Weird Kids' Videos and Gaming the Algorithm
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- Опубликовано: 24 ноя 2024
- Clickbait Title: Video Criticism RUclips Exploitation Meta Commentary Pregnant Algorithm Educational Spam Fidget Spinner Buried Alive For Kids
Very late in the process of making this I decided to change the name, largely because the moment I made the original title "RUclips and the Business of Exploiting Children" public in a promotional Tweet I realized that there was an entire constellation of related issues that I wanted to talk about. From channels that exist to get kids hooked on gambling to parents subjecting their children to abusive conditions as "pranks", there's a lot of shady stuff going on. In that context, weird spam and unsettling videos about poop didn't rank high enough to warrant burning a title that good.
References:
James Bridle "Something is Wrong on the Internet" / something-is-wrong-on-...
H3H3 "Toy Channels are Ruining Society" • Toy Channels are Ruini...
Down the Rabbit Hole "Finger Family Videos" • Finger Family Videos |...
Retsupurae "Joker Mouse Lethal Injection" • Video
Written and performed by Dan Olson
Twitter: / foldablehuman
![Stromae, Pomme - “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Visualizer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1F3OGIFnW1k/mqdefault.jpg)
Im like 99% sure you made this video just to read the absurd titles in a calm informative voice
Feels like I'm having a stroke every time
Why do people know what strokes feel like
@@MsZsc are you sure he meant that having a stroke?
coulda meant somthing else
Blue speed mouse
I'm l1ke 99.9% absotively positive that trolls like you are flaming this video because you want to downplay the issue despite it being a real problem.
This is genuine cyberpunk-horror
If this is what happens when Wintermute and Neuromancer combine, "Neuromancer" is now exponentially more terrifying.
This may be the video in the ring
there has to be some kind of cyberpunk solution to this
@@OhNoBohNo Eat the rich...but with cybernetic vampire teeth implants?
You mean fallout 76 right? no coherent context just a garbled mess of things on screen
i kind of shudder to think what your 'youtubes recommendations' section must look like right now after researching for this video.
Probably part of what the burner channel was used for.
Hopefully he was using private tabs and not logged on to his account...
I bet he either made a new account to destory, or used Incognito mod (heck, maybe both)
Recommended is based on watch time, thankfully, and my on-RUclips watch time of these videos was pretty low. I'd basically click around a video to see what was in it, then download it if it was relevant. So I've spent way too much time watching these, but all in Premiere where I've been cutting them apart and sorting them. My actual recommends are still the stuff I legitimately watch.
Folding Ideas Phew! Smart!
Welcome to 2017, where posting a video raising money for a mass shooting tragedy will demonetize you, but churning disturbing sexual garbage to toddlers is ok
Not sure why you need to raise money for a mass shooting tragedy though.... it's not like it brings back the dead.
Well, Idk. Maybe they can use the money on campaigning for gun regulation, or gun safety, or mental health services. Anyway, it just shows how fucked up the system is.
fumomo fumosarum Assuming that most of the money is actually going to the victims, the money would help families pay for funerals (which are stupid expensive) and medical bills if the victim is just injured.
siegward of catarina demonetizes my friends original content that took months to make
fumomo fumosarum Funeral expenses, counseling for traumatized victims, treatment for the injured (forbadingly expensive for just about anyone in America, and we are most certainly taking about America)
So much for Google's "Don't be evil".
They actually modified that line, it's no longer part of their policy. I guess it became too obvious of a lie.
... but right to the point of Google's "Make money".
a wild lindybeige appears
@@LordOfLemon They don't believe in good and evil anymore, they've gone full Foucault.
@Fen Vulpeus Bruh. Objective evil doesn't exist?
Course it does, just look at the average politician.
And if you're a preschool ESL teacher, these videos are the bane of your existence, because kids learn basic vocabulary from them and then try to repeat it in class...
Wow, really. What's the correlation of that, do you think?
It probably has to do with the already identified factors, but add on the fact that the kids are not from an English speaking home. So not only is the person who sets up the RUclips for them going to use broken English search terms, they also won’t as quickly identify that the video is saying fucked up stuff, because they don’t speak the language.
Oh wow did you make that Vivec profile picture
that is depressing
This is why I'm thankful I wasn't born any later than I was, I'm JUST old enough to have missed this shit. Dodged that bullet.
@@wakeeqq same. When I was about 7 I discovered the internet and I've never left it since. I kinda had friends as a kid but as I got older I just grew to dislike people more and more and be consumed with my electronics to the point of practically having an addiction and when I finished high school I literally didnt leave my house for anything other than groceries or have contact with anyone outside of my family for 4 whole years. I'm 22 now with no social skills and a totally wasted youth. I wish I wouldn't have let my life be consumed by the internet but it's too late now :/
i wasn’t old enough. grew up watching ‘most popular girl in school’, salad fingers, and tobuscus + pewds. feel like the effects of mpgis still haven’t worn off i was swearing like a sailor at the ripe age of 9.
born in the right generation
same like i may have taken the bdsm test at 11 but at least i was watching good tv lol
Same.
I know it's silly to be all "technology bad media bad bluuuuuhh" but honestly? Honestly? HONESTLY? I don't think kids should watch videos on the internet or do anything with computers until they're older. They just need stimulation from the outside world. But what angers me is that this kind of weirdo stuff has a component of class to it. Poorer parents who are always working just to get by would have a lot fewer options for how to entertain their kids, and sticking them in front of youtube videos seems like one of the only valid options. Which means, as in so many other respects, they simply aren't given adequate resources.
Couple of real armchair psychologist. People have been pushing the media rots your brain narrative since kids were listening to Dict Tracy on radio and TV has 'ruined people's minds' since it was black and white.
PermianExtinction the internet isn't moderated but there's many an educational video game (or even just kid-suitable game) available. just control the internet access. make sure it's only available when you can supervise. yes dedicated systems like the nintendo switch have more kid friendly features built in but.. man i didn't get fucked up by putting my tonka space station cd into windows 95.. many not marketed for kids but otherwise suitable games like the creatures series kept me occupied for months too. i didn't know how to make stuff happen, but there were little guys hatching from eggs and walking around and stuff! like a digital fish tank...
@@Xetelian I'm guessing reading comprehension was not your strong suit in school. In case you didn't watch the video you're commenting on, these videos "for kids" are making children passive consumers, because they turn on the autoplay, or click the next video that looks good, and haven't developed the skills yet to avoid those weirder videos. As an adult, I've developed a fairly good sense of what I do and don't want to watch, because I've been on the internet so long (and for so much of my latter childhood). With kids, it's different. Kids up to a certain age can't, and don't know how to, curate their own content. If RUclips wasn't constantly sucking their advertisers' dicks, they'd do something about the algorithm exposing kids to stuff like the segments at 1:44. You don't have to coddle your kids or forbid them from using technology, and after a certain age it's okay for them to see darker shit. They have to, after all, or they'll grow up sheltered. But maybe we shouldn't let kids see some of this shit--and we shouldn't let animation companies lap up revenue because parents don't (or often can't) curate their kids' content, again, up to a certain age. The exact age is, of course, another conversation.
