The Children's Part of Youtube

[Marnetmar]

I first was made aware of this in a thread on 4chan and thought it was an interesting phenomenon - very bizarre.

To paraphrase the thread, there are a bunch of channels containing poorly animated clips with odd music and children's cartoon characters from all sorts of mediums mashed together, mostly in the form of nursery rhymes. Thing is, there are thousands of these channels, some of them have millions of views, others have barely any, and most of them use the exact same songs and type of animation.

Exhibit A:

Creepy ass models, the same children's music over and over, and to top it off, Spiderman flying a Nazi plane.

This video by the same channel has 62 million views:

Notice that the comments on these videos tend to be really bizarre as well. Most of them are gibberish and obviously bots, and some of them are similar channels trying to advertise. One of the top comments on the video here is named "Disney Cars for Kids" and it's a mix of weird videos about Marvel Heroes, Mickey Mouse, and Cars, but some of the videos don't even have Cars characters.

Just searching Finger Family on YouTube will lead you to thousands of these channels:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=finger+family

Who's behind all this? Why does it all exist and why is there so much of it?

Here's one with a billion views:

The most obvious answer to all of this that I can think of is that the idea is to rake in ad dollars from young kids browsing YT that really shouldn't be. But still, why are there so damn many of them? Would any of you parents on Doomworld allow your kids to watch these?

[DoomUK]

To be fair, the one with a billion views is clearly a professionally-made kids video from a different uploader. The animation is still pretty shite, but it's not nearly as surreal as the others.

[Jaxxoon R]

Slenderhulk is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen and oh god what the fuck

[RaphaelMode]

One way or another, it has to be pornography. In a way.

[StevieWolfe]

I too discovered this ages ago through a weirdass channel named "Hey Kids". I guess that with this one, some troll from India hijacked the concept and injected some pretty bizarre shit into his videos after the "childrens" part was over:

Wait for it because this shit is fucking disturbing.

As a YouTuber, I really don't get how they're getting away with this. I posted in that 4Chan thread as well, so I'll restate here what I did there. This is some kind of giant ass scam. The production quality of these videos is exactly the same all across the board so it's safe to say that the same people all over the place are generating this content and the money they get in ad revenue is likely all going to one place. The views and comments are botted beyond belief because obviously there are not truly 300,000 people a day watching this crap.

I'm partnered with a YouTube network and if I were caught botting I would actually get sued big time...both by them AND YouTube so it really boggles my mind how they're pulling this off right in front of everyone. I found out about this shit a year ago completely on accident and even the it was pretty obvious what they were doing: use children's media because innocent and shit, know that fuckhead parents these days can't be arsed to raise their blobs of need so provide a service to sit the little fuckers in front of an iPad and leave them be, then fluff up the views to an insane amount enable ads and watch the cash roll in. Even fuckin' Maddoff couldn't have planned it better. Why these almost ALL come from India though I have no satisfactory answer...so yeah...wtf India.

[roadworx]

i'm betting you that all those view are from bots.

[Bucket]

If a child likes something, it wants it every five minutes for eighteen months straight. My sister went through four DVDs of Monsters, Inc. and seven Blues Clues radios.

[Captain Toenail]

Could be someone milking Youtube for ad money?

Setup a system to auto-churn out videos and eventually one will become popular and make a return?

[lazygecko]

Children are by far the biggest demographic (Pewdiepie being #1 with a primarily tween viewerbase is a testament to that). If it's not kids trying to find stuff themselves, more often than not it's simply parents quickly looking something up on their pad/phone to distract their kids with (this is also explains why some of them loop for so absurdly long. The longer they sit plastered in front of the screen, the less the parent has to bother with them). This dynamic gives some bizarre results, like Classic Game Room's most viewed video by an astronomical margin being a review of Ben 10 for the Wii since the stars just happen to align with that video's search keywords.

What still confounds me though are these kind of trashy IP exploitation nursery rhyme videos in the OP. Sure, it'd be a very easy and sleazy way of earning ad revenue, but I don't believe for one second that they would actually get away with monetizing this content. Either YouTube or Disney's lawyers would be on their asses in no time if that was the case.

[StevieWolfe]

GeckoYamori said:

I don't believe for one second that they would actually get away with monetizing this content. Either YouTube or Disney's lawyers would be on their asses in no time if that was the case.

You'd be surprised with what I've gotten away with monetizing.

[Wovenloaf]

Ha! When I saw the thread title, that weird "Spiderman Finger Family" thing was the first thing that came to mind! Quite strange and creepy, indeed. I think they did something similar for toasters and other seemingly random things. The music doesn't go together either. Another surreal example of cheap money-making schemes meeting lazy disorganization and unawareness.

[Netherstorm]

Oh yeah, THESE kind of videos, creepy stuff. The Leeory Jenkins YouTube channel got taken over by those videos too: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVuU4GhdaQlgogf4kB1d5eg

[roadworx]

Netherstorm said:

Oh yeah, THESE kind of videos, creepy stuff. The Leeory Jenkins YouTube channel got taken over by those videos too: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVuU4GhdaQlgogf4kB1d5eg

wow, really? that sucks

StevieCybernetik said:

I too discovered this ages ago through a weirdass channel named "Hey Kids". I guess that with this one, some troll from India hijacked the concept and injected some pretty bizarre shit into his videos after the "childrens" part was over:

-snip-

Wait for it because this shit is fucking disturbing.

