He Said
The only difference between viral YouTube videos of unsuspecting kids doing embarrassing things and America's Funniest Home Videos is the Bob Saget segue.
Well, that and money. YouTube videos don't make money, which is the goal of showing stupid videos of kids on national television. So which is worse, America's or YouTube's funniest videos?
Since the first videos of kids went viral online, people have been harping on the parents for exploiting their kids. I guess it's exploitation when there's no money to be made. These videos have been around since the show hosted by Saget first got going. In those cases, the parents showed off the video in order to make $10,000.
Nobody is making $10,000 from their YouTube video, so why do people bother posting these videos?
Maybe some people really do not understand what this thing called the Internet really is. There are no rules on the Internet, so people must tread lightly in this virtual space. It's possible a parent shot a video of his paranoid seven-year-old boy paranoid after being gassed at the dentist and thought he'd like the boy's grandparents to see it. So he posted it online.
That video of the boy screaming and asking if the environment around him is real has been viewed almost 102 million times, since it was uploaded two years ago. The Daily Show used a clip of the boy screaming just last week, probably in a re-enactment of a politician's reaction to finding out there will be no pay increase in Congress this year.
The Internet isn't the problem. The problem is the people who are posting these things. Those videos will exist in cyberspace for as long there is cyberspace. You can't take down Charlie Bit My Finger. That video is up there for good.
It was a cute video, but there aren't any boundaries anymore. We share everything. Everybody is putting their entire lives online, and that's fine when it's your choice. But parents are posting these videos of their kids, and maybe in five or 10 years those kids will not want those videos to be available for the rest of the world.
Parents have the responsibility of making these decisions for their children. Posting videos of embarrassing things they do at the time may seem cute, but it could become a sticky issue when the screaming boy goes to high school and the other students mock-scream in his direction. At that time, if he were to ask his parents why they posted that video, the best response the kid is going to get is that they thought it was hilarious.
They are right. It is funny for everybody except the child. Children expect a certain amount privacy within their own home, and that is all lost when that privacy is plastered on the Internet.
She Said
I'm pretty sure everyone has had a funny video forwarded to them at some point. Who hasn't seen the roller-blading dog, or young Justin Bieber singing Usher in his living room? These remarkable things have been captured by others strictly for the purpose of being shared with the rest of us. And most of the time, it's pretty harmless and the subjects in the videos aren't risking a social meltdown as a result.
This isn't the case with all videos, of course.
For some reason unknown to me, people like to post videos of their children doing just about anything. Go to YouTube and search "trick or treating" and you'll see what I mean: the search turns up hundreds of family movies of kids out on Halloween. There's nothing fun or cool about watching someone else get candy, so why were these videos posted?
I suspect that parents are just being proactive in creating embarrassment for their children when they hit adolescence. Instead of breaking out the photo album to show the new boyfriend their daughter's baby pictures, parents can now just click a couple of links. That's a frightening new power.
Seriously though, posting a shot of your baby doing something out of the ordinary might seem like a fun time, but if the video somehow goes viral, the child will be scarred for life. Can you imagine going to high school with 1,000 kids who have seen a video of you screaming before your first shower when you were three years old? Plus, we're an age of people who spend most of our time online, so even if your baby video isn't popular, if it exists somewhere in cyber space, there's a chance that someone will come across it sometime. And there's an even better chance that the person who stumbles across it is someone who hates you.
Looking at it from a different perspective, if your kid can do something crazy cool, then ya, show the world. Consider Sophia Grace and Rosie, the tutu-wearing Nicki Minaj rappers. Their video drew so much attention that the girls have been on Ellen twice, have sung with Nicki Minaj and have dozens of new and colourful wigs like their idol. Ellen DeGeneres even dressed up as Sophia Grace for Halloween this year. Pretty cool, when you consider that last year she was Snooki's poof.
Not saying these kids won't be horribly scarred later in life when they see the videos of themselves tearing around the stage of the Ellen show. Fortunately they'll have 15 minutes of fame with which to comfort themselves.
Moral of the story: consider your kids before you upload videos of them doing random things. You might think the seven minutes of your daughter crushing chocolate cake into her hair is priceless and YouTube-worthy, but I have a feeling that that same daughter, aged 16 years, isn't going to be so impressed.