Also, it's not psychology, both OP's and Abdiel's comments speak of poverty and limited resources--pretty sure that's sociology. You can't think your way out of poverty. But then again, from your misspelling of Dick Tracy and use of the singular 'psychologist' rather than the plural, that wasn't a surprising mistake for you to make.
See, there is a simple solution, you make a playlist of things you know are OK and then let THAT auto play. Problem solved. I know that's what I do when I watch my nieces and nephews. Or I go onto my Netflix kids profile and put something on and let them sit there and watch safe entertainment.
If you don't have the capacity to do something that simple you probably are better off not having kids.
@@contrafidem884 yes!! I feel the same exact way.
For some reason this all seems so disturbing to me, that I'm feeling physically sick like from a long session inside VR.
Same I was eating while watching this and I was like fuck that was a mistake
I remember when I first stumbled upon this whole world of content.....and was genuinely shocked.
I don't shock easy.
But there's something just so......uncanny about it all. Disturbing in a way that's hard to fully articulate. It's nihilistic in a way.
It is all rather dystopian. I don't blame you for having that reaction.
Not my reaction at all, just dumbfounded fascination...
@@avedic Exactly. It's something to do with the distortion of reality, the complete lack of context or any thread of internal coherence... and then add in random violence, horror and fetish-like content, but with bright colours and no one reacting in a realistic human way. Characters drowning, being buried alive, run over, female characters always being pregnant and barefoot (we even see Elsa getting a damn enema in one of these clips). It goes further in online kids' games with images of graphic surgery on young, pregnant Disney characters, semi-clothed, covered in cuts and bruises, crying, presented in highly fetishised situations and art styles. It's the kind of content certain adults will pay large sums to get privately commissioned and never tell anyone about. But here it is being pushed directly at young kids while their parents aren't paying attention. The youtube content farms might be algorithmically generated nonsense, but some of these games are crafted from beginning to end by adults who 100% know what they're doing and if you ask me it's 100% ill-intentioned.
Some kids are particularly sensitive, I know if I'd been exposed to this content as a toddler I would have been genuinely screwed up by it..... and I'm saying that as someone who grew up online and WAS exposed to a lot of disturbing content.... but at least.... at least I knew it was supposed to be disturbing? At least I knew it was 'forbidden' stuff 'for adults' which I wasn't supposed to be looking at, and that gave my developing brain some way of contextualising what I was seeing, measuring it against reality and sorting the information correctly. Also because I at least had to make some kind of effort to purposefully seek out adult content in secret, I didn't get to the really weird stuff till I was more like 10-11. I can't imagine what it would have been like if my parents just left me alone with an ipad when I was 3, believing that 'kids youtube' and 'kids games' would automatically be appropriate.
There's something terribly wrong about kids seeing this kind of content in a context where they know their parents 'approved' it, where the whole thing was made 'for kids' and is presented as part of 'normal' reality. Somehow that's the worst part of it.
It is a trip and a half to hear Dan recite the titles of these videos with a completely straight face and delivery.
It's a splash of hilarity that brightens up an otherwise kinda dark and unsettling topic.
How on earth did you manage to pronounce all those titles so fluently/with a straight face?
Practice. Lots and lots of practice.
Presumably also quite a few takes.
Can you do a blooper reel of the attempts?
I didn't flub that many times on camera. Like, maybe one actual flub, and then ran out of breath a couple other times, so there's no real blooper reel. I just rehearsed a whole bunch of times.
We don't deserve you.
I just don't understand how the famously litigious Disney corporation has allowed all this stuff to stay up. Having all these Disney and Marvel characters in these gross videos isn't just cashing in on their IP, it's also clearly hurting the brand too.
The layers of shell game are so deep that Disney is probably still trying to figure out who to sue, and if they can even be sued. RUclips doesn't enforce trademark violations or copyright beyond "I own this specific text", so that's a dead end.
I found evidence that suggests the core entity is a Malaysian company operating out of a series of shell companies and animation farms in India. This was out of scope of the video, but part of the multiple-MCN strategy is that it compartmentalizes losses. They could lose 80 channels in a purge and just replace them over a weekend.
A Malaysian company operating Indian shells? The mystery keeps deepening. This might be worth investigating.
See, it would hurt the brand if adults were seeing this, but since the audience is so young, it's actually very effective advertisment / brainwashing for all of these kids to love disney aboe all else.
While its true that there is some value in bombarding obsessive toddlers with your IP, Disney is already in a position to do that anyway while also being able to control the quality of said bombardment. Disney also likes to target what of their IPs are popular at a given time, as a means of managing the logistics of their massive IP vault.
I am quite skeptical that Disney is happy with a Malaysian company making bank off of their IP just by virtue of said IP being obsessively watched by toddlers. There's an upper limit on the value of cultural saturation, and Disney almost certainly clears the ceiling without any 'help' from outside the company.
Trademarks are enforced on RUclips, but they don't have an equivalent of content ID (nor could they, at least not reasonably), which makes it expensive to pursue this sort of thing as someone has to personally comb through them trying to find the source.
Honestly, I would love to see if, in 15 years or so, there becomes a genre of entertainment that could be directly related to adults who grew up watching this and it's resided in their subconscious memory for an extended period of time.
You have legitimately frightened me
Many interesting experiments are unethical hahah
Alright Satan, calm down.
Post modernism is really scary.
Honestly, Xavier Renegade Angel reminds me a lot of this
No one's pointed this out yet, but it's worth mentioning that "3hUOx5ATuSrN6hwhoKzJSQ" is most likely the ID number (base 64) that identifies the MCN in youtube's database. It's a naming pattern consistent with how RUclips tracks other elements of it's database.
Phantom Fool and yes it still exists if you have a custom url like me
As a South Asian i can tell you that none of these would be AT ALL ACCEPTABLE as children’s entertainment over there. This has nothing to do with South Asian standards for anything - this is all spam.
Are you a indian? Because that's what he was reffering to.
@@fightingmedialounge519 India... located in the southern part of Asia....
I'm pasting a comment here that I found further down this page. Notice the details & the effort put into getting information. I'll believe a post like this over your knee-jerk reaction to defend your corner of the world. If you think India is above this, you apparently haven't heard of Indian call centers scamming old people out of their social security, pretending to be the IRS & threatening them with arrest or to be tech support to help them w/ non-existent computer problems. Instead of defending a culture, maybe you should take an honest look at it & try to change it! Here's the post I found elsewhere in these comments:
Jayfive276
2 years ago (edited)
For the record MangoKids is based in India of all places. They have another facebook page called Mango Bollywood. A whois on that channel's website gives the Registrant as "Whacked Out Media". Whacked Out Media are a nice big glossy companies that does digital media stuff and have a website where the registrant is in Hyderabad India. Their address, contact details, twitter, facebook, Linkedin and so on are a matter of public record and there to be found. It's not 100% clear if Whacked Out Media own MangoKids and MangoBollywood or just do the website for them as they mentioned as 'brands' on the website. But there is a direct connection between these videos and Whacked Out Media.
