If you grew up in the late 2000s and early 2010s and you’re at all like me, some of your fondest memories involve YouTube. Hear me out: I was a daydreamer, and YouTube back then only sought to enhance my imagination. I was transfixed by Warrior Cats, a book franchise in which wild cats fight for survival in clans. After learning about YouTube at around eight years old, I realized that people made videos about Warrior Cats. I found fan animations and quickly became obsessed with the idea of YouTube and fandom, which sent me down a rabbit hole to explore each of my interests on the site. YouTube became a crucial part of my after-school life; each day spent on the site brought me exciting new jokes and references to share with my friends the next day.
Plenty of other kids my age did this, too — my third-grade lunch table often devolved into what I call “parroting,” where we’d repeat noises and phrases from videos we all had seen. A popular genre to quote back in my day was the YouTube Poop, a style of video in which pre-existing media clips are remixed and edited for absurdist, satirical purposes. All it took was someone yelling “dinner,” and the table would be in shambles, laughing hysterically. It was a joyous time to be eight.
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Over time, we grew out of this, and YouTube did as well. No longer were we obsessed with one-off videos; the age of the YouTube personality was upon us. It was 2012, and every kid my age was into Minecraft. We all ended up finding (now deplorable) content creator Tobuscus, particularly his songs about Minecraft. He was obnoxious, boisterous, dramatic and always talked in a “funny” voice — it was everything a little kid would love. Looking at Tobuscus now, I feel such a strong sense of cringe that I shrink inside myself. But in 2012, Tobuscus was an icon. We all wanted to be like him. We roleplayed as Minecraft gaming YouTubers together in our free time in an effort to fulfill this dream.
We also adored “Annoying Orange,” a YouTube series centering on talking fruits in various comedic scenarios. As the title suggests, it was intentionally annoying, with the titular main character, Orange, frequently trying to annoy his peers. His voice was piercing and loud, and he had an uncanny human smile plastered over his orange body. I can acknowledge now that Tobuscus and “Annoying Orange” were not of good quality. However, I still look back on that time period with love and admiration. Things were simpler; I’d argue most of the content at least felt original even if it wasn’t objectively amazing.
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Cut to a random day this past summer: I sat with my boyfriend in a mundane, family-owned restaurant up in northern Michigan. As we ate, several young children ran around the place, yelling odd quotes I didn’t recognize — and that’s when we saw it: In the corner of the room, the restaurant’s television was playing a strange YouTube video seemingly aimed at the children there. The screen showed a familiar setting of the popular Minecraft game mode “skyblock,” but instead of the usual Minecraft avatars, we saw strange, cartoonish monsters. As we began to listen, we heard a voice-over — what sounded like a grown man doing a strange baby-speak, referring to himself as “banban.” There was seemingly no objective to this video, as the odd characters only ran around spouting nonsense. My boyfriend and I felt our brain cells melting by the second. Is this what little kids are watching now?
This thought has permeated online audiences in my age group as of late; though we are not that old compared to children, in terms of growing up with technology, there have been astronomical differences. Generation Alpha — the name given to these younger children — was raised with mobile communication and platforms like YouTube much more ingrained in daily life (think of the “iPad kid” stereotype).
Online, we have often been forced to confront this generational difference. For example, a video went viral on TikTok that displayed children watching a strange performance. On the stage, we see a colorful dancing cast dressed as Jenna Ortega’s rendition of “Wednesday,” “Squid Game” guards and monsters from the game “Poppy Playtime.” It’s a particularly odd sight, as these three franchises have nearly nothing in common. “Wednesday” is a teen coming-of-age tale, “Squid Game” is a mature and bloody drama, and “Poppy Playtime” is a horror video game; seemingly nothing ties these media together, but the children in the audience dance along enthusiastically.
The comment section expresses disdain and fear at the children’s excitement. “The world is going to shit,” one commenter says. Another reads, “youtube kids: the musical.” There seemed to be a consensus among commenters that these are popular franchises within YouTube Shorts — YouTube’s TikTok-style content section — which is where the kids are hearing about them.
