No Filter and Other Lies

YA fiction 

     The swift ascendancy of and rapid changes in social media pose many moral and ethical challenges for us all.  Teens are very vulnerable.  In No Filter and Other Lies Crystal Maldonado explores one such dilemma.

     Kat, Maldonado's protagonist, has a challenging family situation.  She lives with her grandparents while her younger (and infuriatingly more popular) brother, Leo, lives with their parents.  Mom and Dad tell Kat to say that she lives with them.  But they never make a real effort to get her to move in.  It leaves her wondering why they don't seem to want her.

     Kat has a complicated relationship with long term best friend Hari.  He thinks they're becoming a more romantic twosome.  True, she may be partly responsible for his new interest.  They have been hooking up a little.  But she desperately yearns to returning to being best friends without benefits.  

     Kat has a really frustrating relationship with social media.  A very dedicated and talented photographer, she posts her work on Instagram, only to reap low numbers of likes and hardly any comments.  Just about everyone she knows (including Leo) has exponentially more followers.

     Kat has taken scads of pictures of Becca, a gorgeous college student who works with her at an animal shelter.  It really irks Kat that Becca had social media fame and chose to close her account down.  One night when she's had a bit too much to drink Kat is looking at her latest crop of Becca pictures.

     "She doesn't even deserve these photos, I think to myself.

     And you know what? They're mine anyway.

     I conceptualized them.

     I took them.

     I edit them.

     So technically, these belong to me."

     The next morning Kat discovers that the new account she has created, wedding a picture of Becca with a fictitious name, Max Monroe, is really taking off in a way her real account never did.  Instagram, it seems, shares the in real life preference for skinny white girls.

     Kat wants to enjoy her new found success.  She knows there can be consequences, especially if the person she's posting the photos of finds out.  She doesn't plan to keep the account up forever.  But a little while can't hurt...

     ...or can it?

     After all, her mom does something similar on Facebook, using photos to make her family look more united and perfect than they are in real life.

On a purrrsonal note, well the weekend is here.  Last week was really great.  Any week that includes seeing Adam is fantastic.  And it was great hearing about all that my friends did over break.  Snow cones were a taste of summer in the tentative beginning of spring.  And we had an event at Foster Center last night.  Emma put out all the ingredients for the purrrfect snack mix.  She let me take a bunch home.  Purrrfect for my reading and cat snuggling time!  (Jules)

I live for weekends when I see my people more unless they go to camp when I guard our home against maurading rodents.  (Tobago)

A great big shout out goes out to Emma, hostess with the mostest.

Tobago and Jules Hathaway 

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