But people could do worse than contact Whacked Out Media and demand they deal with this shit or otherwise pass on the details of the people who can. Someone is responsible for uploading these things or supervising them being uploaded automatically and someone further up the chain (e.g. at Whacked Out Media) would either be mortified they are connected with this and mortified if it was stated publicly and repeatedly that they were the people indirectly responsible for it. I'm sure the companies and people Whacked Out Media work with and for would be less than pleased too. These people are not immune or invulnerable just because they are not in the West.
Best guess - the ad revenue for this trash pays for Whacked Out Media's more legit enterprises the same way Buzzfeed's crappy listicles pays for their (admittedly excellent) journalistic arm. Either way, do what you can to shut 'em down.
(I edited my first sentence for clarity. All other content is the same.)
@@DonnaBrooks Huh? No, South Asians don't consider scamming old people out of money to be morally upright either.
Just like pumping out hyper-violent or suggestive content to kids, it's something that would be considered as grotesque in that culture as in yours.
It would have taken you a few minutes of thinking to realize that. Assuming, of course, that you're _not_ hideously racist.
You're confusing a bunch of bad people taking business advantage of their geographic locale, its still-emerging online-business law, etc. for the morals of an entire region.
No offense, but i've seen roadside romeo. I have no idea what the standards actually are for indian childrens entertainment media. Assuredly not this but dear god that movie was from DISNEY'S people and it was horrendous. I would only consider making my children see it as a punishment
The doctor character who's injecting a needle into Elsa's bottom at 1:44 is from the Alice: Madness Returns video game. So either EA is selling them assets to use, or they're ripping models from games without permission (and horror ones, no less).
Oh, tons of the assets in these are from Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto mods, too. But thank you, though, for that. We've been wondering where the hell that doctor model is from.
Yeah, I've played it many times so I thought I recognised it from somewhere, it's a good game but definitely not for kids. The model is specifically Dr Hieronymus Q Wilson from the Asylum level, one of the most disturbing parts. Thankfully they at least brightened up his white coat so you can't see the blood stains. :S
@@FoldingIdeas And I think Spider-Man in these videos uses Carl Johnson's walk animation.
When he says those titles, I swear I can feel my brain collapsing in on itself.
It's like I'm having a stroke.
He explained quite well why they're like that, though. They were never meant to be read or understood by a human brain.
Are you implying toddlers don't have human brains? XD
Freddie Kruger not one that can typically understand written language
I was worried I was coming down with some kind of self-aware form of dementia or something.
@@freddiekruger3339 Toddlers don't read those titles, dude. No living thing does unless they're reporting on the videos as a phenomenon
I have no idea if I'm growing more paranoid with age but these videos strike me as equally damaging in their content as the implication that they are gaming the system with no repercussions.
Part of what's creepy about these videos is that lack of any real narrative, and the context-less violence that's portrayed just something for a kid to look at. And the weird, fetishy undertones with pregnant Elsa, or Elsa getting tied up for some reason...I really don't know what to make of it. Am I projecting an adult's thought process onto something that ultimately has no real meaning? I just get worried that so much of neural development takes place during toddlerhood...should this be what they're absorbing?
No, you are entirely correct. This is infuriating.
It's sad that it's taking advantage of parents who probably have no idea what their kid is looking at, and don't have the time or will to watch through every mindless children's video to see if it's appropriate.
People who grew up watching programs on a children's television network implicitly believe that anything marketed for kids with a huge viewership is going to be child-friendly--but RUclips has no desire to actually monitor the videos it hosts.
I don't have kids, so I had no idea this was a problem that existed. But now I'm kinda worrying about whether kids are internalizing some disturbing things.
I think that kids should consume the highest quality of media. Many people say "it's just for kids", but I think the fact that they aren't as conscious or analytical isn't an excuse to give them low quality products. They don't have to understand the story structure to enjoy a well crafted narrative. This is why fairytales exist. And I think watching these kinds of videos will make them unaware of even the existence of higher standards.
Well the reason it's creepy is more than lack of narrative but the uncanny valley of the author. No longer can we say the creepy not-quite-human thing is the creation, it can also now be the creator. And the deep unsettling chasm that opens when we start to consider what happens when the algorithms get better at not just aggregating generated assets but in the asset creation.
The sound effects and bad colors and jerky animations and fetishistic actions are strange now, when there's clearly someone who can be traced to the origin. But eventually no-one will have made any of it.
+
10-12 years from now, the internet is going to recall all of this as the children come of age. they’ll share stories, maybe some memes. it’ll be a bigger thing than the Sinbad/Shazaam thing.
It's like Candle Cove, but real.
now i'm just so worried and scared for these kids who might grow up with bizarre memories from infancy that they can't really explain or trace back but could nonetheless create fears, perceptions or behaviours that are not very good :S and i don't even know what a solution would even begin to look like
the solution to what? the scenario you just made up? quite likely we won't need any.
I suppose the bottom-line is, children should not be allowed to use the internet unsupervised. Parents need to take responsibility for being aware of what their kids are watching.
Exactly, its just as bad if not worse than dropping a child n front of a tv all day.
《YELLOW 》 The only difference being that the quality of content being shown on the television is much higher than random SEO titled children's videos. And that demand for higher quality is what drives more socially acceptable content.
Joshua Christensen exactly. Everything on television has to be approved by live humans multiple times. This usually prevents wildly inappropriate or stupid things from hitting a tv screen.
Not that television didn’t or doesn’t have its issues with questionable kids content. But even the darkest Cartoon Network kids episodes don’t melt your brain the way YT kids does.
@hyrulphicsound Or you could just supervise her? She's going to try to get on the internet eventually whether you want her to or not just supervise her when needed and explain to her how to navigate the internet safely. Trust me it's much better than keeping your kid away altogether.
Idk that TV is that much different. I can pinpoint a couple of phobias of mine that relate directly to some weird ass cartoon I saw. (Also I once caught Who Framed Roger Rabbit when I was waaay too young and it came back to me on several fever dreams. I will now forever miss on this cinematic masterpiece because when I catch one frame of it my 25yo ass will start shivering) So I guess the point is, be ALWAYS vigil to ALL media your children consume.
The footage actually makes me nauseous.
Ren and Stimpy gave me nightmares as a kid and that shit was on TV. Yet you'll find countless people trying to defend it.... Lol these videos are just as bad with innuendo...
Secular Satanist
Except that Ren and Stimpy wasn't made for preschool aged children. It was made for the preteen to teen crowd, so you can't blame your nightmares on it if you watched it too young. Was it gross? Sure, but it wasn't a horrible show. I was/am a fan of the show, but then again, it was age appropriate for me to watch when it was on.
@@ToxicTerrance yeah, cartoons like Ren and Stimpy are actually made by humans with an imagination and creativity. Not an algorithm simply created to make money in an exploitative manner by sorry ass criminal lowlifes who have never worked an honest day in their lives. I also guarantee the people behind shite like this have a number of various crimes under their belt, if authorities were to investigate them and their activities behind closed doors.
I understand you didn't like the show, DoD, but it can't possibly be compared to this drivel.
@@Kawamura2 I watch Ren and Stimpy when I was in my 30's. I loved Ren and Stimpy.
same, I had to look away... Unnerving really
A friend of mine is a mother of four and has her kids watch RUclips a lot. I've sent this over to her. Thanks for sending this out.
