Ever stumble on some random YouTube video and wonder to yourself, "How did this piece of shit get 200,000 views?" Well, I have the answer.
Kids. Very small children enjoy the YouTube a lot more than you may be aware of, and I'm not lying when I tell you that the only videos they enjoy are the fucking weirdest and most annoying ones. We have one desktop computer in our house. At least three times a day, my kid will climb up on the office chair and just start surfing away, watching completely random shit for as long as she can. This annoys me, because A) I have shit to do on that machine. Hey kid, you already colonized the TV. Leave the fucking computer to Mr. Breadwinner. And B) Because the stuff she clicks is so harrowing to both watch and/or listen to.
In a child's hands, YouTube is like a long hallway, with doors leading to ever stranger and more inexplicable places. You click on a Wiggles video, you find a link to a homemade video of an animated dinosaur lighting his own farts, which leads you to a link to a crude drawing of a volcanic ass, which leads you to news footage of Mount St. Helen's blowing up, which leads you to a clip of Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker" dubbed in Korean. It's like Six Degrees Of Fuckedupness. And when I beg my kid to watch something relatively normal, like a Cookie Monster clip, she immediately clicks away to something awful. Here are some of the things you might find if you leave the surfing to a kid who doesn't know any better:
FUCKED UP EUROTRASH CARTOON ARTISTS
This is the Gummi Bear song. Unfamiliar with it? Well, just take one listen. After that, this horrible anthem will bore directly into your cerebellum and nest there for eternity. "Oh I'm a gummi bear. Yes, I'm a gummi bear! Oh, I'm a yummy chummy funny looking gummi bear!" DIE, gummi bear. I never thought I'd pine for the relatively mature beats of Crazy Frog. I now have a reflex in me where, if I see a bag of Haribo in a store shelf, I grab it, throw it on the ground, and stomp the shit out of it.
LARGE-GUMMED WOMEN MAKING AMATEUR NURSERY RHYME VIDEOS
This woman's name is Cullen, and she has produced dozens of creepy videos where she stares at the camera with her big Baba Booey gums, and waves and sings songs DIRECTLY TO YOUR KID. It's fucking creepy as shit, mostly because my kid seems to enjoy it. Listen lady, don't you have real kids somewhere that you can sing to? Are you barren? Do you really have to expand your empire digitally? It's like I'm stuck at Gymboree with the world's most annoying instructor.
LAZILY PRODUCED EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS
This is Puppy Dog. Even his name is lazy. And for the next five interminable minutes, this big shithead in a dog suit will talk to your child as if they're legally brain dead. "Hello! Hi! Hi! I'm puppy dog! Let us play!" Holy shit. These are children you're talking to, Dog. Not fellow dogs. To give you an idea of how poorly written these videos are, I transcribed the lyrics to one of the songs. This one is done to the tune of "When The Saints Come Marching In"
The train is yellow
The train is yellow
The train is yellow yellow yellow yellow
Oh yes the train is yellow
The train is yellow yellow yellow yellow
THAT IS A FUCKING HORSESHIT EFFORT, PUPPY DOG. Mix up your lyrics, or I will put arsenic on your Beggin' Strips. When you have kids, you quickly figure out which children's programming is well thought out, and which is written by six monkeys locked in a room with typewriters. This is the blurst of clips, I tell you.
SLIDESHOWS OF RANDOM VEHICLES SCORED BY A TERRIBLE LOCAL ROCK BAND
Complete with star wipes!
HOMEMADE NURSERY RHYME CARTOONS FROM UNKNOWN FOREIGN COUNTRIES
Eighty percent of the homemade videos your kid stumbles on will not come from America. Like this one. Where was it made? China? India? I can't spot the accent, it's that fucking weird. The nursery rhyme "Ding Dong Bell" is strange enough on its own without a pidgin interpretation.
Ding dong bell
Pussy's in the well
Who put her in?
Little Johnny Thin.
Who pulled her out?
Little Tommy Stout.
What a naughty boy was that
To drown a pussycat
The way these rhymes go, it's stunning to me that the fat kid doesn't eat the cat at the end. Would it shock you to know the comments for this video include such tidbits as…
O M G ! S O s o r r y ! I ' m j u s t t o o s c a r e d ! O k . . . . T h e r e w a s a l a d y w h o w a s w a l k i n g i n t h e f o r e s t w i t h h e r d o g a n d w a s k i l l e d . I f u r r e a d i n g t h i s , t h e n u w i l l f i n d a d e a d b l o o d y b o d y h a n g i n g i n u r c l o s e t . U w i l l b e h a u n t e d a n d k i l l e d b y h e r . t o s t o p i t?? p o s t i t h i s t o 6 o t h e r v i d e o s i n 3 0 G O O D L U C K
So yeah. Pussies in wells, homicidal skinny kids, and dead bodies in closets. Your kid is better off watching a George Romero film. But these videos get even creepier as they drift into pseudo-anime territory. Like this one.
"Allow me to interdoooce myself! I'm your friendly neighborhood Rhyme Man! And say hello to Rhyma! And Rhymey!" Nearly four million people have watched this video. All of them will have night terrors for the next three decades. CLAP YOUR HANDS! CLAP YOUR HANDS! LISTEN TO THE MUSIC AND CLAP YOUR HANDS, OR WE WILL SLIT YOUR LITTLE THROAT.
NAUGHTY TALKING BABY SONGS
These videos are produced by a company named FlowGo, whose headquarters I hope burn to the ground in an enormous gas leak explosion. There are thousands of these things out there. And while I love a good fart joke, they lose their charm when spoken by a creepy talking baby with a sped-up Alvin and Chipmunks voice effect. This is why the E-Trade baby needs to be beheaded.
OCCASIONALLY WELL-CRAFTED SONGS EVERYONE CAN ENJOY
Wait, what's this? Say, this isn't awful! Oh, thank you, Mr. Rhino. Thank you so very much. You are a welcome oasis in a giant pool of suck.
