There’s a growing and, frankly, disturbing trend on YouTube wherein people create and upload videos clearly geared towards children, but filled with violent and inappropriate content. How inappropriate? Come, walk with us and be dismayed.
When Kid-Friendly Is Anything But
The issue recently came to our attention when a friend with small children mentioned that he was increasingly finding very weird videos, on both the general YouTube site and on the YouTube Kids app, while searching for kid-friendly content.
What kind of weird? Dozens and dozens of videos that looked otherwise kid-friendly but with popular characters acting violent, getting hurt, or engaging in inappropriate behavior no parent would want their child to emulate.
We’ll admit, we were positive it had to be some sort of odd or isolated case. Of course there’s content on YouTube that isn’t kid friendly but videos co-opting popular characters to show kids violent and weird stuff? At first blush it sounds kind of like a razor-blades-in-the-candy story, right?
But, sure enough, when we fired up YouTube (both the regular site and the YouTube Kids app) and started searching for popular characters, within the first few search results there were plenty of bizarre examples of these videos.
Here’s an example we found on YouTube that shows characters from Peppa Pig (or close approximations there of) as monsters that steal children, throw them in a pot to cook them alive, and get shot in the head by the police. Yes, that’s an animated Peppa Pig-style cop holding a revolver.
“But wait!” you say,”That was on regular YouTube! What about the YouTube Kids app!
” We’ve got some pretty awful news—it was actually easier to find really weird videos when searching for the names of popular characters on the YouTube Kids app than it was on the regular YouTube app. (We’ll touch on why that’s the case in a moment.)You know that picture of Mickey Mouse dressed up like an old-fashioned robber that we opened this article with? That’s a screenshot from a video we found in the top search results after searching for “Mickey Mouse” in the YouTube Kids app. The 10 minute long video opens with two children (that look like baby Mickey and Minnie Mouse) playing in a park. The “robber” Mickey comes over and offers Minnie candy, which she accepts. She licks the candy, it drugs her, renders her unconscious, and the “robber” Mickey abducts her.
That same video also includes the same small baby Mickey that appears in the original segment spanking his teacher with a ruler, seen below, when she reprimands him for getting 3+3 wrong on the chalkboard.
Later in the segment we see Mickey beat up his sister, get screamed at by his mom and spanked, and an older Mickey and Minnie Mouse type pair drinking alcohol, only to have Minnie burst into tears when the camera pans and reveals she’s pregnant. Truly, you can’t make this stuff up.
These two videos are hardly isolated incidents, either. During our travels we came across examples of Peppa Pig knock offs stealing cars, Mickey Mouse knocks offs threatening each other with guns, characters “pranking” each other by urinating on each other (you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a poorly animated Elsa trick Kristoff into peeing on Anna), and an absurdly high number of videos that showed people in positions of authority misbehaving (like policemen beating kids and doctors yanking on children and feeding them syringes).
You know the helpful Mickey Mouse from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse who helps everyone in need and says “Awww, shucks!” a lot? Well you won’t find him in the videos we kept turning up, like the one, seen below, where Mickey lures Minnie into a graveyard only for her to be attacked by zombies and left screaming in terror in a puddle of her own urine. Again, seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.
Even when these character rip-off videos weren’t shocking, they were still packed with the kind of content most people wouldn’t want their young children watching like showing siblings knocking each other down and getting rewarded with candy or stealing from each other with no repercussions.
What’s particularly puzzling about it…
The post PSA: Parents, YouTube Is Littered with Creepy Pseudo “Kid-Friendly” Videos appeared first on FeedBox.