Culture Goblin
I know this is 7 months old and all, but did you actually get a response from that?
Some people should be ineligible for the responsibility of raising the next generation.
Ops friend confirmed for bad mother.
@NorthernLights yea should've showed the kids pewdiepie so they can be part of the movement
my sister posts stuff about this stuff being on youtube, but her response is to just sit them in front of Disney instead of youtube rather than to take the time to monitor what they watch, or to set up a playlist of videos
As far as I’m aware this kind of content is still rampant in 2021. So definitely still a bad idea to just give toddlers unsupervised access to RUclips. There are other ways to entertain/distract them, and they’ll have plenty of time to learn media literacy when they’re older.
Still terrible in 2022. I know a few kids who watch nothing but disturbing Minecraft Peppa Pig Huggy Wuggy Magnet Cooking videos all freaking day and I feel terrible for them. I spend time with them to give them other things to do in life, showing them the games I'm playing, catching them bugs, doing science experiments. But there's only so much I can do because I'm not their dad. Their parents don't care what they watch and they have their own phones at 3 and 5.
Yeah. Mutahar(from SomeOrdinarygamers) has a new video showing how this awful shit has evolved. Elsagate never really ended. It just hid and morphed into Huggy Wuggy and Peppa Pig.
@@Solaceon yikes, my cousins are always on youtube too, it's honesty scary
Honestly, best way to combat this on a personal level? Currate a playlist. Dump in a wide mix of vids from franchies/entities you recognize (and are preferable televised in the US), set it to loop and shuffle, and lock the controls. Examples include: Peppa Pig, Bluey, Sesseme Street. Disney Junior, Nick Jr., PBS Kids. Sort their channel's libraries by most views and add the top fifty to one hundred. You'll be set for DAYS.
These exist. It’s called a disk library. Just get a bunch of dvds
That's an excellent idea!
...a shame that videos that RUclips deems "for kids" aren't allowed to be put on playlists
@@fntthesmth423 | Yeah, learned that after the fact (stupid on YT's part). Thankfully, the official channels for the above examples have their OWN playlists or even twenty-four-hour livestreams. You'll be swapping those lists out more often, but it's STILL better than Autoplay.
We stopped letting our 6-year old watch youtube entirely because all she would watch was videos of other people (sometimes apparently kids) re-enacting these same scenes with actual toys. Some of them were quite disturbing.
This is why people need to pressure youtube to remove these from the site immediately. The psychological effect on the young children watching these on repeat is downright disturbing.
My uncle in Cali let's his kids watch those videos of kids playing with other toys and what not. It's neglectful but at the same time the path of least resistance for a parent. It is REALLY dangerous I think to leave kids consume media constantly unattended.
MegaBearsFan don't let your kids watch RUclips kids have them go outside
Your a hero wish more parents would do the same
youtube was never a place for kids when i was growing up.. the first exposure i had to it was "hammy the hamster", an early viral video which also started out seeming like a cute puppet kids thing, but quickly devolved into shouting obscenities. from that point on youtube was cemented as smth for teens and up in my mind. (though of course, some sex words coming out your speakers are quite a different matter than antisemitism in "fun" games channels, so i feel like today's youtube would need more preparing against just accepting whatever you hear without question...)
These weird children's videos have a strange, annoying, almost nauseating effect on me. I can't quite put my finger on it. It's like the primal urge you get to smash a weird looking spider, even if you don't actually do it (which I generally don't because spiders are just trying to make a living like the rest of us). It's like wanting to scratch an itch or swat away a mosquito, but not being able to. I think the blatant exploitation of children for money is part of that revulsion.
I don't know, I don't like kids and they still make me very ill to look at. Even just a still image physically nauseates me and I can't say why.
Hyper-real animations in a garbage fire of a colour palette. Things are moving ...almost realistically but they look the furthest that you can get from real.
I completely agree! Seriously was just asking my friend this the other day. I asked why do the videos have the same weird monotone voices? And who edits these? Do the kid vidoes get sent to one weird person that adds the super creepy music, sound effects, and voice overs? I think so.
It’s genuinely disgusting. It’s pure manipulation and exploitation of children on a mass scale and akin to societal brain washing. It makes us think about if we have been brain washed ourselves, and makes us desperate to want to enforce critical thinking onto the children in our lives in hopes of them breaking out of it.
It’s just freaky. It’s a dystopian novel trope and it’s reality.
it's definitely the uncanny valley, which is basically the effect one gets when they see something that should be correct, but isn't for some unknown reason.
Don't give your kid a tablet or smartphone until they're much older pleeeease. They'll be better off without it because of shit like this
Yeah. I always figured if I had kids I'd start them on the interwebs about when I started, which was about the age of, oh... 11 or 12? With good parental controls.
Heck, I feel like even that was a _little_ early to be on some of the sites I was on, and it was a much tamer internet back then.
I didn't really watch any RUclips videos before I was 5 or 6. I'd either just color things for 30 minutes, play some games on My Wii, go outside, play with My Legos and all that. Much better than from when I was 9 to 10. I actually saw something that traumatized Me for a year. (wasn't even a kids video..) But hey, I've gotten over it.
These days they have youtube apps for pretty much every platform, from nintendo consoles to even TVs.
I feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg of how weird the internet is going to be in coming years. The singularity will be pregnant Elsa unbirthing the earth.
it's gonna be like neon genesis evangelion but rei is a pregnant cryomancer
@@DT-od3hd get in the spiderman shinji
@@DT-od3hd
Gathering the views of humanity in the surprise egg
2 Fast 2 Frozen Elsa Giving Birth Joker Attack Spiderman Fidget Spinner Hulk Superheroes Movie is where a lot of people thought the franchise began to lose its way.
But by the time Frozen 4 The Quickening Elsa Giving Electric Birth Bugaloo Joker Attack Spiderman Fidget Spinner Hulk Superheroes Movie came around, audiences agreed that a creative new corner had been turned.
Really good vid.
My 4 year old cousin has a tablet and just shouts "HULK FIGHTS IRONMAN" to youtubes voice search, the kids dont need to be able to read for find the weird titles
mram, no 4 year old (or 6 year old, or 8 year old) should have his own tablet. Send his parents this video.
Jason Doe 7 to 8 is fine if he's not constantly on it. 30 minutes to 2 hours on electronics is enough.
Great video, but I don't agree with the ending. I'm working for one of the biggest media agencies in the world and after talking to a lot of our teams, nobody seems to be really aware of this. Mostly, since we normally just report the numbers. Impressions, view-through rate, etc.
Most clients flip their shit, if their ads are shown to the wrong demographic. What has any company to gain, if a toddler watches an ad for consumer electronics as an example? It's throwing money away. Just did a report this morning on our newest campaign. 50% of our ads were shown before stuff like this. And it doesn't end with kid content. I've seen dozens of videos showing horses being cleaned. All with the same SEO titles. And while they have 18 million views, they only feature about 1-2k comments. All of them having a comment chain above 50 with every single comment only featuring one or two letters. This is clearly being done by bots. And I guess, so are the views.
This needs to get more attention. And I'm talking upper management level attention. Only after the biggest clients complain to pull their ads will RUclips sort out this shit.
