handed her child a drill at the age of six. Apparently, this is eco-friendly ingenuity, a beacon of conscious parenting, and a spiritual teaching moment for the digital masses. Meanwhile, the drill hovers perilously close to actual harm, but fret not: the lens is on, the captions are ready, and the heart reactions will flow like holy water.
If this were ancient Rome, the child would be gladiatorial fodder; in the modern era, they are Instagram fodder. Every hammer strike punctuates a moral lesson: “Be industrious. Be visible. Be monetisable.” Safety? Optional. Consent? Trivial. Privacy? Ha. That, dear reader, is for the unenlightened.
Let us dissect the syllabus:
A student of this curriculum emerges… highly skilled in performing for approval.
Ah, the mental contortions required to reconcile “my child is my spiritual guide” with “my child is endangered by this drill.”
Step One: Deny the obvious risk. Claim alignment.
Step Two: Monetise the spectacle. Ebook? Online workshop? Limited edition Instagram Story template? Why not all three.
Step Three: Lecture your audience about the dangers of screens while filming the child with a camera. Bonus points for captions like: “Digital detox starts with awareness, not fear”—while using a tablet to capture said awareness.
Observe the paradox: children are simultaneously a warning and a commodity. They are the moral lever with which attention, influence, and cash are prised from unsuspecting followers.
It is one thing to cultivate curiosity, resilience, and skill. It is quite another to condition a child to measure self-worth in likes, shares, and comments.
The child is no longer a child—they are a performance, a living thumbnail, a tiny brand ambassador whose most valuable skill is obedience to the camera’s gaze.
Let us not ignore the true puppet-master: the social media algorithm. It rewards visibility over virtue, clicks over care, and virality over wellbeing. The parent may call themselves “spiritually awake,” but the algorithm is fully conscious—and delightfully complicit.
Each post of a child’s carefully staged accomplishment feeds the feedback loop: more exposure, more approval, more pressure. The result? A family ecosystem engineered for engagement, not education.
To an outside observer, this is absurdity dressed as enlightenment. To a follower, it may seem aspirational. To the child, it is daily life.
The irony cannot be overstated: a person warns about the corrupting power of screens, yet uses the very same medium to turn their offspring into a marketing instrument. Their lessons in “alignment” are inseparable from their campaigns in visibility. They profit from your awe while preaching authenticity.
One cannot help but imagine the meetings of these self-proclaimed “conscious leaders”: a room smelling faintly of essential oils (and, not infrequently, a hint of compost), lit by the glow of iPads displaying children in action, as someone intones solemnly, “We are raising the next generation of spiritually awake influencers.”
Dear reader, laugh if you must. The spectacle is, in its own way, genius. Yet beneath the humour lies a cautionary tale:
If you find yourself applauding a ten-year-old wielding a saw because the post “feels authentic”, step back. Remember: what is marketed as awakening may in fact be exploitation with a pastel filter.
And when the parents tell you the screens are poison—perhaps consider which part of the family is the true commodity.
Keep your wits. Keep your laughter. And never forget: genuine mentorship nurtures, it does not perform. Real enlightenment does not require a social media audience. And children—most of all—deserve to be children, not content.
*All characters and situations in this essay are entirely hypothetical… though if you scroll far enough, you may recognise them anyway. 😏