Amanda Hess is great. This is important cultural critique, in real time. Future humans and our robot masters alike will thank her and the Times for the sober context these video essays provide for the shifting, twisting, self immolation that is mass culture in America today. Keep it up!
I don't find money grubbing, exploitative, attention seeking parents and their offspring amusing or cute. It's actually disgusting and disturbing. I guess I'm old. I didn't even know this was a thing. I was better off not knowing.
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We can thank the parents of David after the Dentist, who made enough money humiliating him to pay off their house.
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I think these videos teach children that: 1) there is no such thing as privacy and 2) adults are there to exploit them, not raise them. The kids don't choose, or opt in if you prefer, to have their every meltdown or cute moment publicized. I think parents who internet-publish their kids constantly are guilty of child abuse.
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Wow. Just... wow. This makes me feel so ancient. The first time I ever saw a video of myself, it was just a couple seconds of the back of my head, accidentally caught on somebody else's video of an event. I was 14. It was the most surreal and awesome thing in the world. Who ever sees the back of their head? In motion? Nobody, ever! And that was in the 90s, I'm not THAT old. I know this is true for any technology and yes, maybe I do sound old, but so much of the magic of it is lost when you overuse it. Just like a kid buried in toys sees nothing special in yet another toy, a kid who's constantly on video will see nothing special in recording or watching a video. Or a photo. The family album or the family videos are no longer a special thing to be treasured and looked at with warm nostalgia, but a constant reminder of that thing my parents make me do all the time.
The wide availability of technology is tempting, and I agree that it's hard to resist capturing every moment. But I try to be subtle about it and go for adorable candids, than staging a show for the entire world. And my kids absolutely love occasionally watching videos of themselves, to remember a fun event or cute story that their fleeting minds have already forgotten. I'll fight to keep the magic, along with their privacy.
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