I agree it needs more attention, but I would be worried if some groups wanted ads on this. I reckon it gets more insidious if for instance kids toy companies start targeting ads on this shit.
Finlay O'Neill I think 80's animation shovelware is waaaay better than the current situation.
Erik Nielsen I agree, but I mean if some companies start targeting ads on these shovelware animations on RUclips
Really doesn't make it any less somber.
yeah it doesnt make sense that companies would want their ads to go to people who have zero chance at purchasing their product *any* time soon.
I'm so glad people are looking into this now. When I began looking into why there were so many animated children's rhymes sung in Indian accents back in 2015 (my nephew watched a lot of them, and I got a bit worried or just morbidly curious) or so there was very little information to find. Seems things have escalated since then.
I don't understand why everyone has suddenly come to discover the existence and troubling implications of these videos, but I'm glad they finally have. Thinking of the effects some of these videos are having on the very young is deeply disturbing, and they should have been removed from the site years ago.
@joseph boyd I think a lot of people are discovering these thanks to those articles related to abusive parents going to jail after their "pranks" channels were discovered. I'm guessing the algorythim relates pranks channels to these videos because of the "kids" label
This all sounds like the plotline to a Phillip K. Dick short story. It honestly frightens me.
Same, I seriously thought it was part of an ARG (Alternate reality game)
Well, to be clear, the vids he watched weren't as creepy as the ones shown in this video, but they were surreal and kinda weird, and perhaps as importantly - SO MANY!
The funniest thing about that replacement music you put over the straight up clips of this generated trash is that it kind of fits right in.
This is such a bizarre and fascinating phenomenon. Yet more evidence we live in a cyberpunk hell world.
I still don't get why Elsa has to be pregnant in most of these videos. Is it because that's one of the hallmarks of adulthood that a pre-schooler would automatically recognize?
Yes, and "mom's having a baby" is, for a lot of people, one of their earliest memories. Even if mom has never been pregnant, since she has young kids she's probably hanging out with other moms w/ kids in the same age range, and several of them are probably pregnant at some point or another. It's one of the few states of being that kids are familiar with.
Folding Ideas it could also just be laziness. At first there might have been a reason to use pregnant Elsa but, over time, it is just part of the generated library.
It is hard to assign intent to what looks like a procedurally generates system.
two words: fetish content.
Reminds me of those weird crappy web flash games
kamenkewl I was wondering the same thing 😥
This lends validity to the theory that our world is another world's hell.
I just love how content using Copyrighted characters never gets flagged by the bots, meanwhile every other channel gets instantly demonetized.
Isn't it against Google's policy to have more than one adsense account? How is one person collecting on 400 RUclips accounts without breaking that (and not having MCM status)?
Yeah, what's up with Disney and DC not caring about this?
I'm not a legal expert in copyright law but I think it is covered by parody and fair use or exists in a grey area of it.
I would think these videos are exactly what trademark laws exist for at all.
Kevin McGuin if this is protected then how is everyone not allowed to just use these characters for their own gain? By the same token, Dreamworks could just make an Elsa and Spiderman movie and call it a parody.
Bot's can't tell that a video is using Elsa's likeness, especially if it's a shitty facsimile of it.
And even Disney can't flag every video with "Elsa" in the title.
when i was studying abroad i lived with a family with a five year old child who was on her tablet 60% of the time and it’s scary the lack of anything that this content produces. not to be a bAck in MY daY person, but when i was younger most of the media we consumed had some kind of moral or lesson even when the target audience was too young to understand this. humans have loosely followed this structure for years where almost every fairy tale or ancestral story we are told has some kind of take away. it’s scary to imagine the next generation of children who will grow up with this horrific devoid of life content instead of actual stories meant to teach. i wonder if this will somehow stunt development, attention spans, or even moral growth.
Recently my 10yo nephew and 5yo niece were staying at my house and she was glued to her IPad playing Roblox or watching weird RUclips videos. It was kinda sad. She seemed to have forgotten about the toys we keep stored away for when little kids are over. I can also relate to the “bAcK iN mY dAy” because as a toddler I was watching videos on phonics and reading children’s books. Then when I was a bit older I also watched kids shows with actual care put into them- unfortunately I did fall victim to kids RUclips for a while but it was just a phase. For a lot of younger kids it’s been this stuff for their whole lives
@@sshelby13 😥
I mean, I'll settle for "back in my day, content was created by actual humans that had to at least make things make sense on a surface level enough to pass basic parental scrutiny". Even if 95% of parents sat their kids down in front of the TV without actually screening what they were watching, that other 5% would police things, report to the networks/fcc, and keep things relatively sane.
Now each viewer basically has their own custom-curated network, and the only overarching watchdog is the mechanism that creates money for youtube.
I’ve seen this video close to half a dozen times, something about it is weirdly addictive. I’ll see it in my recommended page and think “oh yeah, let’s watch that again!” And then I keep chuckling to straight-faced Dan delivering the most bonkers titles
WE HAVE TO GO BACK
WE'RE IN THE WRONG TIMELINE
SOMETHING WENT WRONG
WE HAVE TO GO BACK
Colm Murphy your comment is underrated
+
We have to go back, Kate! Wait...
GOTTA GET BACK,
BACK TO THE PAST
SAMURAI JACK!
999
That was great and also fucked
I still don't understand why pregnancy and syringes are so common in these videos though??
Is a gravitation towards those things a common aspect of child psychology or is it just a random idea from whichever formless elder god makes these videos??
It's a common aspect of child psychology. They're the dramatic images that kids are actually familiar with, and due to the way that childhood milestones like vaccinations and a second/third child fall, they tend to overlap with the earliest formation of permanent memories.
same thing with all these videos that show cartoon characters basically excrete on each other.
Kids find gross and dirty stuff interesting and are curious about stuff like that.
It's an interesting difference between what children will watch (which let's face it is anything, though a talky piece like Folding Ideas would probably interest them less) and what we'd traditionally consider appropriate (not just in the US, but I think most countries and especially Western countries). Because adults don't just want children to watch, they also understand that they're expected to hold children to a certain behavioral standard.
Why do you have to ask? You were a child yourself at some point, right? Were you attracted by pregnant woman and syringes? No? ..... me neither....
my father had diabetes and he had many syringes and needles, he was giving himself a shot of insulin twice a day. As a kid I was weirdly fascinated by that. Certainly I've stolen some and played with them.
This is legitimate journalism. I always find your videos incredibly insightful, but this is some amazing investigative research! Thank you for teaching me something I otherwise never would have even considered in a million years.
I remember as a little kid back in like 2007 I would watch a lot of stop motion lego stuff on youtube, I was old enough to type 'lego' and a few other words into the search bar, but that's about it. Most of which very poor quality stuff I expect was made by pre-teens. And in one video multiple minutes in it just turned into violent porn. My assumption is that this was the sick prank of some teenager who thought it would be funny.
I'd assumed these types of videos were like that when I saw them 2nd hand through articles or youtubers diving into how immensely uncomfortable these videos are, but it seems more like it's just ai creating this kind of nightmare fuel.
The fact that you state out all of the garbage names and channel names despite them being essentially garbage key words/letter spam. It really hammers in that these things aren't normal in any human context.
