What I find interesting is that many of these youtubers have created personas to appeal to their audience, like true entertainers. However loyal viewers are fooled into this false sense of reality, where they are friends with content creator and this is not a persona at all, he's my friend. Over time, the content creator and the audience share so many moments together, it becomes an emotional bond and a substitute for people's social needs. People grow attached to this persona, sometimes obsessively. I think it could create of a scary pattern of disassociation, has it already?
Another thought: If the content creator chooses to optimize the money-making persona, it eventually leads to sensationalized content to generate the maximum possible number of views. I think there is some sadness in that: no matter what form of art, so much of it is influenced (disrupted?) by money -- it almost seems inevitable.
My GF is an elementary school teacher and she says the amount of kids who are developing anti-social behaviors is increasing pretty rapidly. Kids these days have computers and are basically simply "escaping" to the internet to live in a fantasy world that is disconnected from reality. Some even display active addictions to computer games, like minecraft, while others say they only have friends online in the games or with these youtube personalities like you say. These kids literally do not know how to make friends or interact with other kids because they are so used to just sitting in front of a game or computer basically having a "friend" entertain them with only one-direction of interaction. They think this is normal relationship for a friend. They don't understand that in the real world in order to get friends you need to talk to other kids and interact with them. They literally do not know how to do this because they've learned it is not necessary...
Parents need to take it very seriously and limit the amount of time the child uses the computer...otherwise these behaviors continue into adulthood. If you are socially incompetent then it will hold you back in terms of jobs and so on. Very troublesome is that parents are basically using computers to babysit the kids or to keep them occupied...which only helps to reinforce the lack of social skills they get. How many times do you see a kid in a shopping cart holding a tablet watching some movie or whatever? Very common.
Before I had regular access to technology I spent most of my after-school and recess time staring off into space, pacing around constructing imaginary worlds, and reading YA fiction. I had no interest in my peers, and no idea how to connect with them, years before I ever touched a computer. When I finally did get into the internet, and programming, it was manna from heaven. Now I get to be a productive member of society, staring off into space at my desk and constructing imaginary worlds in the form of software systems for important business purposes. If it weren't for that, I might have wasted away, disintegrated, completely detached from the normal human world.
I dunno. Just because a child has no social life and a lot of screen time, doesn't mean the causality works as you propose. Some of us have a tighter grip on the world of things than the world of people. (It's definitely become more balanced for me, with time).
Computers, internet, youtube, games - these things are a part of a real world. I mean, they aren't a hallucination, they don't exist on a separate plane of reality. Experiences are real, joy they bring is real, and for many people, it's far better than what the "real" world around them has to offer.
If people are tempted to escape into a virtual world, it might be because the real world around them sucks.
I have never really heard people describe elementary school as the most inclusive environment where if just children took their time to talk to their peers then everyone would get along and bullying would be something of the past.
If children has a higher need to escape reality than in the past then maybe we should ask why that is rather than in vain hope try to make the problem go away by removing the escape method. Like you I find it troublesome that parents use computers to babysit, but I would say the same thing about any form of babysitting mechanism that result in the child not get any social support.
Youtube is turning 14 next year and computers have been mainstream way longer than that. Personally I was a kid when it was the TVs fault and video games were making kids violent, but imo things turned out just fine.
Before my household had internet I was nose deep in a book 24/7, never leaving my room, and I had no friends at all.
Post-internet I at least had friends, sure some were in the Netherlands, or Germany, or Australia, or Brazil, or Japan but they were people. Actual people that existed outside of the fantasy novels I would read. People that as an adult, I was able to travel to and visit. I have a job in web development, something that wouldn't even exist without the internet.
I owe essentially 100% of my "successful adult life" to the internet existing. Without it I'd likely be working a minimum wage job at a local fast food chain without a single friend to speak of. Merely existing and reading books.
I blame helicopter parents like my mother far more than I blame access to the internet.
What about the giant scare of strangers that flared up in the 90s? Every stranger is a potential murderer/rapist and you shouldn't speak to them. Children not being allowed to travel outside alone, the rise of "helicopter parenting". Even if you allow your child to go outside it's increasingly unlikely they'll meet another child because other parents don't let their children go outside. When I was younger I remember always seeing parks full of unsupervised kids playing. Most parks I see now are empty. Or maybe a parent watching their kid(s) play on the equipment.
A great feature on Playstation is Family Management using sub-accounts. You can set time limits where it will log them out automatically. You can also setup a schedule with certain hours per day and end time.
I hear lots of "how much gaming did you do when you were young?" but it isn't the same. Today big game companies engineer the games to be addictive to "win" screen time. Back then I may have sunk a lot of time into Nintendo but it was mostly solo playing or playing with friends/siblings that sat next to you. You tended to help each other out to get past levels, etc.
I'm not sure it is so simple. As a point of counter anec-data I was always kind of concerned about this, and I even developed a slightly unhealthy habit with my phone when I sank into depression. In any case, we decided an iPad for our son might be helpful for education and we bought one for him/us when he was 1. He used it quite a lot and he learnt maths really early. As he has grown up - now 3, he only occasionally uses his iPad. To be honest, I find it quite strange that it hasn't turned out how we all would expect it to. I've been conscious to not put crappy advertising games on there, or anything with psychological hooks. But I honestly don't think it is the device that is the root of the problem.
It's not a matter of "computers" but a matter of education: if kids discover something like Smalltalk/Cobol scripting in a friendly environment like ancient Alto&c workstations or actual unix shells and Emacs they may choose to develop some IT skill or ditch computers entirely; if they are mere consumer of contents they became incapable of developing anything themselves.
Kids are "totipotent" individuals if they grow up as creators, citizen between other citizen they became adult, otherwise they became consumer, easy to steer from employers to politicians but incapable of being citizen.
I don't think that behavior should be called anti-social. Why do you put their online friends in quotes? When I grew up, I only had one real friend, and everyone else I played with only because they lived on the same street. I did not particularly like the games most of the time, but there was no choice.
In contrast, these kids have friends, who actually share some common interest. They choose those friends. And also, probably, more of them. If anything, I'd call that hyper-social.
> My GF is an elementary school teacher and she says
Respectfully, I've spent a _great deal of time_ with elementary school teachers, and many appear very very willing to diagnose random children, adults, and coworkers as being "a bit autistic", and so on.
In addition, and assuming wildly here, how old is she? If you're the HN average of about 30, and she's about your age, she doesn't really have a cross-generational experience to pull from, even assuming she was making observations free of the very many cognitive biases one would expect in this situation.