I’d like to sit and ruminate on this idea for a moment. Rather than the original content like “Annoying Orange” that I saw as a kid, most content that becomes popular with children on YouTube today is from pre-established media, repurposed in odd new ways. I’ve seen similar phenomena among children in my own life — another one of my young cousins loves Roblox and frequently plays maps inspired by the horror game Five Nights at Freddy’s, but he has never played Five Nights at Freddy’s himself (and he shouldn’t, since its horror themes would be graphic for someone his age). He knows soundbites from the original game and quotes them often, but it’s through the filter of Roblox. I’m sure a majority of kids in that viral TikTok haven’t seen “Squid Game” either, but instead gained interest in it because of its presence in filtered-down YouTube Shorts. The “banban” YouTube video I previously mentioned fits into this perfectly. My boyfriend and I later found out that the characters in the Minecraft video are from a horror video game called “Garten of Banban” — this game is not targeted toward children, but through this recycling of its characters in Minecraft videos, they’ve grown attached to the game in their own odd way.
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I think of “Skibidi Toilet” as a prime example of this. “Skibidi Toilet” is an absurdist, seemingly plotless short-form animation series centering toilets with human heads trying to take over the world. It was not made as kids’ media, but instead created by animator DaFuqBoom as a random meme parody. To many early viewers, the series acted as a modern take on nonsensical, fun animation videos from the 2010s made in the physics sandbox game Garry’s Mod. In this sense, there is an artistry to the absurdity of “Skibidi Toilet” — DaFuqBoom’s animation abilities are incredible, and it’s clear that care is put into its production. However, kids have latched onto it, likely after coming across it on YouTube Shorts. There is nothing to flag it as kids’ content (unless you count its obnoxiousness), but it somehow ends up in Shorts’ algorithmic pipeline and reaches these children. This has changed the public perception of the series. Once regarded as a revamping of old meme trends, now, with children assumed as its primary audience, it is assumed to be “useless garbage” that is harming the attention spans of the kids watching. One motherhood blog even reported on how to prevent “Skibidi Toilet Syndrome” in children. Though this is, of course, not a legitimate phenomenon, in some sense I can understand the concern. These kids do not understand the layers of irony, artistry and referential humor that go into “Skibidi Toilet,” instead transfixed by its obnoxiousness alone. This makes for an internet paradox where creativity and fan content run rampant online but can also appear distorted, context-less and computer-generated when targeted at kids.
In terms of content itself, YouTube kids’ content is just as obnoxious as what I had — by no means am I trying to say that my quoting of “Annoying Orange” as a fourth grader is more intellectual than what kids are quoting today. However, online content has gained this new layer: It feels machine-generated and lacks authenticity. I think of the Spider-Man and Elsa videos that took the internet by storm in 2014 — these videos (aimed at children) showed Marvel hero Spider-Man and Disney princess Elsa doing complete and utter nonsense, unrelated to either of their characters. It felt like Spider-Man and Elsa were the subjects of the videos only to gain clicks from children who recognized and loved them. The bar for kids’ content is low, as kids value familiarity, so this marketing scheme feels predatory. It is not original, but instead, beloved franchise characters processed through layers and layers of filtering, almost coming off as artificial intelligence-generated.
The dominant feeling I have when thinking about YouTube Shorts-addicted children is discomfort. I try so hard not to come off as a fear-mongering boomer when I have these thoughts; I don’t want to make a sweeping conclusion that technology is ruining our society. I don’t believe that; however, I certainly notice a difference in how I consumed content versus how kids of the 2020s consume content. The emphasis on short-form content aimed at kids in particular has become a frequent topic of discussion, with many arguing that platforms like YouTube Shorts add “‘short bursts of thrills’ to kids’ digital diets, making it harder to pull away.” Regardless of how technology continues to evolve, it’s important that we keep looking out for our youth and making the internet a safe place for them. Additionally, I notice a shift in originality, now placing emphasis on pre-existing intellectual properties rather than original characters. Though there’s not much we can do about this (as it is booming in popularity), in places where we can recognize genuine artistry online as opposed to quickly-generated sludge, we should take the time to do so.
I reflect on my elementary school classrooms, where we parroted references to YouTube videos left and right. I remember my friend getting in trouble in third grade for yelling a line from a YouTube Poop video during a fire drill and feeling bad for him, barely managing to keep in my hysterical laughter. YouTube felt like my own world, and I was proud of that. There is such a thrill to online content as a kid, and when I see my young cousin “hitting the griddy,” I may not understand the significance of it in the way he does, but can I really be upset about it? It’s adorable. It’s hilarious yet sweet that, as children, we’re so much more willing to take something so silly so seriously. At the end of the day, I don’t think that “Skibidi Toilet Syndrome” is rotting the brains of our youth, but it’s important to keep our eyes out for them regardless.
Daily Arts Writer Katelyn Sliwinski can be reached at [email protected].
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
