The Further YouTube Adventures of a (Now) Four-Year-Old
I both love and hate YouTube. I originally subscribed to Premium because it's only $2 over a YouTube Music subscription. Now I'm glad I did because it's intolerable otherwise. I'm pretty good at YouTube algorithm curation, crafting a feed that generally give me stuff I want to see, although I remain largely dissatisfied with the algorithm experience.
The little guy would be very happy to just sit and watch YouTube all day. He very much knows his way around smartphones and Chromecast interfaces and can get into YouTube and use the search without assistance. And he will. He has absolutely no interest in YouTube Kids because it doesn't have half of what he wants to see. If you ask him what he wants to watch, he'll still say "Fans!" As we discussed last time, YouTube Kids does not have fans.
I've got to keep on him. He's using a profile on my YouTube Premium account, and even if I'm not with him, it means I can periodically go through his history and nudging him back on a reasonble track. YouTube, thankfully, hadn't tried to show him the worst shit, but it does occasionally try to get him to dip his tow in the garbage sewer to see if he'd like it. Specifically, if you search for fans, you get videos from obsessive fan nerds like you'd hope, but you also get videos of idiots just smashing the crap out of fans for no reason. With millions of views. He thinks that's pretty hilarious. I purge them from his watch history and tell YouTube not to suggest the channel if it shows up on the main page.
There's no way to block a channel on YouTube, frustratingly. And worse, it now knows that the person on the browser on a Linux desktop and the kid on the Chromecast are different people, so it makes different suggestions. This is infuriating. But it's probably making some line go up somewhere.
Anyway, what he ends up watching most of the time is generally pretty wholesome and kid-friendly, but I am not unaware of the dangers of giving a kid free rein on YouTube and I hate that the platform gives you next to no tools to mitigate them.
Fun stuff after the cut.
The Kiffness
This one's on me entirely. The little guy was suddenly interested in funny bird videos (especially "birds pooping in the toilet!" which is a real thing, apparently), so I thought he might dig The Kiffness and Ginger the Cockatiel's Kookie Kookie. And man, did he. Instant hit.
His interests in The Kiffness' repertoire diverge slightly from mine. I haven't managed to get him to love Alugalug cat or Coca-cola Man as much as I do. But Bock Bock Chicken is another hit.
Eu Amo Ventiladores – Canal Pedro
Oh, Pedro. This is currently his favourite fan channel. He's really into fan restoration videos, but most of those channels are a little bit dubious. Pedro is a fan-obsessed Brazilian kid and his dad will restore fans. The one annoying thing about this channel is it uses AI auto-dub to translate the Portuguese. I have a visceral revulsion to voice synth narration on YouTube these days, so this is a bit of a problem for me. And it especially grates with the dad, having gotten a fan to work, enthusiastically says something that gets translated (in a relatively affectless voice) as "Turn on! Turn on! Turn on! Turn on!" And then our little guy will echo "Turn on! Turn on! Turn on! Turn on!" 😮💨
Pedro's a good kid and his dad's pretty cool. But I worry that their house (literally) full of fans is giving the little guy something to aspire to.
Kid Crew
Kid Crew appears to be the final evolution of the kids-riding-on-power-wheels genre of kids' YouTube. And, unlike the inexplicable array of Ukranian kids with too much disposable income, the parents making the videos make more than a token effort to make the videos educational and fun.
Kid Crew was his favourite for a while, but I think his interest might be waning a bit. He'll still watch them when they're recommended, tho. And he gets a kick out of Mittens the cat.
Handyman Hal
Handyman Hal may have finally superseded Blippi. They do similar things, but Hal better aligns with his overall interest in fixing and making things. So I love that. Still a little bit annoying, tho.
Science Max
I have no idea how he stumbled on Science Max. I've tried to coax him into using the TVO Kids app, but Science Max is almost a decade old and you have to search to find him there. The YouTube channel is doing the usual YouTube kids thing of constantly re-uploading old videos in new compilations and constantly livestreaming. Whatever, Science Max is great and the little guy absolutely loves him. He was explaining Newton's Laws of Motion to Ellen the other night and keeps asking me to build a bridge out of pasta.
It hurts my heart a little bit every time they go to the Science Centre, tho.
Quiet Nerd
I admit, I love that he loves this channel. And he really does love it.
Jason aka Quiet Nerd's videos have settled into a formula: he spends the first half building (or rebuilding) an electric car/rover/shelter in the woods and then the second half actually using the thing to go camping, fishing and generally enthusing about how well everything turned out. It's delightfully charming and wholesome. And our little guy is now very enthusiastic about solar panels, batteries and differential gears.