As a YouTuber, I really don't get how they're getting away with this. I posted in that 4Chan thread as well, so I'll restate here what I did there. This is some kind of giant ass scam. The production quality of these videos is exactly the same all across the board so it's safe to say that the same people all over the place are generating this content and the money they get in ad revenue is likely all going to one place. The views and comments are botted beyond belief because obviously there are not truly 300,000 people a day watching this crap.

I'm partnered with a YouTube network and if I were caught botting I would actually get sued big time...both by them AND YouTube so it really boggles my mind how they're pulling this off right in front of everyone. I found out about this shit a year ago completely on accident and even the it was pretty obvious what they were doing: use children's media because innocent and shit, know that fuckhead parents these days can't be arsed to raise their blobs of need so provide a service to sit the little fuckers in front of an iPad and leave them be, then fluff up the views to an insane amount enable ads and watch the cash roll in. Even fuckin' Maddoff couldn't have planned it better. Why these almost ALL come from India though I have no satisfactory answer...so yeah...wtf India.

um, the link isn't exactly working

[VGA]

I guess there's hundreds of thousands of parents and babysitters doing generic searches like "spiderman nursery rhymes" and putting them on a loop/playlist. And every single day they have it playing for their little gremlins to occupy themselves with.

Add to that some majestic ad exploitation with botting as well ....

[DoOmEr4LiFe]

Utterly bizarre.

[Altazimuth]

It would be prudent to quote Nietzsche here, I imagine.

[Doomkid]

These remind me of those bootleg versions of Pixar films - the one that sticks out in my mind is "Ratatoin", a shitty 10 dollar budget version of Ratatouille.

When the missus and I decide to have children, I won't want this surreal shit permeating their nightmares.

[Doominator2]

Altazimuth said:

It would be prudent to quote Nietzsce here, I imagine.

I suppose this quote would fit well with the video you just showed

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster... when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you..." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

[Coraline]

My daughter watches this shit every single day all the damn time (I've seen all the videos linked in this thread). It seems creepy and fucked up...but anyone with a kid born in the last 5 years knows how important these videos are (mine is almost 3)...

They allow you some time to yourself :-)

I say, keep making them!! Better than me letting her watch utter garbage anywhere else on YouTube. It could always be worse, and there definitely is worse.

[RUSH]

The fuck? Wow this is some creepy ass shit. Crazy to think that some group of people somewhere in the world are making money hand over fist from this stuff. Youtube has become such a strange monetary platform. Remember that kid who got kicked in the head while taking a selfie in front of a train? Yeah he was reported to have made well over $100,000 through ads. Simply from sheer stupidity. Unbelievable. A link to that video in case you haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy8Yt-P614w

35+ million views!! $$$

[Jaxxoon R]

It's not his fault people like you link to the video he monetized because it was getting lots of views from people linking to it.

[Aliotroph?]

It's weirding me out how many of those songs clearly use non-native English speakers. At least now I know what the "hocky pocky" is all about.

[Clonehunter]

That SpiderMan one goes well with acid.

[40oz]

I'm not a parent but I'm not really comfortable with the idea of leaving my child their room with a computer so they can find Disney stuff themselves on YouTube. If they want Disney ill gladly provide them with the TV channel or DVDs for them to watch.

Not to mention if my kids dont have aspergers i would imagine them getting pretty bored of this immediately and moving on to the next thing. You'd be amazed at some of the things kids dont find fascinating.

[Quasar]

Aliotroph? said:

It's weirding me out how many of those songs clearly use non-native English speakers. At least now I know what the "hocky pocky" is all about.

Maybe there is single-frame North Korean propaganda interspersed as subliminal messages :P

[40oz]

I watched a few more, I don't really see anything particularly malicious or subliminal or anything in these videos. In fact I don't see them to be much more of a botched version of a professional product than a 1994 wad is to Doom.

It's definitely kinda weird but for a child aged 1-4 I feel like this can be really calming for them and not as bizarre or "nightmare fuel" as most people are implying. BTW by the time I have kids its much more likely they will be watching youtube from a smart tv app than on an internet browser making an account and reading comments. Considering the content is free for me and doesn't seem very harmful, I don't think the practice is very malignant or deceiving. Kids might have some weird playtime conversations with their friends during preschool and kindergarten but I doubt this will have any long-term effects on who they become when they grow up. Personally I'd prefer something a bit more educational than nursery rhymes but before they're old enough to talk and construct sentences and ask questions, this should be fine.

[TMD]

What kind of devilry am I looking at?

[Breezeep]

Good question.

[BaronOfStuff]

What in Christ's name.

[dew]

Sooo... this insane shit is basically SLIGE for babby attention capturing content, right? Just dangle something colourful and cheerful they vaguely recognize in front of their face and they'll get hypnotized for an hour while mommy does her nails and the neighbour.