And if my toddler wasn't going to have an iPad before, they certainly won't have one now.
I'm giving mine picture books, Peter & Jane, never an iPad/tablet. That way I can curate what they learn.
Honestly, even if you *were* to get electronics for your kids, I wouldn’t suggest getting an iPad. I own an iPad Pro almost purely for its utility as an art tablet, and that’s basically the only exceptional feature of it. Everything else is pretty...”eh,” especially if you wanted to use it as a “kid’s first device.” It doesn’t really teach you any important computing skills (most computers they’ll use in schools and the workplace will run Windows, so learning to use a PC is never a bad idea), and iOS’s massive amount of idiot-proofing discourages any sort of experimentation, which is something that children should be allowed and encouraged to do, as it allows them to actively interact with their computer! I remember how cool it was back in the day when I discovered I could make my own command boxes with Notepad, and how cool it was to show it off to my friends. The idea that I could not only *use* the computer’s applications, but *create* my own applications within it, was mind-blowing, and led me into my love of amateur programming. I think if I had grown up on Apple, I would’ve just eternally assumed that programming was only possible for some faceless old people working in megacorporations. Personally, I prefer Android devices for mobile stuff-viruses for Android aren’t as prevalent as you might think, and there are a multitude of adblockers and antivirus apps (bitdefender is apparently the best of these) for Android that make it much safer. Android also has a lot of apps that Apple doesn’t due to its open-source nature (thanks for having NO good zip file extractors whatsoever, Apple! And mega-thanks for having absolutely zero emulators to test my homebrew shit with!). Apple also tends to have pretty poor build quality on their devices (at least when it comes to Mac devices-I don’t claim to be an expert on mobile Apple devices) for some reason. This is important because kids can and will try as hard as they can to trash any device you give them. Hell, I managed to put some shallow cracks in my iPad’s screen without even trying. (It fell about half a foot, and when I picked it up, there was a little spiderweb of cracks. Fortunately, the screen still functons fine, but it’s kind of annoying when I’m trying to draw and my stylus gets stuck in a crack and ruins the line.)
All the other Apple accessories are crazy expensive for their quality, too. Airpods cost way too much for their audio quality, and a lot of iPhone cases are pretty mediocre despite their higher pricing. The only one that’s really worth it IMO is the Apple Pencil-great sensitivity, and it can detect the amount of pressure you’re using, too! But it’s only really relevant if you want to draw something.
TL,DR: iPad is okay for casual usage and a few other niche things, but it is not a good “baby’s first computer.” Get Windows or Android or Linux or what-have-you instead, and make sure that you have a swole antivirus & adblocker.
What disturbs me is how many parents can shove in iPad into the hands of a 4 year old then not even glancing at what they're watching.
This is such an interesting "prequel" of sorts to the COPPA situation, in hindsight.
If you go find these videos today, the comment sections are all 11-15 year-olds who watched the videos as young children talking about how nostalgic it makes them
Oh god
That can’t be right. I refuse to believe it, and I’m definitely not going to click on any of these videos so I will wallow in my stubbornness.
@@miggle2784
I am 15… Takes me back to easier times
The Logan Paul situation reminded me of this as well. This optimization strategy that seems to be able to optimize some human engagement trigger almost inhuman. I'm starting to get really worried about this automation of the internet making people... obnoxiously engaging.
Imagine we made a self-learning algorithm that creates "art" and the creators of the algorithm defined that art as being "able to provoke an emotion". If you made that into an algorithm, you'd have created a machine that tries to optimize arbitrary human emotions in it's audience, no matter how uncanny or nightmarish. That's not a machine you want turned on.
However, we are seeing how people like Logan Paul are tapping into morbid curiosities of young viewers who can't look away. In a way, Logan Paul has become a proxy for an arbitrary engagement optimizer.
Just reminding you that you predicted AI art 5 years ago
@@genericprofile2381 Holy shit, I forgot I did.
The future is weird.
And it's just going to get weirder. We are down the rabbit hole, into the world of the fantastical, and this is only the beginning. Only a handful of us are properly preparing. If you'd like to learn more about the coven, you can email me at heathercalun@gmail.com
Just wait until 'nerd podcast' equivalents start coming out, created by people that grew up on these mash-up style videos.
...I'm building a shack in the woods at present.
Kawlin Rolfe, a whole generation of people who see Elsa as a pregnant with Spiderman's child, I don't know what to say.
You know, they used to tell children the old version of Little Red Riding Hood where the wolf tricked Red into eating her grandmother, then instructed her to strip naked and get into bed with him. Kids can handle more than we give them credit for.
*The future is stupid
Lindsey Ellis and Folding ideas videos on the same day. Wonderful. :-)
I like how "The weird part of youtube" is the majority of RUclips now.
Sono "Weird part of youtube" is weird Russian viral videos of dudes burning pictures of that one mouse girl in good jest, or Ronald Mcdonald remixes. Elsagate videos are just plain not... that sort of harmless.
Yes
@@hind__ Yeah. It's Touhou themes assembled from YTPs of a Japanese McDonald's commercial and spheres turning inside out.
No joke , try to found videos like "Klasky Csupo Effects" (I hate g major) (g major) (goo goo gaa) and more recent with the "Alphabet Lore "popular video
I find out that these videos are made from 5-14 year old children. Sometimes they made their own "klasky csupo" with low production (a phone with kinemaster/capcut). This odd content interested me when I found a special channel. I don't know it's name. It was something was Snapish. His/her videos where so chaotic with it's own logo / an oc character from the game Gacha Life and more on the down corners and upwards the screen saying that we can use the video freely.
It is an interesting result of this whole mess that computers producing videos like this could be considered to have "passed" the Turing test because the actual humans operating in this space behave so algorithmic that the algorithms and the humans are functionally indistinguishable.
Does that count as a pass for the Turing Test? It feels more like a compensated fail....
turing test participants are attempting to pass the test so this doesnt make sense.
also the test has many flaws anyway
If I have a child, I swear to god I’m just making them watch Mr. Roger’s Neughborhood on VHS tapes for the first like 6 years of their life lmao
ironically that's probably the best possible option
lmao good decision
I'm 25 and I grew up on Thunderbirds, Thomas the tank engine and captain scarlet VCRs. Incredibly dark at times and probably damaged me psychologically but damn theyre quality
Jeeeezus.... this is terrfying
It gets a LOT worse unfortunately ruclips.net/video/geJ5l331Hfo/видео.html
I thought that kind of videos were memes, i didn't knew this were made for kids to watch. That's fucked up.
Well even if they were intended to be memes, kids would end up watching them anyway. (How many times have you seen a 6-year old dab in a row?)
I want to say the moral of the story is don't drop kids in front of internet-capable devices unattended, but I honestly don't know, this is a very strange situation
I genuinely worry about the sort of developmental impacts watching tens of hours of this shit a week is gonna have on pre-k kids
Just have your kids watch Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.
@Frizzurd PBS doesn't show reruns of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood?! I'm surprised. Maybe it's because the programs are "dated" or b/c they no longer hold the interest of our children who no longer have an attention span & don't care about anyone who isn't a Disney character.