My bet would be that if you found a teacher -- from almost any point in history -- and asked them what the kids are like in their time period, they'd tell you about the latest inventions that have made their kids uniquely awful and anti-social. I'll spare you pulling out the 3,000 year-old quotes about how "young people these days don't respect their elders".
If there are some studies that show it, I'd be all for it. Teacher anecdotes are uniquely poor quality samples, in my opinion.
This was described in 1956 by Horton and Whol in the paper Mass Communication and Para-social Interaction.
> One of the striking characteristics of the new mass media - radio, television, and the movies - is that they give the illusion of face-to-face relationship with the performer. [...] The most remote and illustrious men are met as if they were in the circle of one's peers; the same is true of a character in a story who comes to life in these media in an especially vivid and arresting way. We propose to call this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a
para-social relationship.
They even use your term 'persona' to refer to the individual behind the glass.
> But of particular interest is the creation by these media of a new type of performer: quizmasters, announcers, 'interviewers' in a new 'show-business' world - in brief, a special category of 'personalities' whose existence is a function of the media themselves. [...] Lacking an appropriate name for these performers, we shall call them personae.
> Over time, the content creator and the audience share so many moments together, it becomes an emotional bond and a substitute for people's social needs.
I've wondered about this for podcasts too. I noticed a scary habit where I would play podcasts when I was feeling lonely. Over time, you feel like you're pals with the hosts and something about the audio format checks the social needs box in your brain, thinking that you're hanging out with another human. I don't want to unconsciously sate my social needs with podcasts so I've been more intentional about my listening.
There is a good reason why the Kardashians are incredibly successful. They are able to convince their viewers they are part of the family with their shows. I think its because you feel included since most of the show is back-and-forth gossip on family issues where its common for the people in the scene to try and find a solution to a problem where the problem person is excluded from the conversation. As a result, I think the viewer feels more welcome than even one of their family members.
Once hooked, the kardashians make bank because they can sell their fans laxative teas or hair growth gummy bears on instagram through huge ad endorsements
Personally I’ve experienced something like this while reading fiction. The characters are so life-like and endearing in some books that I miss them and feel a loneliness temporarily after finishing. So I guess it isn’t just modern media, humans just have a tremendous capacity and need to connect.
Fun to imagine an alternative reality where our brains would simply be unable to accept flashing monitor LEDs or vibrating speaker diaphragms as representations of people.
You're putting a dark twist on it, but personally, I do feel like many of my favorite youtubers are my friends. I might not be their friend, but I love them, they have taught me a lot, and helped me to get through tough times.
If I'm sad I can always watch their videos and feel happy and connected to other people. I like people who create awesome stuff, I can relate to them a lot more than to the people I meet in real life.
I don't think these feelings are invalid. If people watch someone's content, and learn things, and feel connected, and that makes them feel good and happy - I think that's wonderful.
Besides, it's not like real life people are amazing at being real, everyone has a fake persona they're trying to project. What you can't fake is being funny, insightful, educational, likable, charismatic, talented, inspiring, etc. If you're creating something good, people will like you. Nothing wrong with that.
Junk food will make you full too, but over time make you sick. I fear you're substituting real human connection with cheap alternatives. Cooking healthy food can be annoying and it often makes a mess, but is necessary in the long run.
Dismissing real life people as "not amazing at being real" is ironic to me because people have been the way they are since maybe even before the dawn of homo sapiens. That's just what real is. Not everyone is this charismatic, funny, inspiring character. You still welcome them into your life just as they welcome you into their lives.
I think this is the essence of most modern entertainment. I once produced a pilot children's animation and had written a "bible" - the text that sets out what you plan to do for a series - and was told by a senior commissioner in no uncertain terms that modern children's tv series "must take place in the same place with the same characters so kids can come home and watch the show at the same time every day and feel like they have a family while their parents are doing something else. That way they buy into the brand and parents buy all the merchandise". As you mention, it's the inevitable consequence of optimisation and why there should always be a space for government-funded programming and art.
> there should always be a space for government-funded programming and art.
Why is everything people want has to be government funded? Just go ask people for money directly, like a lot of the abovementioned youtube stars do. Tax man with the gun does not have to be involved with this.
Yes, but there is a bright side too. Mr. Rogers developed a personal relationship with many of his viewers in the way that you are talking about, and I think he did a great service to the world
Mr. Rogers was different because he was using his influence for social good and to teach positive characteristics/skills/traits etc.
The other personalities, do not specifically cater to this. They're more interested in creating a following and creating something that keeps people coming back for more.
If you dig deeper Politics, Sports, Religion, Movies/TV all do the same thing. They contribute to a "sense" of well being.
What contributes to "actual" well being of the follower is another matter entirely.
Though in the age of big data, despite all the pessimism we are surrounded by, it is possible more and more for the celeb class to influence "actual" well being (in terms of mental health/purpose/financial stability etc) of their followers.
The next George Lucas or Stan Lee could push psychological buttons in ways no one ever has before.
Here is a (somewhat related) instance of what you are talking about: A New Mexico Resident drove for 11 hours to break into the home of Gavin Free and Meg Turney, with intentions to kill Free [0]. It seems he became obsessed with Turney and wanted Free to die "alone and without children". Obviously there were other mental health factors at play and it wasn't just "youtube fame did this", but it is a case of this largely one-sided relationship-dynamic.
Pewdiepie definitely diverges strongly from Felix‘ IRL persona. Pewdiepie is an outgoing personality with misogynistic tendencies, playing with racial slurs every now and then, appealing to his Reddit/4chanish/incel followers (whom he now calls army of 9 year olds).
IRL he seems to be awkward around other people, soft (nice), and obviously a bit depressed.
I think Pewdiepie's main reason for success is the opposite of what you just said. Differently from other youtubers, he seems real and honest, not built artificially to target a specific audience.
I've watched pewdiepie vids and think they're completely retarded but pewdiepie as a person is a genius because he knows the largest demographic on youtube are immature youngsters who have tons of time to watch youtube. So he creates content to cater to that demographic's quirks.
His real persona comes through pretty frequently though, which is why people like him, imo. When he does longer gaming videos, or more serious videos, you can see what he is really like to some degree. Most of his viewers should be very aware that the PewDiePie persona isn't who he actually is in real life, which is a departure from other YouTubers who always have their "TV personality" on while they are recording. Even in his less serious videos, every once in a while he will break from his PewDiePie persona and have a bit of more serious commentary, which makes him seem very genuine, while still being entertaining. The viewers know he is having fun and joking around in his videos, rather than trying to act like he is something he's not.
