execrable children's programming pox

Furchester Hotel is pretty great. I dubbed off a whole lot of episodes onto audio CD and Ella listens to them most nights when going to sleep.

Go Jettas also very popular round these parts.

That is such a great idea about the audio burning!

octonauts has some weird dynamics I'm not quite sure about

- captain barnacles is clearly not an especially experienced seaman nor is he very well versed in science; I suspect he is a sort of Richard Branson / James Cameron type who came into a very large fortune by some means or another and has decided to follow his passion, with the help of some hangers-on that don't realize (or do, and don't care) how incredibly dangerous he is

- rather disappointing that the kiwi dog got re-dubbed for the american edition. by which I mean profoundly upsetting, every time she talks it feels like the curse word cut-outs in a radio edit, where you're reminded they intentionally ruined something on purpose for the lamest of reasons

- kwazii has no place at sea - he's clearly deranged, a danger to himself and others, the only thing I can figure is that he's barnacles old pal from school who just won't ever go away; he and kwazii have a really problematic co-codependency thing going on and I have to imagine that many eligible and attractive partners approached the wealthy "captain" over the years only to realize that his addled buddy with the questionable hygiene was never going to settle for anything less than 95% of barnacles' time and attention

- professor inkling is a total fraud, as is obvious to every other professional on the ship, but thanks to the credulousness of barnacles, scientific credentialism and the utter failure of meritocracy in the 3d cartoon animal world as well as ours, his paperwork is sufficient to ensure his continued employment on the octopod despite being only slightly less useless than kwazii

- the other crew members are remarkably talented and incredibly chipper, because not being both of those things is how you know you won't last long on the octopod with the aforementioned three idiots running the show. They all seem like sharp, hard working graduates at the top of their respective classes, but none of them went to "name" schools and of course they would jump at the chance to earn what is probably an inflated salary on a "research" expedition which doesn't have to rely on finicky government funding and there's no pressure to publish original work or whatever. Looking at the penguin and the otter in particular I'm guessing they're also carrying a massive amount of student loan debt.

- the fact that the below-decks junior crew are all "vegimals" seems to indicate a pervasive racism / caste system persists in octonaut world, so once again, not that different from real life

I have similar thoughts re Bing: it seems to show a future post-human utopia with evolved-into-anthropomorphic-form animals are cared for by syntehtic AI intelligences in the form of friendly toys

lol tom booming post

That is everything I have wanted to say but could not put into words.

the peppa pig episode where they go on holiday is fucking hilarious

"This is Captain Emergency speaking"

every time Octonauts ends up being the day's viewing pick i think of this:

kwazii has no place at sea - he's clearly deranged, a danger to himself and others

haha well it's fucking true

The first words my son says to me every morning are "I wanna watch Paw Patrol" in a really whiny voice. Cannot wait for this phase to be over.

I love how this thread was started by someone with no kids who just wanted to complain about these shows that are only ever watched by kids or adults with kids

"I saw an episode of Doodlebops" hey bud you had literally no reason to resign from the Never Heard Of Doodlebops Club

Paw Patrol is the fucking worst, luckily my son's phase only lasted about 6 months. He's now heavily into Horrible Histories, which really is brilliant.

Seems pretty shitty of Ryder to summon all the pups to the lookout when he already knows which ones he wants.

Not as shitty as his cruel way of forcing them to use expensive military equipment to eg climb trees rather than their l, I dunno, claws. He is crippling their natural skills

Watched a bunch of episodes of Dinotrux with my daughter this afternoon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGiYFOZ-iqs

Holy shit this threadbump led me to read Tom's Octonauts post and yeah. Vegimals are a clear analogue to Potterverse house-elves.

I hate that the boys go adventuring and the girls are in support roles. Hypergendering is already a problem (why are Minions and Penguins of Madagascar all male, don't get me started on Smurfs).

Dinotrux is the same thing as Dinosaur Train and Dino Dan - it's like brainstorming gone stupid: "Hey gang, let's just spitball here: what do kids like?" "Dinosaurs!" "Trucks!" "Trains!" "Great! combine any two of those things and you have a show."

OTOH "Nella the Princess Knight" is trying a bit too hard to check all the boxes, and fails in the other direction. Is a puzzlement.

