YouTube Kids is massively popular and also the actual worst content the world has to offer. The most successful content, racking up hundreds of millions of views, is extremely vapid and just consists of sounds and colours punctuated by disguised adverts for expensive toys. No narrative, no speech, nothing educational. Kids are so malleable and early development is so important, yet a sizeable chunk are watching people in knock-off Spider-Man costumes unwrap toys and chase around knock-off Elsas all day. I won’t even get into the unsettling uncanny valley side of things and the creepy procedurally generated animation on there.
I’m genuinely concerned about kids being brought up on what is essentially mental junk food through their most formative years. I’m not saying they all need to be listening to violin concertos all day, but I feel that when I was a kid straight up garbage like this didn’t even exist and every kids show had at least something you could learn from it, like Sesame Street, or was decently produced entertainment, like Pokemon. This has a quarter of a billion views and it’s just... nothing.
The what
In amongst the vapid shit there’s a sizeable portion of actively harmful shit, usually focusing on Spiderman and/or Elsa and usually involving surgery, pregnancy, injections, toilets, dentistry and occasionally drug use and sexual content. It all feels procedurally generated and like fetish content at the same time, sometimes it’s cartoon and sometimes it features adult actors. It’s a very weird rabbit hole with lots of theories about where it’s coming from.
Link me that shit goddamit
I think YouTube’s now cracked down on the most egregious channels but here’s an example (and this is the lighter side of things)
THE TITLE CONTAINS THE PHRASE "ASS INJURY" WHAT THE FUCK. THIS IS NOT FOR CHILDREN, THIS IS FOR STONNERS
Welcome to the rabbit hole homie 👁
Alright I watched the video and this is deffinitely for stonners, I wanna get drunk and watch them with friends.
From the comments:
:agony-limitless:
deleted by creator
Dantist*
Before youtube cracked down on kids content there were really creepy videos that the algorithm was showing kids that had titles like that. Parents rightfully freaked out and youtube has attempted to get rid of the weird shit but predictably does a pretty bad job. Kids will still get weird shit every now and then. It's really bizarre and creepy.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/youtube-for-kids-videos-problems-algorithm-recommend
Can't believe people figuring out the six key phrases/images that will promote a video to the top of the algorithm would result in videos that are literally just compositions of those phrases/images without rhyme or reason.
The content was always deliberately made to abuse children's sexuality because they're curious about bodies and don't understand sexuality
They appear to exist to solicit clicks, full stop.
By abusing the fact that children are curious about that kind of stuff. There's a reason "doctor games" are so common among young children of any gender.
Here's a rundown and that's from like 4 years ago
So it's just one big company and Youtube is okay with it. Huh.
It's the counterpoint to the Prestige TV shit. Rather than spending $10M/episode for cinema-quality TV, you get to just expropriate the minimalist near-zero budget crap people will churn out for free.
YouTube's model is the purest incarnation of click-bait.