I've never watched pewdiepie but I assume his audience is too young to be on reddit or 4chan or to having been rejected by women for so long as to consider themselves to be celibates.
How would you know any of that without actually knowing him IRL for the contrast?
Afaik your IRL description is one he gave about himself, where he also explained that he initially used YouTube to get past his "awkward around other people" issue.
In that context, I find it hard to believe that people could consistently play a "fake-persona" without that ever influencing their normal mannerisms, particularly when they have to summon this "fake-persona" on a near-daily basis.
More interestingly this mechanic functions in every kind of social relationship. Everybody who isn't a total shut-in has at least a few different audiences they cater to. Also very common to become too attached to a persona that, say, pleased one's parents but doesn't quite work out at work and suffer for it.
And if anything given the prevalent expectation for consistency, such dissociation is rather freeing.
Great comment. I have some thoughs on the matter:
- I dont think you need the money motive though (its def. sufficient but not necessary). - The relationship between money and art is as old as civilization itself - in fact I believe the coupling is looser today than in ages past.
- Some would argue that the term art is not applicable to most popular youtube channels.
>People grow attached to this persona, sometimes obsessively. I think it could create of a scary pattern of disassociation, has it already?
I know Jenna and Julien have had people show up to their previous address, it seemed like mostly parents driving/flying their kids across the country to show up at their rental house to meet them...
I follow some vloggers that I find entertaining as well as have listened to podcasts for a decade now. I will readily admit I have more of a perceived familiarity with a lot of these people than I do with people I know in the real world for example:
- Adam Carolla and crew, 5 days a week times many years. I know about Adam's kids, his nanny, his wife, his business endeavors, his high school antics, his childhood, falling out with his friends, his genital warts test...
- A guy in Germany named Pierre who does a couple of few vlogs a week on his YouTube that I've supported via patreon and am Facebook friends with now
- Jenna and Julien, I've basically been watching both of their channels the entirety of their relationship
- The hosts of Geek Radio Daily, which I'm friends with on facebook. I've been listening to them a decade, I've been writing and calling in to the podcast the entirety of that time, I occasionally shoot memes to Flynn and we've been playing Words With Friends for several years, yet he and his wife know virtually nothing about me and I feel like they are old very good friends as I've been listening to them sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, for a decade.
- Mike Luoma, I discovered him on podibooks a decade or so ago. Listened to him narrate his stories. Found his podcast. Listened to it. Hired him to do an intro to my podcast that lasted a few episodes. Been friends on Facebook for years, have introduced him to other podcasters, will be on his 500th episode in a couple of weeks, I feel like I know so much about Mike yet I bet he knows virtually nothing about me.
It's certainly an interesting world we are building. Celebrity worship has been a thing as long as there have been celebrities but never before have we had such levels of exposure to given individuals. Such access to their lives through their video or audio, through their social media, through their patron-only content.
I find it fascinating and addictive but I absolutely recognize there is real danger in a society that is moving towards this sort of exchange, especially for individuals that do turn to obsessive behavior and even idol-worship.
Radio has similar properties, which is one of the reasons it is such a popular medium for certain types of demagoguery. Modern TV is different, but many people had similar feelings of attachment to soap opera characters, etc.
This is just watching tv. I can make my wife laugh with our injokes based on our own life and stories but also based on Modern Family and Fresh Off the Boat episodes we’ve both watched.
Considering the politician with the best understanding of exploiting a major social media platform is President now, imagine where these youtubers will go.
> However loyal viewers are fooled into this false sense of reality, where they are friends with content creator and this is not a persona at all, he's my friend.
Just like Mister Roger's Neighborhood in the 1970s.
By all accounts Mr. Rogers wasn't a persona, though, that was the real him. He really did want to be everybody's friend, not for fame or fortune, but because he wanted to make the world a better place.
> If the content creator chooses to optimize the money-making persona, it eventually leads to sensationalized content to generate the maximum possible number of views.
In the past brand prestige protected the media from this to happen. A backslash on a TV will make all advertisers to flee.
YouTube does not suffer from this. They host radical, xenophobic, and misogynistic content without consequences. Because they label themselves as a tech company, a middleman that has no responsibility on their own content. But are they? Meanwhile we buy what YouTube advertisements show they have no reason to stop.
When you optimize society to generate money instead of generate value you get to this weird situation.
My 7 year old son watches Dude Perfect on YouTube, which I had never heard of. Apparently its all the rage, in elementary schools and he heard about it via other kids.
I watched a few to make sure they were ok, but they mostly came off as older guys doing elaborate stunts that kids would do on a much smaller scale (like throwing balls off tall buildings, fat suits on cars, etc )
I'm not shocked they are making $20M or so. One of the episodes showcased their new Dude Perfect headquarters that looked like a block long warehouse with basketball courts, foam pits , etc in it with their DP logo all over it.
I guess it pays to cater to kids base desires on a grander scale
As someone with a six year old daughter who loves YouTube. I worry about this too. I can't really explain why I am worried, maybe I am just being a parent. I just hope in future sometime my daughter doesn't have some altered version of reality gleaned from commercials on YouTube.
Advertisers are always looking at ways to skirt the rules in non-obvious ways. There are a lot of laws around advertising to kids including total bans in some regions. Ways to legally side-step those rules are pretty rare and when one is found - until the loophole is closed - you can be sure of a lot of business going that way.
What do you think is more effective: an ad saying my child will like this toy or my child asking me for that toy? I think it all boils down to that, basically.
That is surprising. I never once got the impression they were trying to do something much bigger than themselves; pretty low key on their mission there.
Which isn't too bad because it's basically a tv show at that point. They have multiple hosts, cameramen, sets, etc. There's probably quite a few people working on those shows and they probably burn through that 20m pretty quick.
My six year old has started running around the house without his shirt, lifting things and drinking milk so that he can be all swole. That or he watches chrisfix videos on how to repair the car.
I highly recommend the chrisfix videos, btw. We've both learned a lot about cars.
I've been gently reminding my son that Dude Perfect is pure entertainment and he is barely learning anything with it. He's slowly been drifting away from it.
Thankfully, he watches kurzgesagt, BackYard Scientist, VSauce, TED and mostly scientific or programming videos so its mostly 5 to 1 , educational to entertainment videos with the limited screen time he has.
