Something Is Wrong on the Internet

That reads like a pitch for an episode of Black Mirror.

 

Real life is basically an episode of Black Mirror. This kind of stuff makes me afraid to have kids

 

I read the NYT article about this on Sunday, and it just baffles me - especially the fact that this kind of stuff is in any way lucrative to make. No one should be getting paid to terrorize children like that, especially with such shit videos.

 

I've spent 9 years working with children in a computer class. The shift from software to internet based entertainment has made it so hard to monitor content on a larger scale. Although parental controls are a heaven sent, they are not a sure thing.

I think more attention should be drawn to the content on the internet. It has become toxic past the point of the regular cess pits such as 4chan.

 

was super skeptical at the beginning of the article but watching the video "buried alive" posted at the bottom is making me genuinely extremely uncomfortable and i really have no idea how a kid brain would even process this shit

 

The most "no shit Sherlock" headline ever, haha

 

I’m about 7 min into the BURIED ALIVE Outdoor Playground video and I’m pretty entertained. Seeing Spider-Man, Joker, Venom, Hulk, and Batman Drive through McDonalds on motorcycles and change to the colors of the burgers they ate was dope.

But in all seriousness, really interesting and well written/articulated article.

 

What the fucking fuck

 

This guy REALLY avoids linking some of the weirder shit. Injections, broken teeth, dissections, eating poop, debasement, etc ALL featuring spider-man, Elsa, the joker, and venom.

Someone said it best: it's as if an AI made these. Loose fragmented collages of the same "topical" ideas in a very weird, unnerving way

 

There’s an cutesy animated video that pops up in my niece’s suggested feed from time to time where Maui gets Moana pregnant. That’s enough internet for me.

 

At the last law firm I worked at, one of the other attorneys had a two-year-old daughter who would come in with her from time to time. She loved to sit on my lap and watch YouTube videos, usually of animals, but as we started to poke around the exact sphere of content this article highlights, shit got weird fast. This is one of the videos she requested most often, and after conferring with multiple friends, we’ve come to the conclusion that live-action Elsa crushing cheese balls on a trampoline with a dog has to be a fetish. Like, someone is definitely getting off to this.

 

Completely bizarre!

 

This is exactly the reason why we had to tell my 4 year old daughter that YouTube was "broken", and remove all access to it on our ipad. The surprise egg and finger family craze was one thing, but she increasingly landed on really disturbing videos. Really scary stuff. The "other videos" scroll on the right side of YouTube is dangerous.

 

Very unnerving article. This summarisation in particular is just so depressing: "What concerns me is that this is just one aspect of a kind of infrastructural violence being done to all of us, all of the time, and we’re still struggling to find a way to even talk about it, to describe its mechanisms and its actions and its effects".

I don't know whether it was my personal naivety/ignorance that I didn't notice before, but 2016-17 is when I really started to realise how out of hand & all-consuming the internet is becoming. It is already so damaging in so many ways and it is the responsibility of the giants like Google/Youtube/Facebook/Twitter to start taking real, purposeful action to prevent and minimize that damage imo.

 

Definitely some weird/unnerving themes in these videos.

Reminds me that I grew up watching Ren & Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life, and Pete & Pete starting at age 9 though. Looking back on those shows now, there's definitely A LOT of adult themes and jarring animation, but i turned out ok.

Right? Right?!

 

Yeah honestly that video was fucking dank I don’t get what the big deal is

 

I'll always remember that one episode of Rocko's Modern Life where Rocko lost his job and became a phone sex operator. The punchline was Mrs. Bighead calling in and both of them realizing who they were speaking with and promptly hanging up. That episode came out in 93 and was on replay for years after. I recently watched a FB video about how messed up 90s cartoons were and I instantly remembered being 9 years old watching that scene and not understanding it. Back when I was growing up, it was always there but somewhat hidden. These kids today have no shot at a somewhat innocent life. I just saw a video of Spiderman pissing on Elsa in a tub and the way it was titled, you would think it was a normal video.

 

Same here. Our daugter turns 5 next month and we've caught her watching some seriously questionable animation and live vids on the YouTube Kids app so we've taken it off all devices and have only kept PBS Kids and Disney Jr for when we do allow screen time.

 

I have been hesitant to go into the details of my profession here on the boards but I will say this - this goes way deeper than even this article's darkest suggestions. There are a lot of things hiding in plain sight on the most mainstream of internet hubs...

 

I hope by your profession, you're not referring to the fact that you work for a place that takes part in the manufacturing of this filth

But if you can't say anything a simple "no" to that will suffice, I won't make you sell out any kind of anonymity you're required if you aren't taking part in it

 

My kids definitely used to watch those "surprise egg" videos. Luckily none of it got too weird and they couldn't navigate it on their own, but once I started hearing horror stories any kind of YouTube access got nixed right away. It's sad how much we have to shelter our kids from things like this...like, it's one thing to monitor their internet access because that's obviously not a big deal, but every kid has a smartphone now and they're gonna be going to school with other kids with this stuff and ugh. It's horrific thinking about the future.

 

Well this is disturbing as hell

 

As terrifying as it is that this applies to kids, I'm conflicted about being even more afraid of how the internet is affecting and priming adults for certain attitudes and viewpoints.

It makes me want to unplug from everything - but then how would I know what is going on in the world?

Or do I even know the truth of what goes on in the world now?

 

wow so yeah, that article was....distressing on so many levels