Ugh. Families like this tear me apart. The parents are somewhat conservative, respectable people. In some cultures, maybe, they might be considered the honorable archetypes of parenthood. Then they have a kid.

They love the kid, but just a little too much. They fail, in some way or another to put the fear of God into them. And I don't mean the literal fear, but somehow they fail to impose upon their kid that there are certain standards for behavior and that they can, at their leisure, enforce those standards. Too often it's because really, they can't.

So the kid, he enrolls in the wildest, stupidest, backwoods cultural zeitgeist blowing through the valleys of the internet or behind the high school or wherever and he picks up a new lifestyle. Maybe he becomes an otaku. Maybe he becomes a goth. Or a furry. Or, dare I say it, a brony. He becomes obsessed and decides he wants to share his new obsession with everyone and develops a victimhood complex because no one wants to hang with him. Eventually he gets bullied. He also gets depressed but covers it up with false glee because that's not what "a true brony/otaku/furry (but maybe a goth)" would do. No. Instead he takes it home and shares it with the only people he's certain will always accept him. His parents.

And that's what you're seeing in this photograph, ladies and gentlemen. The moment when a sad, lonely child receives acceptance from the only people he can reasonably expect it from at the cost of their deep shame and embarrassment. Look upon this image and weep for the deeply stupid and mundane tragedies of family dynamics.