The Khan Academy courses are really good as well as the ProdigyGame (for math) for keeping him engaged and multiple grades ahead of his current grade.
The only reason it works is because these youtubers know that the largest demographic on YT is 8-22 year olds who are immature. On the flip side, the advertisers think they're advertising to adults with disposable income....thus it because a huge waste of ad spend for the advertisers but they haven't realized that yet. All they know is TV viewership is decreasing and online media is rising...so they need to do something to push their products.
Well they are advertising to people with disposable income, by proxy: the parents of the kids who watch the videos then beg/nag their parents for things from the adverts.
Half a year ago I saw a documentary (can't remember which), where a number of popular YouTube vloggers were followed to see what being an influencer entails.
While each of them were enjoying the good stuff - the money earned, the free gadgets and trips, etc. - in general each of them also felt trapped. To me it seemed like hell to live a life like this.
Huge social pressure from followers to crank out new content on a continuous basis. No time to take real breaks, let alone a longer vacation. Totally focused on social metrics. A wrong move leading to loss of 1,000s of followers. A vacation or even being sick leads to people complaining in your feeds, or even starting to threaten you.
Responsibilities and contracts with influence marketers.
Being an influencer is a kind of topsport. You are a professional, while you are also still a kid.
And the longer you keep doing it, the more you've made a life's choice (neglecting school, building real social network, etc.) and it is harder to get out of it.
Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention that the real famous vloggers also can no longer come outside without being recognized everywhere. E.g. 16-20yr olds that cause young children to go histerical when they see them, giving signatures all the time. Literally no rest anywhere.
Of course, going to a job for 40+ hours a week feels like being "trapped" to a lot of people. Especially when you throw in a Mortgage, car loan, student loan and some credit cards.
At that point, it's impossible to stop going to work 40+ hours a week.
Sure. He can. He is already at the top. And his example will be the ultimate dream of many, with full support of (greedy?) parents. But your kid may not be all that lucky. It is a crowded market.
And for each influencer there are tens of thousands of wannabe's, who are quietly churning on for just a handful of followers, but with the same grand dreams of fame and glory. If they get their real joy from this, then that it is okay. Otherwise at least they learn to handle disappointment early in life.
To me this little news snippet had just hit home how much of a bubble I live in, and how we're diverging into multiple streams of media for different cultures and classes.
These million dollar media businesses exist that I have no idea about and no exposure to. Presumably when my child reaches approx 8, he'll have been brought up without ads and with most of this content having been blocked (or more accurately, just never coming into the house/houses of his friends, blocking, even though that's what it is we're doing is almost too 'active' a word). And there will be a whole sub-class of the population brought up on this stuff that we never mix with.
Or maybe I'm naive and these media will get in past our defences, but judging by how current media bubbles work it's a distinct possibility that it will remain a bubble I'm never exposed to (I.e I know pay TV options and certain newspapers/you tube things exist, but struggle to tell you a single person I know under the age of 50 who subscribes).
I can't be the only one who feels a little sick at the prospect of making money heaping consumerism on children...?
Eh? I mean, most of the money comes from sponsored videos.. So hot wheels, thomas the train, surprise eggs.. etc.. some are obvious, some are the kid playing with the thing. It's funny that we cut the cord and don't allow kids to watch nick jr or disney jr but instead allow youtube where the subversion is greater. My kids don't watch any (or very few) traditional ads but they know exactly what is hip. Most of this was from youtube kids. And now they have the surprise toys. Genius. Is it bad or good? I mean don't take your kid to target or walmart or the supermarket or the airport...
Well, for context, I wouldn't even think of youtube as a media service (whether it is or isn't is another topic). I think of it as a video hosting website: subsequently I engage with it looking for a trailer, a how-to video, instructions, when a real-estate agent uploads a video of a house they're showing...and yes maybe every now and then a video or meme that someone forwards me.
As a video-hosting website, i don't think it would be responsible for me to consider giving a young child open access to it until they're old enough to basically be able to have open access to the internet: because its a video-hosting website on the internet, not a media company, and certainly not one that's vetting material suitable for small children.
Subsequently, it doesn't even get past the first psychological/physical barrier of getting into the home as an idea.
Now, bear in mind, when I grew up and was under 10, I wasn't allowed to watch cartoons before school. Cable wasn't a thing in my country. Indeed my parents would have protested that cartoons and many commercial shows "rot the brain" (and these days, i'd be inclined to agree).
I didn't feel denied, I remember watching cartoons on the weekend, and while yes, I had some hotwheels and matchbox cars (never saw a cartoon of them, did they exist?) and a voltron sheet and toy set (which I do remember as a cartoon admittedly, along with astroboy, lost cities of gold, dr who, etc). But for the most part I remember my sand pit and my building blocks more. And then just as I got old enough, home computers became a thing.
We had sesame street and playschool and mr squiggle, to be sure, but these did not have any commercial content. I also remember I had david attenborough and nature documentaries and general trivia gameshows that I liked to watch with my grandmother downstairs in the granny flat. And there was a set time each night when my parents would watch the news (which i found boring). And of course we had books!
But there were a whole HEAP of shows where the main purpose of the show/story was not even vaguely ads or consumption, and its those and similar shows that I'd be allowing, or am planning to put on a server and let my child watch from there.
As for target and walmart, well, we don't have the later in my country, and I've barely been in one of those retail stores currently for several years. Our food/groceries are delivered, and when we do go to the supermarket, its to pick something up on the way home from work or as a last minute when we're out of something: alternatively, many of the other essential things are bought from the greengrocer/bakery/dairy or other specialist retailers that are scattered around my neighbourhood, again, currently without advertising distractions targetted at children.
I mean, i get the message: I went to the supermarket as a child with my parents as well, but we weren't allowed to get anything. It was 'the rules'. I distinctly remember being allowed one Cadbury Furry Friends chocolate bar every wednesday that my mother would bring home from work: they're little blocks of chocolate about 15-20g in size.
I'm not saying we're immune from advertising. But my point is there's at least two separate worlds now: like the internet with ads, I've grown up without ads on the internet, my children are going to grow up without ads on their internet, because they're just blocked before they come in the door. There's a whole world of media out there (apparently) they aren't going to see (and looking at some of it now I'm even less inclined to let them) because at best they might have to watch it at a friends, but due to the social bubble, even the degree that its going to happen is an open question.