@@DonnaBrooks Yeah, they have Daniel the Tiger now who fills the same purpose. Mr Rogers is very slow and old looking compared to modern cartoons with bright colors and fun character voices/plots. You’d have to expose them to Rogers first before showing them the other stuff, otherwise they’d be bored with him.
listening to you casually list the titles of these youtube videos feels like the override password to either start or stop a robot that has gone haywire
I think that when you're dealing with a kids channel, RUclips should introduce a "privilege program" that channels can sign up for. When signing up, actual people will look at the channel judge whether it is suitable for RUclips Kids. If accepted their videos enter the pool of videos that are available on YTK. If this privilege is abused, their channel gets removed with all the content. This huge punishment will demotivate fraudulent channels.
google would never waste money on hiring actual people to do anything with youtube
I love this idea
can we all agree that Dan Olson has been changing the status quo for over a decade now and that it isn’t at all ostentatious to say that he’s one of the best content creators this accursed thing we call the internet will ever see?
No, it's not ostentatious, and I don't think that word means what you think it means.
you're right and you should say it. ignore the annoying boy comment above me
Everyone's wrong.
To me personally, this video is where your current arc began and it's fun to come back and see how it has morphed into gaming the shorts algorithm.
Great video, great research and great insight. As someone who produced a well known RUclips Kids show for six years (The Annoying Orange) and I'm producing a new one now (Liam the Leprechaun) it's daunting to think that my efforts to make something silly and fun for kids is competing with A.I. and unscrupulous knuckleheads. Thanks for making a very informative video!
bobjenz Did you create it?
Or just work on it?
if you really produced The Annoying Orange you have no right to call out the YTKids videos lol
This comment is just a way for him to announce a new show in association w/ one people might know. Annoying Orange is GARBAGE. It's not quality children's programming. I wouldn't brag about it, bobjenz.
Bruh
@@bandombeviews6035 he worked on it
How. Did. You. Research. That.
I'm scared to think that every video he watched stole a piece of his soul.
He probably went to the sub Reddit r/elsagate, then confirmed it from him self after. There is a bunch of people looking into this, because of the explicit content in a large chunk of the videos.
P Zając reddit probably there is a lot of info there
The reddit about this is glorious, I checked a while back, and the leading theory are variants upon: MK ULTRA inspired experiments to lead children to become helpless so the secret pedophiles can grab them. Ritual satanistic/cult abuse theories, next comes stuff like 'it isn't real', and only then a sort of 'IT IS AI' (showing a misunderstanding of what AI is, and well tech in general). The theory mentioned in this video by folding ideas isn't really thought of.
Super tinfoil hat thinking all around. It is pretty odd. (This was a while back btw, this isn't representative of the sub reddit now (I hope)).
Ids Braam yeah a lot of whats posted in that sub is ridiculous, but they definitely would have helped for more of the grounded claims brought up I'm this video. Personally I'm glad he didn't go into the conspiracy BS.
What is the point of targeting adverts at kids who cannot even read? The whole youtube revenue system feels like a bubble that is just going to burst, the adpocalypse may just be the beginning if advertisers realise what is going on.
I think he was suggesting toy companies in the video. He made an eighties reference - kids TV was then characterized by lots of cheap animation loss leaders (he-man etc) for toys.
They don't need to read anything. Just show them the picture of the cool thing enough times, and they'll be begging their parents for it by next morning.
Good point, I would be interested to know what type of adverts you get if you start binge-watching this kind of content- could see whether it really is aimed at them or not.
Parents put a video on autoplay and leave their little one. As youtube has an algorithm to select what video comes next and these channels game the system they eventually appear. The little one sees bright colours and characters they recognise and may or may not hit 'replay'. Either way the company gets it's sweet sweet ad revenue. Rinse and repeat for millions of kids every day.
It doesn't matter, the person making the video gets paid no matter if a person watches the video at all, as long as it plays on a device somewhere. (and using devices used by kids probably beats google system that detects if somebody is trying to scam the system. At least, for now).
This is why I watch with my kids because this is dystopian and disturbing. Google really has their priorities straight. The fact that buried alive is in the title and nobody is doing anything is wrong.
Join a communist party if you want things to ever improve. Corporations exist for the sole purpose of generating profits for their owners, and it is literally illegal for them to prioritize anything above profits. If you support people having democratic control over the government, I cannot imagine why you might object to us having democratic control over the economy as well.
@@justinwatson1510 I agree. I'm currently helping organize a communist party in my part of the world. Everyone not blinded by propaganda must realize this is what markets lead to - and why it can not continue.
8:00
"The target audience can't read."
Yes, it can. The algorithm IS the target audience. That's who they're selling to.
So that's why I keep getting "inspirational" clips of Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate in my feed, no matter how many times I tell the algorithm not to recommend that content-the right wing grift-o-sphere has adopted the tactics of finger family knockoff farms.
precisely. the alt right manosphere is very hard to avoid.
I have the opposite problem; RUclips has seemed to think I _dislike_ Jordan Peterson content(I want more of it), when the reality is all I've been doing is marking "not interested" _specifically_ on those annoying videos that just bolt on that obnoxious "inspirational music" to things he - or Andrew Tate or anyone really - says.
I haven't seen any of him on my feed for years now.
Dan olsen saying insanely long and creepy titles with no emotion is massively funny to me.
I love your videos dude, I always feel like I'm legitimately learning something, rather than simply being told about something like most video essay channels.
I 'vehad horrible nightmares that I'd still prefer to those videos.
Whenever you outsource content creation, you have to realize that potentially dangerous minds will look at the system and purposefully damage it. All content aimed at kids needs to be monitored and cleared, like how Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and Disney make sure that the jokes meant to keep the adults from getting bored aren't crossing a line. In an age where parents are relying on phones to babysit, steps have to be taken to either get parents to become better at their job or find a way to cull the harmful content.
I don't know for sure if it ever stopped, but it's either still happening or starting up again with stuff like Poppy's Playtime (and other horror-for-preteens properties) characters and for some reason, Digital Circus characters
I'd really love to know the full story behind this and what companies/people decided to put hundreds of hours of work into this....Whatever it is.
Adam Curtis will do a documentary about with ominous music playing over footage of Dan-O here in a year or so.
Padaster "and here I am, watching it live!"- Philomena Cunk
Procedural generation is like the old infomercial for that chicken roasting thing. Set it and forget it. The only time spent is during setup.
We are in the Metal Gear Solid 2 ai-controlled future
Robert .Breedlove but there's no nano machines.
...... Or is there?
Yeah, but it's the AI that's been hit by Emma's virus.
we are the fork in the conveyor belt, and we need scissors
whats worse is we're actually not. the ai's in mgs2 wanted to provide filtering and contextualization for the overwhelming stream of data being created by the information age, this is what it looks like without any control or oversight
Fission Mailed
You reading the titles in such a deadpan way is hilarious
Pre-schoolers should never be given unsupervised access to RUclips.
I understand that parenting is a fucking tiresome nightmare and that every instance of free time when the child is occupied is precious and helps parents cope, but no, it is not worth dropping your developing child's mind into a cesspool created by pedophiles, trolls and algorithms.
