Just wait until the adults are people who grew up with the YouTube algorithm
Slightly off topic, but it just dawned on me that the youngest generation might not have as universal of a childhood compared to some before.
Like, everyone in school knew what SpongeBob was. Maybe you didn’t have a TV or you didn’t like watching it, but you knew the characters and the general gist of what happens in the show.
With kids on such giant platforms like YouTube, there’s so much variety, I wonder if the “brand recognition” will be as strong in 10 years.
I’m sure most kids know about Skibidi Toilet, the Paul brothers and Mr Beast.
What’s worse, is that the Paul brothers and Mr Beast use their influence to promote products directly to the children. Like Prime.
Many shows when we were kids were just drivers for toy sales though. Product placement was also huge and unregulated.
I imagine that 10-20 years from now, there will be a lot more young adults bonding over vague memories of videos that they loved when little, but that they can’t find a shred of anymore. Creators will have risen and fallen through the years. Some will shut down their channels and retire, others will be demonetized, and yet more will simply disappear without a trace. There won’t be a backlog of every kids’ video on YouTube; it’s not like PBS or Nickelodeon, where popular shows might get officially archived. Instead, people will be left vaguely describing plots they can’t fully remember, all the while getting a weird look from those who don’t know what they’re talking about. They may even come to think, “Maybe I just dreamed it all up?” and give up on their search for nostalgic connection.
Until the day one person finds an old screenshot from whatever the show was and shares it. That’s when everyone will flip out because, Holy shit, that’s it! That’s the show! At which point, they will collectively and slowly realize just how messed up the show actually was.
I’m 29 and this is already the case. A lot of the early 2000s internet is already getting hard to find, and even a lot of early YouTube feels like it’s been scrubbed clean, or had stuff auto-muted/removed due to copyright that drastically affects the content. Not to mention all the flash animations and whatnot that might not have made it to somewhere as big as Newgrounds. There’s a lot of stuff I remember watching that seems to be utterly lost
yt has been around for some 18 years now. there are already adults who grew up with it
YouTube changed. Of cause it always had some kind of algorithm but The Algorithm is relatively new
Yeah, we’ve gone from ‘charlie but me’ to ‘charlie pretends he’s not a Nazi on a clip from fox news’
The Algorithm has been A Thing long enough to have impacted young adults during their formative years.
At 25 I’m barely old enough that I entered adolescence just as “youtuber” became a career for many people (around 2012ish). The Algorithm has been part of it all my teens though I witnessed it becoming increasingly eldritch throughout and teaching its final untethered form in the second half of the 2010s. Today’s 20 year olds never knew anything else as they were 13 when elsagate was in full swing.
TL;DR how are your knees grandpa?
I really hate it, YouTube has more restrictions than Cable TV now… I remember when you were allowed to reference the fact that death, bigotry, and sexual assault existed. Now on Youtube you’re only allowed to reference the latter two if you’re PragerU and tying to say these are “Good things ackshaulkly”
They seem to be talking about it (and by extension streaming) as a replacement for TV. But TV was still a big thing 18 years ago.
Exactly why I heavily limit the amount and specifics of what my kids watch on it. Sadly I know too many kids that have been literally raised on YouTube, and they already act weird af.
Woke is when eyes more open. Checks out.
This sadly reminds me of when an Official Star Wars Youtube channel did animations to introduce the main characters to a younger generation. There’s one of Leia where they re-enact her shooting the group’s way into the garbage area.
And literally there were dozens of Far Right Star Wars “Fan” channels screaming about it, claiming that no scene like that existed in the actual movie and that they were “re-writing history to make Leia look more important than she really is”
They really are just massive sexists who pretend Rey’s a Mary Sue and that Leia never did anything but wear the slave outfit.
I like the accuracy of the eyes growing over time.
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this too. Just yesterday, I was thinking “what would Mr. Rogers say/think at a time like this?”
Then it dawned on me that maybe the worst parts of society had a radically different upbringing and media exposure than myself. 1 The so-called “violent” cartoons (many of which were just toy commercials) I get and recall people keeping that stuff from their kids. But to think of banning something like (1980’s) PBS in your home, of all things. Now I understand why that messaging existed in the first place - we might be worse off right now without it.
1. Insert “we-are-not-the-same-gen-x.jpg” meme here.
My only hope about public radio/TV, going forward, is that they’re already so used to operating on a shoestring budget from the government. It will unfortunately mean more funding drives, but I will definitely be far more likely to contribute if that becomes literally their only source of income.
And maybe without money from the government, they will be more independent, as lately NPR has been sliding right as an overcorrection over idiots that think reporting objective reality is biased because it makes their side look bad.