It's been happening for decades though. Kids don't watch Saturday morning cartoons these days or wait to see what toy will be in the next McDonald's happy meal. They watch YouTube and see ads there.
Internet advertising isn't regulated but in a way it self-regulates. Content creators don't want in-appropriate ads and YouTube doesn't want that either when a channel is targeted for 8yo, it would make them lose money.
Or like He-Man, where the entire premise was to create a cartoon they could sell action figures from. Rewatching it, the plot wasn’t all that coherent. But that didn’t matter, because Battle Cat was cool and Skeletor’s castle had a microphone and speaker built in.
Under 13 year olds cannot have a youtube channel or account without the supervision of their parents. They absolutely are allowed to use the site, though. Youtube even has channel setting specifically for young children.
A small point: did anybody notice how this reward mechanism prize the "idiocy" far more than the "knowledge"? I mean most followed YT channels, most upvotes on FB etc are about "brainless things", "brainless contents" vs valuable technical or cultural contents.
An YT channel about "just for laugh" or "sport" or "how to decorate nails" have FAR more subscribers and viewers than a tech, historic, physics, ... DIY channels.
That's of course natural but prize it instead of fight it it's a means to push toward stupidity.
It may just be the difference between how many people a video is relevant to and how deeply it impacts them. Things like tech, history, physics, and DIY channels each have fewer people who connect with the content than something like how to decorate nails.
One explanation could be the amount of investment one has to make to fully appreciate, and thus get value from, these different topics. For example, appreciating a "just for laugh" video generally takes less effort and specific experience than appreciating a technical video. This is related I think to the Law of Triviality [1].
At the end of the day though, I think there's somewhat of an inverse relationship between how many people you can impact with a given message (or video) and how deeply you can impact them. To impact someone more deeply requires deeper insight and shared context gained through experience on the viewer's part to interpret and appreciate the video, which necessarily narrows the target audience.
The system that disproportionately incentivizes the less deep content is probably the fact that the incentives are built around numbers of views, which doesn't discriminate between deep versus cursory impact on the viewer. If overall value of a video were calculated as number of people impacted multiplied by the depth of the impact, there would be more incentives to create impactful videos. However, most incentives currently reward only the number of people impacted irrespective of the depth of impact, and so it's much easier to produce videos that impact a lot of people with little depth.
Of course, this trivializes how difficult it is to actually build a large audience, which is difficult to begin with. Personally, I think they all have their place. Sometimes I want something stimulating to watch, sometimes I want something brainless.
Like you say, it's natural, just like in the past(?) when stupid reality shows and drama was gathering all the ratings. And I'll be honest (I'm not sure I'm one of many who feel this way), when you see guys like the Paul brothers in this list I can't help but think that the bad guys won.
Well it's natural in the sense that "mother or idiots is always pregnant" (ancient Italian proverb), but that's also not a thing we should prize.
I mean, in my poor English, that it's normal we have a bigger audience for a video of people doing parkour that for a video about Bayesian's filter but we must develop a way to prize more the latter than the former.
In physical world we have something like a doctor, lawyer, ... get paid more than a clown, so they can afford a better life, get prize by the society, inspire other's to take their path etc. Clowns have their role of course, we also need them, only they receive a proper reward.
We start to invert this trend with professional sportsmen's, movie/entertainment industry and now with social platform we bring that trend to the sky.
Same thing with TV, Music, Film...If you want mass appeal you need to hit the lowest common denominator. It doesn't bother me because I find that if you just let go of your pretensions there are some genuinely good channels that could be describe as "Idiotic".
Heck Pewdiepie is actually a pretty interesting channel from time to time. You got to hand it to the guy for putting in the work to not only reach the top, but to stay on the top but hasn't completely sold out to advertisers to make bland family friendly content.
It rewards popularity in itself. It just happens that most people are at or below average and average isn't anything to write home about. It rewards lower effort for higher returns as well. That also isn't remotely new. Gossip rags sell more than even accessible science magazines let alone journals.
It isn't stupidity in itself that pays. Make a channel of hitting yourself in the groin every day and you won't even break $10k/year.
You, me, any other. We all like to laugh but we know that life is beyond that. That's why we have schools that teach history, physics, chemistry, math, geography, ... instead of teaching nail arts, hair styling, parkour etc.
Also, if you travel the world a bit, you'll easy see how most "mean acculturated" countries offer generally a better life quality, life expectancy etc.
It says 15% OF this earnings, he might be getting more than that but 15% is locked up until he is an adult.
Even so, the parents are probably the actual 'runners' of the company (?) doing all the work except being on camera. Meaning administrative work, accounting, filming, editing, marketing maybe and so on.
Exactly, it's not like the kid is writing the scripts, creating the sets, buying the equipment, paying for lawyers, settings up advertiser deals, paying for video production and editing, etc. From the videos, it seems like they've now got a much fancier house too, which I'm assuming was paid with the earnings.
From the Wikipedia page, only 15% of the child’s earnings need to be put aside into a trust:
“This law requires a child actor's employer to set aside 15% of the earnings in a trust (often called a Coogan Account), and codifies issues such as schooling, work hours and time off.”
This doesn't mean that the parents get the other 85%. All the income belongs to the child, the 15% figure is put in a trust as a requirement by California law and cannot be accessed until the child turns 18.
Are you sure? Seems like the parents are really the "producers" and the kid is more of an actor. He very well might get a lot of that money, but I'm not sure. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Is there any reason to give an 8 year old child access to (his) millions of dollars?
My 6 y.o. lives in a youtube universe. Every content he creates, he makes a video and publishes on youtube. Making slimes, building stamps, building paper train wagons, visiting places, and of course unpacking toys and stuff. He always concludes video or other stories like `pls press the Like button, and subscribe to my channel in order not to miss a thing`. When I talk too much he says 'papa skip ad', with a tap gesture. on air.
youtube is the definite leader for <10 y.o.s around me.
This is like some nightmarish version of the panopticon. Future societies won't have to worry about monitoring their citizens - they'll already be raised to broadcast everything by default.
You should explain to him that whatever you publish on the Internet is forever and whether he'd like someone in his adult life to be able to find that content.
Maaaaybe. Link Rot is a real thing. Look at Twitch. They delete a LOT of footage all the time. A lot of speedruns are lost to time due to these 'top-level' decisions.
While I think it's great when kids create content, what really scares me are the comments. Youtube is often times such a cesspool, I wouldn't want my kid to interact with that as a creator. How do you handle that?
