Attention is the only currency left that hasn’t been devalued by inflation. Raj Kundra knows this. He’s a man who understands the machinery of the public eye better than most, having spent his fair share of time being chewed up and spat out by it. So, when he drops a birthday montage for his daughter, Samisha, and Shilpa Shetty responds with a perfectly timed "Aww," don't mistake it for a private family moment. It’s a broadcast.

It’s another day in the content mines.

The video itself is exactly what you’d expect from the high-end celebrity tier of the Instagram ecosystem. It’s a blur of filtered sunlight, slow-motion giggles, and the kind of curated childhood that looks suspiciously like a commercial for an expensive organic detergent. Kundra’s caption is a masterclass in the "Girl Dad" pivot—a specific flavor of public rebranding that uses the innocence of a child to buffer the jagged edges of a complicated public persona.

We’ve seen this script before. It’s the digital equivalent of a political candidate holding a baby, except the baby is your own and the campaign never actually ends. Shetty’s "Aww" in the comments is the signal to the masses. It’s the "Applause" sign lighting up in a sitcom studio. Once the matriarch validates the post, the engagement loop is complete. The fans flood in, the emojis multiply, and the algorithm pushes the Kundra family brand a few inches higher in the feed, right past the news of actual importance.

Let’s talk about the cost, because there’s always a cost. We aren't talking about the price of the party or the designer outfits. We’re talking about the privacy tax. Samisha is four. Or five. The age doesn’t really matter; what matters is that her digital footprint is already deeper than a deep-sea trench. Every "wholesome" video is a data point. Every birthday wish is a piece of intellectual property owned by Meta, monetized by the parents, and consumed by millions of strangers who feel a strange, unearned intimacy with a toddler they’ve never met.

It’s a weird trade-off. To stay relevant in the current attention economy, celebrities have to cannibalize their own domesticity. You can’t just have a birthday party; you have to produce one. If a celebrity kid blows out a candle and it isn't captured in 4K with a licensed acoustic track playing in the background, did the birthday even happen?

The friction here isn't just about the ethics of "sharenting." It’s about the sheer labor of it. Think about the production value of that "Aww." Someone had to edit that video. Someone had to check the lighting. Someone had to monitor the comments for the inevitable trolls who still want to bring up Kundra’s past legal entanglements. It’s a high-stakes game of brand management disguised as a father’s love. It’s exhausting to watch, let alone live.

We live in an era where the boundary between a human being and a lifestyle brand has been sanded down to nothing. Kundra and Shetty are pros at this. They’ve built a fortress out of their family life, using these snippets of "normalcy" to keep the narrative controlled. It’s smart. It’s calculated. It’s also deeply depressing if you think about it for more than ten seconds.

The internet doesn't want authenticity; it wants the performance of it. It wants the "Aww" factor because it’s a quick hit of dopamine that doesn’t require any intellectual heavy lifting. It’s the digital equivalent of a sugar high. We scroll, we see the kid, we see the happy parents, we hit the heart icon, and we move on to the next crisis or cat video.

But there’s a nagging question at the back of the skull. What happens when these kids grow up and realize their entire infancy was a strategic asset in their parents' PR strategy? What’s the psychological price tag on being a prop for "likes" before you can even tie your own shoes?

Maybe it doesn’t matter. In twenty years, privacy will probably be a luxury only the truly anonymous can afford. For now, the Kundras will keep posting, Shilpa will keep commenting, and we’ll keep watching because the alternative—looking at our own uncurated, filter-free lives—is just a bit too boring.

It’s a hell of a way to celebrate a birthday. One wonders if the kid even got to eat the cake before it was cleared away for the next shot.