Thoughts On: Honey, YouTubers Are Poisoning The Kids
My thoughts on Honey, YouTubers Are Poisoning The Kids by Stephen Moore
This is a great article on the negative effects that the internet has on children, but I would also expand that to adults as well. Some really choice quotes:
It was one of the first holy shit moments I had of seeing how putting the Internet in the hands of the young was influencing them in ways they clearly didnāt understand.
This is something I see almost every day. Even among adults. I see people doom scrolling for hours and the sites using infinite scrolling and it is never a healthy thing. I call it "getting sucked into the infinite scroll" In the past it was more getting sucked into Wikipedia or something like that.
He might be the biggest YouTuber with over 316 million subscribers, but his channel is predatory, pure and simple.
All the big channels are like this. I mostly watch smaller ones, but those come with "sponsors" which are always a little shady. I understand the people trying to make money from their content and so it is a small price to pay to see what they have to share.
From there, āinauthentic authenticityā became his brand.
This is a great term. It really describes how off putting and creepy it is to see someone videotape themselves being "spontaneously" benevolent. The worst cases is where they endanger some animal in order to "rescue" them. Or videotape themselves helping a homeless person as if that person is just a prop in their lives. A similar sort of fraud is where they take an item, such as a tool, pair of shoes, or something similar and throw it in the mud only later to "find" them and restore them. It is nice to see a restoration video as it show appreciation and care for people's belongings, but some of them are obviously fake.