He currently doesn't care about the comments but most comments are quite offensive. I see him alone, in his room, preparing for a video, rehearsing his speech, and having multiple takes and revisions. Kind of very weird. He comes up with like `papa, i need photopolymer, darkening toner,glue.. because i want to do xx.` . Of course he's pissed off when he hears, as a child he can't touch chemicals.
Readit News
Another thought: If the content creator chooses to optimize the money-making persona, it eventually leads to sensationalized content to generate the maximum possible number of views. I think there is some sadness in that: no matter what form of art, so much of it is influenced (disrupted?) by money -- it almost seems inevitable.
Parents need to take it very seriously and limit the amount of time the child uses the computer...otherwise these behaviors continue into adulthood. If you are socially incompetent then it will hold you back in terms of jobs and so on. Very troublesome is that parents are basically using computers to babysit the kids or to keep them occupied...which only helps to reinforce the lack of social skills they get. How many times do you see a kid in a shopping cart holding a tablet watching some movie or whatever? Very common.
Before I had regular access to technology I spent most of my after-school and recess time staring off into space, pacing around constructing imaginary worlds, and reading YA fiction. I had no interest in my peers, and no idea how to connect with them, years before I ever touched a computer. When I finally did get into the internet, and programming, it was manna from heaven. Now I get to be a productive member of society, staring off into space at my desk and constructing imaginary worlds in the form of software systems for important business purposes. If it weren't for that, I might have wasted away, disintegrated, completely detached from the normal human world.
I dunno. Just because a child has no social life and a lot of screen time, doesn't mean the causality works as you propose. Some of us have a tighter grip on the world of things than the world of people. (It's definitely become more balanced for me, with time).
If people are tempted to escape into a virtual world, it might be because the real world around them sucks.
If children has a higher need to escape reality than in the past then maybe we should ask why that is rather than in vain hope try to make the problem go away by removing the escape method. Like you I find it troublesome that parents use computers to babysit, but I would say the same thing about any form of babysitting mechanism that result in the child not get any social support.
Post-internet I at least had friends, sure some were in the Netherlands, or Germany, or Australia, or Brazil, or Japan but they were people. Actual people that existed outside of the fantasy novels I would read. People that as an adult, I was able to travel to and visit. I have a job in web development, something that wouldn't even exist without the internet.
I owe essentially 100% of my "successful adult life" to the internet existing. Without it I'd likely be working a minimum wage job at a local fast food chain without a single friend to speak of. Merely existing and reading books.
I blame helicopter parents like my mother far more than I blame access to the internet.
What about the giant scare of strangers that flared up in the 90s? Every stranger is a potential murderer/rapist and you shouldn't speak to them. Children not being allowed to travel outside alone, the rise of "helicopter parenting". Even if you allow your child to go outside it's increasingly unlikely they'll meet another child because other parents don't let their children go outside. When I was younger I remember always seeing parks full of unsupervised kids playing. Most parks I see now are empty. Or maybe a parent watching their kid(s) play on the equipment.
I hear lots of "how much gaming did you do when you were young?" but it isn't the same. Today big game companies engineer the games to be addictive to "win" screen time. Back then I may have sunk a lot of time into Nintendo but it was mostly solo playing or playing with friends/siblings that sat next to you. You tended to help each other out to get past levels, etc.
Kids are "totipotent" individuals if they grow up as creators, citizen between other citizen they became adult, otherwise they became consumer, easy to steer from employers to politicians but incapable of being citizen.
In contrast, these kids have friends, who actually share some common interest. They choose those friends. And also, probably, more of them. If anything, I'd call that hyper-social.
Respectfully, I've spent a _great deal of time_ with elementary school teachers, and many appear very very willing to diagnose random children, adults, and coworkers as being "a bit autistic", and so on.
In addition, and assuming wildly here, how old is she? If you're the HN average of about 30, and she's about your age, she doesn't really have a cross-generational experience to pull from, even assuming she was making observations free of the very many cognitive biases one would expect in this situation.
My bet would be that if you found a teacher -- from almost any point in history -- and asked them what the kids are like in their time period, they'd tell you about the latest inventions that have made their kids uniquely awful and anti-social. I'll spare you pulling out the 3,000 year-old quotes about how "young people these days don't respect their elders".
If there are some studies that show it, I'd be all for it. Teacher anecdotes are uniquely poor quality samples, in my opinion.
Dead Comment
> One of the striking characteristics of the new mass media - radio, television, and the movies - is that they give the illusion of face-to-face relationship with the performer. [...] The most remote and illustrious men are met as if they were in the circle of one's peers; the same is true of a character in a story who comes to life in these media in an especially vivid and arresting way. We propose to call this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a para-social relationship.
They even use your term 'persona' to refer to the individual behind the glass.
> But of particular interest is the creation by these media of a new type of performer: quizmasters, announcers, 'interviewers' in a new 'show-business' world - in brief, a special category of 'personalities' whose existence is a function of the media themselves. [...] Lacking an appropriate name for these performers, we shall call them personae.
http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/short/horton_and...
These could be today's satirists
I've wondered about this for podcasts too. I noticed a scary habit where I would play podcasts when I was feeling lonely. Over time, you feel like you're pals with the hosts and something about the audio format checks the social needs box in your brain, thinking that you're hanging out with another human. I don't want to unconsciously sate my social needs with podcasts so I've been more intentional about my listening.
As for people growing attached to the persona, here's an interesting case: https://youtu.be/VJJ90qpzark?t=458
Once hooked, the kardashians make bank because they can sell their fans laxative teas or hair growth gummy bears on instagram through huge ad endorsements
If I'm sad I can always watch their videos and feel happy and connected to other people. I like people who create awesome stuff, I can relate to them a lot more than to the people I meet in real life.
I don't think these feelings are invalid. If people watch someone's content, and learn things, and feel connected, and that makes them feel good and happy - I think that's wonderful.
Besides, it's not like real life people are amazing at being real, everyone has a fake persona they're trying to project. What you can't fake is being funny, insightful, educational, likable, charismatic, talented, inspiring, etc. If you're creating something good, people will like you. Nothing wrong with that.
Dismissing real life people as "not amazing at being real" is ironic to me because people have been the way they are since maybe even before the dawn of homo sapiens. That's just what real is. Not everyone is this charismatic, funny, inspiring character. You still welcome them into your life just as they welcome you into their lives.
Why is everything people want has to be government funded? Just go ask people for money directly, like a lot of the abovementioned youtube stars do. Tax man with the gun does not have to be involved with this.