Every previous generation managed to take care of their kids without this. There are plenty other way to keep children occupied aside from sticking a tablet in front of them. There is no excuse for subjecting them to this.
yes
Or even if you do, make sure they are watching quality content
Ask a friend/relative to look after them. Put on a good cartoon. Give them toys to play with.
This content vomit is not good for them.
There's plenty of decent content for children on Netflix and Disney+ (and more).
It requires slightly more involvement in at least picking something for them, but at least it's 10 times better content wise.
Hard to believe this happened over 4 years ago. It was definitely a cautionary tale of ensure you can monitor what your toddlers are consuming and how RUclips is definitely not a place for unsupervised kids.
Watching the mystery of these "kids videos" be slowly chipped at by channel after channel has been quite a satisfying arc. Maybe now that it's trickled upward from H3H3 and Idubbbz into relatively mainstream videos some people will finally, y'know... notice the problem and launch one of those outraged campaigns against it instead of just finding it hilarious.
A very well made and informative video.
Anyone remember those Frozen flash games that where everywhere a couple of years ago? The one's like 'perform surgery for ingrowing teeth on baby Elsa'? They disappeared suddenly but they looked very similar to these videos.
I've said it before and will say it again.
Take a few hours and make a playlist of children's content and only drop that playlist in front of your small kids. Once they're old enough to type keep an eye on their watch history. Never leave autopay with toddler. Don't just ignore what your preteen is consuming. Once their a teen hopefully you've been a good enough parent and you can give them the privacy they now depratly need to be able to form into a functioning adult
Unfortunately, they've removed the ability to make playlists for children. Honestly, there are so many streaming platforms out there (free and paid) with curated content that RUclips isn't that great of an option.
I first realised something odd was going on when I recently visited my brother for a weekend and sat with my little nieces. For an hour each day, they are given time to watch videos. I noticed they gravitated towards a channel with live action videos that featured some European people playing a family (two parents, a boy, and a girl).
The videos all seemed to share a common theme of defecation (shown in the live action videos as plastic pellets and various members of the family doing it indoors, outdoors and at any time) as well as ad nauseum repetition of a couple songs (which I now know to be Finger Family and Johnny Johnny Yes Papa). To my adult mind, the near-obsession with defecation in the videos seemed weird and a bit alarming, but I guessed maybe it served as a way to teach children not to be afraid of potty training or something? Like the children's book Everybody Poops? So I dismissed my alarm as adult overanalysing.
But the more I saw them watching video from that channel and others, the more I started seeing weirder things. Syringes everywhere, pregnancy, Elsa and Spider-man. It seemed to me like a form of distilled, concentrated clickbait. Featuring Elsa and Spider-man made sense from a clickbait point of view, but why were the characters doing such weird... adult... creepy... violent things? No, something was definitely wrong here.
It took me a few days to find the "Elsagate" subreddit and learn how big this rabbit hole goes. I intend to inform my brother and sister-in-law about this so they can be more on their guard (they already largely vet what my nieces watch, but I feel they should know about this specific topic.)
Note: I'd love to read the scripts to this video, as a text article. But it doesn't translate well to being heard. It's too much like written language and not enough like spoken language. This is the first video I watch of yours and it sounded stiff and unnatural. But I'm definitely subscribing because it's quality content.
Oh hey that's my voice! (The Retsupurae video at ~3:00)
TieTuesday Stream Archives TieTuesday holy shit I loved the original RP videos you and Slowbeef did so much
Oh hey I thought I recognized that voice :D
While you talk about 4-year-olds being barely literate in terms of writing, do you have any info on how these videos related to voice commands and voice searches? "I.e. Siri I want to watch Elsa on tv" "Siri my mom is pregnant. What is pregnant" etc.
that's a really good point. At 4-5 a lot of kids can read a little, mostly recognizing names, but can't write or type. But, tablets have mics, & the RUclips Kids app can do voice to text. So if a kid says "Elsa and Spiderman" they can recognize that the screen says those names & look at the thumbnail & click.
Soprie I thought that said punch Elsa on tb
wait, is that really true? about literacy being low at 4 i mean. i assumed it was an overstatement. i started reading at 2, which i know is pretty young, but you start school at 4 and my primary school seemed to expect you'd already been taught how to read, they just did practise on how to write the letterforms etc
Kit Vitae while it's true that some kids can read at two (and this is helped by a parent spending time and reading to their kid #preschoolteacher) that doesn't necessarily mean the child has the reading comprehension / critical thinking skills to understand what they are reading or clicking. Like, they understand the names "Elsa = cartoon princess" "spiderman = cartoon hero" but perhaps not other words or sentences. Lots of kids can phonetically sound out letters at a young age, but not understand what a word means. Case in point "pregnant". Unless the kid is having a younger sibling and mom explains what it means, kids have little reference to understand even the basics of what "pregnant" is.
9:18 "and here's where it really goes off the rails" oh just NOW it's really going off the rails?
Nice shout out to Fredrik.
I'm so happy that since this issue exists more people are trying to explore it and bring it out to people's attention. I remember like 2-3 years ago visiting a friend and her kid was freaking out at RUclips and she got upset thinking he went out of his way to select something disturbing, and now I can't help but think it might have been an early example of this.
Thank you for doing a video on this because it has been driving me nuts when my child ends up on one of these crazy slurry style videos. How can advertisers be ok with 4 year olds being exposed to this garbage?
This is the most well-researched coverage of this topic I've seen.
Thank you so much for this video, it’s fascinating taking a deeper dive into this weird, weird world. What I wanna know is why companies like Disney are totally ok with their licenses being messed with like this, especially if there’s the potential for a high stream of revenue and reach to their target audience.
I'm not sure if Disney's higher ups know yet. When they do and they track down whatever company is shitting these videos out, I strongly suspect there will be a lawsuit.
Why did you abbreviate 3hUOx5ATuSrN6hwhoKzJSQ that one time, it's a really catchy network name.
I just realized that all of this sounds like something Kojima would have written. Inscrutable networks of AIs and humans indistinguishable from AIs creating enormous volumes of content to entice children to view a neverending stream of propaganda designed to make them an obedient consumer is a little mundane for one of Kojima's main plots, but it's definitely up his alley, and I could absolutely see it being some part of Cipher's (or some other nefarious illuminati-esque organization's) wider plans.
Stumbling upon this in 2022 I'd be curious to see a follow up. Kids YT is still a minefield of garbage but the tactics seem to have changed a lot since this video was made based on my own experience watching YT with my 2 year old. For example I still see a lot of re-uploads and low quality nursery rhyme videos but nothing like these seemingly AI produced nightmare fuel animations. Lives also seem to now play a big role in people just trying to farm views with stolen content (also outside of Kids YT).
this was fascinatingly fascinating:D
5 years on, it's scary how awful it got. Now I have children, I'm glad it's got better, not much though.
I never thought that I'd be turning away in sheer, genuine disgust at videos designed for toddlers. Fucking hell.
I just love these so much. They are hilarious, terrifying and absurd all at the same time. It's something Salvador Dali would make if he had Sony Vegas
3:42 hang on how did this nostalgia critic skit get in here
best fucking joke in this comment section