Youtube: Kids Edition

I’ve been thinking a lot about today’s update and it was something I’d be totally unaware of if it wasn’t for my 3 year old son.  People, I have to let you know, you’re kids are watching some weird shit on Youtube.  Truth be told, everyone is watching weird shit on Youtube but I was still surprised to see the things that were hypnotizing my son.  It’s not just my kid either; I was talking with a few other father’s and found out that their kids are watching the exact same channels.  I’m not going to directly name or link to any of the Youtubers I’m mentioning here.  And while I may find the content weird, I’m not really attacking them.

Eggs.  I don’t know how my son found them originally, I don’t know how he still finds them; but videos about toy eggs are huge.  So here is the thing.  In other countries there are lots of chocolate eggs with toys inside them, but America doesn’t trust its children no to eat toys so they are illegal here.  Instead these videos focus on toys hidden in plastic eggs, paper mache eggs, or even eggs made out of play-doh.  After the narrator talks about the eggs they then open them up and reveal the toys inside.  Sometimes it’s just the toy.  Other times there may be things like slime or glitter in there too.  The eggs range in all sizes.  Some are barely big enough to hide a matchbox car and others are huge.  These eggs hold a power over my son that I don’t understand. 

Fan Fiction.  This one takes a serious second place to the eggs.  There are a number of videos where people are playing out stories with their toys.  Usually this involves massive crossovers where the Toy Story cast is helping the Transformer Rescuebots participate in a race again Lightning McQueen.  Sometimes narrated by children and their parents, but most of them are just done by adults.  They get odd.  I mean every version of fan fiction gets strange, and this is safe for kids, it’s just strange.

Bootleg videos.  The final one is the most horrifying.  Crappy 3d animated Spidermen in rainbow colors dancing to songs meant for toddlers.  Like the fan fiction these routinely mix characters from different franchises.  Some of these are serious nightmare fuel and I’m glad that my son doesn’t seem to care for these ones.

As I said previous, none of these things are unsafe for kids in moderation.  I was just amazed that these things exist and I wouldn’t even know about them if I didn’t monitor what he was doing/watching.  To the people making these things, more power to you.  You’re entertaining thousands of kids from the looks of your page views.