Government funded art doesn't make it pure art, it makes it art that serves the political aims of the bureaucrats charged with doling out the money.
The other personalities, do not specifically cater to this. They're more interested in creating a following and creating something that keeps people coming back for more.
What contributes to "actual" well being of the follower is another matter entirely.
Though in the age of big data, despite all the pessimism we are surrounded by, it is possible more and more for the celeb class to influence "actual" well being (in terms of mental health/purpose/financial stability etc) of their followers.
The next George Lucas or Stan Lee could push psychological buttons in ways no one ever has before.
[0]- https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-mexico-man-dead-aft...
IRL he seems to be awkward around other people, soft (nice), and obviously a bit depressed.
Afaik your IRL description is one he gave about himself, where he also explained that he initially used YouTube to get past his "awkward around other people" issue.
In that context, I find it hard to believe that people could consistently play a "fake-persona" without that ever influencing their normal mannerisms, particularly when they have to summon this "fake-persona" on a near-daily basis.
I know Jenna and Julien have had people show up to their previous address, it seemed like mostly parents driving/flying their kids across the country to show up at their rental house to meet them...
I follow some vloggers that I find entertaining as well as have listened to podcasts for a decade now. I will readily admit I have more of a perceived familiarity with a lot of these people than I do with people I know in the real world for example:
- Adam Carolla and crew, 5 days a week times many years. I know about Adam's kids, his nanny, his wife, his business endeavors, his high school antics, his childhood, falling out with his friends, his genital warts test...
- A guy in Germany named Pierre who does a couple of few vlogs a week on his YouTube that I've supported via patreon and am Facebook friends with now
- Jenna and Julien, I've basically been watching both of their channels the entirety of their relationship
- The hosts of Geek Radio Daily, which I'm friends with on facebook. I've been listening to them a decade, I've been writing and calling in to the podcast the entirety of that time, I occasionally shoot memes to Flynn and we've been playing Words With Friends for several years, yet he and his wife know virtually nothing about me and I feel like they are old very good friends as I've been listening to them sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, for a decade.
- Mike Luoma, I discovered him on podibooks a decade or so ago. Listened to him narrate his stories. Found his podcast. Listened to it. Hired him to do an intro to my podcast that lasted a few episodes. Been friends on Facebook for years, have introduced him to other podcasters, will be on his 500th episode in a couple of weeks, I feel like I know so much about Mike yet I bet he knows virtually nothing about me.
It's certainly an interesting world we are building. Celebrity worship has been a thing as long as there have been celebrities but never before have we had such levels of exposure to given individuals. Such access to their lives through their video or audio, through their social media, through their patron-only content.
I find it fascinating and addictive but I absolutely recognize there is real danger in a society that is moving towards this sort of exchange, especially for individuals that do turn to obsessive behavior and even idol-worship.
Radio has similar properties, which is one of the reasons it is such a popular medium for certain types of demagoguery. Modern TV is different, but many people had similar feelings of attachment to soap opera characters, etc.
Dead Comment
Just like Mister Roger's Neighborhood in the 1970s.
Are you saying that if art pleases people so much they're willing to pay money to experience it, that makes it not art?
In the past brand prestige protected the media from this to happen. A backslash on a TV will make all advertisers to flee.
YouTube does not suffer from this. They host radical, xenophobic, and misogynistic content without consequences. Because they label themselves as a tech company, a middleman that has no responsibility on their own content. But are they? Meanwhile we buy what YouTube advertisements show they have no reason to stop.
When you optimize society to generate money instead of generate value you get to this weird situation.
I watched a few to make sure they were ok, but they mostly came off as older guys doing elaborate stunts that kids would do on a much smaller scale (like throwing balls off tall buildings, fat suits on cars, etc )
I'm not shocked they are making $20M or so. One of the episodes showcased their new Dude Perfect headquarters that looked like a block long warehouse with basketball courts, foam pits , etc in it with their DP logo all over it.
I guess it pays to cater to kids base desires on a grander scale
I'm slightly shocked that the money comes from advertisers interested in influencing 6-7 year old kids.
I highly recommend the chrisfix videos, btw. We've both learned a lot about cars.
Thankfully, he watches kurzgesagt, BackYard Scientist, VSauce, TED and mostly scientific or programming videos so its mostly 5 to 1 , educational to entertainment videos with the limited screen time he has.
The Khan Academy courses are really good as well as the ProdigyGame (for math) for keeping him engaged and multiple grades ahead of his current grade.
https://www.prodigygame.com/
Clean language, strong work ethics. Works with heavy equipment, builds a Castle out of Shipping Containers, fixes trucks/boats/bikes/excavators etc.
Mustie1 is another clean educational YTber with similar content: https://www.youtube.com/user/mustie1/videos
To be fair I do this and I'm 34. ;)
Although you should tell him that running is the worst thing for gainz.
Half a year ago I saw a documentary (can't remember which), where a number of popular YouTube vloggers were followed to see what being an influencer entails.
While each of them were enjoying the good stuff - the money earned, the free gadgets and trips, etc. - in general each of them also felt trapped. To me it seemed like hell to live a life like this.
Huge social pressure from followers to crank out new content on a continuous basis. No time to take real breaks, let alone a longer vacation. Totally focused on social metrics. A wrong move leading to loss of 1,000s of followers. A vacation or even being sick leads to people complaining in your feeds, or even starting to threaten you. Responsibilities and contracts with influence marketers.
Being an influencer is a kind of topsport. You are a professional, while you are also still a kid.
And the longer you keep doing it, the more you've made a life's choice (neglecting school, building real social network, etc.) and it is harder to get out of it.
Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention that the real famous vloggers also can no longer come outside without being recognized everywhere. E.g. 16-20yr olds that cause young children to go histerical when they see them, giving signatures all the time. Literally no rest anywhere.
At that point, it's impossible to stop going to work 40+ hours a week.
These million dollar media businesses exist that I have no idea about and no exposure to. Presumably when my child reaches approx 8, he'll have been brought up without ads and with most of this content having been blocked (or more accurately, just never coming into the house/houses of his friends, blocking, even though that's what it is we're doing is almost too 'active' a word). And there will be a whole sub-class of the population brought up on this stuff that we never mix with.
Or maybe I'm naive and these media will get in past our defences, but judging by how current media bubbles work it's a distinct possibility that it will remain a bubble I'm never exposed to (I.e I know pay TV options and certain newspapers/you tube things exist, but struggle to tell you a single person I know under the age of 50 who subscribes).
I can't be the only one who feels a little sick at the prospect of making money heaping consumerism on children...?
Unless I’m misunderstanding your comment, most of the money comes from pre-roll advertising, not sponsored content product placements.
As a video-hosting website, i don't think it would be responsible for me to consider giving a young child open access to it until they're old enough to basically be able to have open access to the internet: because its a video-hosting website on the internet, not a media company, and certainly not one that's vetting material suitable for small children.
Subsequently, it doesn't even get past the first psychological/physical barrier of getting into the home as an idea.
Now, bear in mind, when I grew up and was under 10, I wasn't allowed to watch cartoons before school. Cable wasn't a thing in my country. Indeed my parents would have protested that cartoons and many commercial shows "rot the brain" (and these days, i'd be inclined to agree).
I didn't feel denied, I remember watching cartoons on the weekend, and while yes, I had some hotwheels and matchbox cars (never saw a cartoon of them, did they exist?) and a voltron sheet and toy set (which I do remember as a cartoon admittedly, along with astroboy, lost cities of gold, dr who, etc). But for the most part I remember my sand pit and my building blocks more. And then just as I got old enough, home computers became a thing.
We had sesame street and playschool and mr squiggle, to be sure, but these did not have any commercial content. I also remember I had david attenborough and nature documentaries and general trivia gameshows that I liked to watch with my grandmother downstairs in the granny flat. And there was a set time each night when my parents would watch the news (which i found boring). And of course we had books!
But there were a whole HEAP of shows where the main purpose of the show/story was not even vaguely ads or consumption, and its those and similar shows that I'd be allowing, or am planning to put on a server and let my child watch from there.
As for target and walmart, well, we don't have the later in my country, and I've barely been in one of those retail stores currently for several years. Our food/groceries are delivered, and when we do go to the supermarket, its to pick something up on the way home from work or as a last minute when we're out of something: alternatively, many of the other essential things are bought from the greengrocer/bakery/dairy or other specialist retailers that are scattered around my neighbourhood, again, currently without advertising distractions targetted at children.
I mean, i get the message: I went to the supermarket as a child with my parents as well, but we weren't allowed to get anything. It was 'the rules'. I distinctly remember being allowed one Cadbury Furry Friends chocolate bar every wednesday that my mother would bring home from work: they're little blocks of chocolate about 15-20g in size.
I'm not saying we're immune from advertising. But my point is there's at least two separate worlds now: like the internet with ads, I've grown up without ads on the internet, my children are going to grow up without ads on their internet, because they're just blocked before they come in the door. There's a whole world of media out there (apparently) they aren't going to see (and looking at some of it now I'm even less inclined to let them) because at best they might have to watch it at a friends, but due to the social bubble, even the degree that its going to happen is an open question.
Internet advertising isn't regulated but in a way it self-regulates. Content creators don't want in-appropriate ads and YouTube doesn't want that either when a channel is targeted for 8yo, it would make them lose money.
An YT channel about "just for laugh" or "sport" or "how to decorate nails" have FAR more subscribers and viewers than a tech, historic, physics, ... DIY channels.
That's of course natural but prize it instead of fight it it's a means to push toward stupidity.
One explanation could be the amount of investment one has to make to fully appreciate, and thus get value from, these different topics. For example, appreciating a "just for laugh" video generally takes less effort and specific experience than appreciating a technical video. This is related I think to the Law of Triviality [1].
At the end of the day though, I think there's somewhat of an inverse relationship between how many people you can impact with a given message (or video) and how deeply you can impact them. To impact someone more deeply requires deeper insight and shared context gained through experience on the viewer's part to interpret and appreciate the video, which necessarily narrows the target audience.
The system that disproportionately incentivizes the less deep content is probably the fact that the incentives are built around numbers of views, which doesn't discriminate between deep versus cursory impact on the viewer. If overall value of a video were calculated as number of people impacted multiplied by the depth of the impact, there would be more incentives to create impactful videos. However, most incentives currently reward only the number of people impacted irrespective of the depth of impact, and so it's much easier to produce videos that impact a lot of people with little depth.
Of course, this trivializes how difficult it is to actually build a large audience, which is difficult to begin with. Personally, I think they all have their place. Sometimes I want something stimulating to watch, sometimes I want something brainless.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
I mean, in my poor English, that it's normal we have a bigger audience for a video of people doing parkour that for a video about Bayesian's filter but we must develop a way to prize more the latter than the former.
In physical world we have something like a doctor, lawyer, ... get paid more than a clown, so they can afford a better life, get prize by the society, inspire other's to take their path etc. Clowns have their role of course, we also need them, only they receive a proper reward.
We start to invert this trend with professional sportsmen's, movie/entertainment industry and now with social platform we bring that trend to the sky.
Heck Pewdiepie is actually a pretty interesting channel from time to time. You got to hand it to the guy for putting in the work to not only reach the top, but to stay on the top but hasn't completely sold out to advertisers to make bland family friendly content.
It isn't stupidity in itself that pays. Make a channel of hitting yourself in the groin every day and you won't even break $10k/year.
This cult of relativism really needs to stop.
Also, if you travel the world a bit, you'll easy see how most "mean acculturated" countries offer generally a better life quality, life expectancy etc.
Dead Comment
Why 15%? Why not 100%? Why not even 50%?
Should this sit right with me? I want to believe this child isn't being exploited.
EDIT: Thanks for clearing that up for me. It seems I was misunderstanding.
Even so, the parents are probably the actual 'runners' of the company (?) doing all the work except being on camera. Meaning administrative work, accounting, filming, editing, marketing maybe and so on.
“This law requires a child actor's employer to set aside 15% of the earnings in a trust (often called a Coogan Account), and codifies issues such as schooling, work hours and time off.”
Seems like it should be more.
http://www.perennialfinancialservices.com/blog/thank-uncle-f...
Of course, the child also isn't generating the whole business himself either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Child_Actor%27s_Bil...
Dead Comment
youtube is the definite leader for <10 y.o.s around me.
It's the stupid stuff they'll do in high school and college they should be worried about.
Maaaaybe. Link Rot is a real thing. Look at Twitch. They delete a LOT of footage all the time. A lot of speedruns are lost to time due to these 'top-level' decisions.
https://www.polygon.com/2014/8/6/5975413/twitch-video-on-dem...
I don’t know why but the concept of my child being an active yt contributor at that age freaks me out.
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