Have read some new Transformers comics recently, and the writer has made a whole bunch the ostensibly male characters overtly gay, created a bunch of female characters, and also introduced characters who are regendering themselves from male to female, all of which seems a step in the right direction that will no doubt be greeted with howls of rage

transitioning transgender transformers huh

there's more than meets the eye!

Robots in dese guys.

I feel like I'd trade a 3-day marathon of the trolls movie on loop or any of the above shows, no matter how execrable, for never having to watch or overhear a Zach King vine or a Lonnie Dos youtube again for the rest of my life.

"Hey! Heard you preferred the trolls!"

*suddenly turns into troll*

"You better with this? Looks like I'm a troll now!"

MY SON: How does he do it?

Also, and I'm fully aware of the irony of my wishing death on this particular parent, but Batman Dad needs to die.

My son is obsessed with any youtube video that has Thomas the Tank Engine on it, usually some crappy flash animation or homemade action movies using Thomas toys. Fairly harmless, although often infuriatingly bad, but recently there have been ads for Jigsaw (horror movie) beforehand, that I can't skip for a few seconds. Any way to get rid of these? Other ads are usually just for toys etc.

ublock origin blocks all YT ads and is more or less the reliable standard for adblockers (make sure it's origin and not standard "ublock" which is apparently hated for some reason)

thanks - we watch it through a smart tv which I'm not sure you can put adblockers on. might just disable the youtube app and let him watch it on my laptop.

YouTube kids app is designed to avoid this exact problem, not saying it's wonderful of course.

We just keep an ear out. You can’t leave that responsibility to anybody else, much less a robot programmed by somebody on a short term contract who, even if they have kids, probably doesn’t really care less about yours.

well yeah, it just starts immediately in a scary voice. we were thinking of telling him tv YouTube had gone away anyway, we've got loads of actual proper Thomas episodes for him to watch...
he got into actual videos of car factories from manufacturers for a few days, these were pretty cool though.

My kid is super into Dinosaur Train lately, which I don’t hate because he gathers all his rubber dinosaurs together when it comes on and tells me their names and sometimes he yells DINOSAUR TRAIN like the theme song. Also I always mentally replace the first line of the song with the opening line from Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story”.

I like it much more than Wild Kratts which he was way into for a while before that. Though that show did get him obsessed with walruses to the degree that he wants to be one for Halloween.

Other shows sort of come and go:

- Paw Patrol is fucking terrible but I’m kind jealous I didn’t come up with a show that kills a quarter of each episode with a stock montage of the team mustering for whatever. He loves his Paw Patrol shirts though. My wife bought a season on amazon when he was sick so we’re stuck with that around

- Daniel Tiger sometimes is really soothing and sometimes makes me want to claw my eyes out

- he had a Peg + Cat phase but that only lasted like a week or two, which is sad cause I liked that one

- sometimes he’s into Sesame Street but not that often which is again sad cause I like it

- Yo Gabba Gabba is awesome but it’s not on Netflix or PBS so no regular access

- sometimes he likes Cat in the Hat but fuck that show

Anything though is better than toy videos or whatever weird garbage he ends up with while using YouTube on the iPad

We’re PJ Masks all the time now.

We've seen all of those phases and weathered them all.

Possibly controversial opinion: On balance, children who can control their own entertainment input (whether by searching on their own, following chains of "if you like this..." suggestions, and/or abandoning things they're tired of) are happier children. And they're WAY easier to deal with than children who need frequent parent interventions to keep them satisfied with their entertainment streams.

In my childhood, our choices were to (A) watch what was on or (B) not watch what was on.

In the childhood of my nieces and nephews, there were more options. You could put in a video! And you could ask someone to change it to a different video if that one wasn't appealing!

Nowadays my children just flop down with their tablets on whatever surface is nearest, and they watch what they feel like watching (within a wide but constrained universe).

N.B.: I love them to pieces, and I assure you I interact with them plenty. But I'm glad of not having to deal with "Paw Patrol, but not THIS episode" every couple minutes when I'm trying to get some work done.

Yeah, my son is too young to bring up a program on his own so there’s usually this ten minute quest to figure out which Daniel Tiger episode someone talks about a pie in or something.

I know it's a cliche, but I have yet to se anything remotely as irritating as Barney.

pk ha yep same here figuring out which ep has diesel 10 and Henry and a ghost

I like it much more than Wild Kratts which he was way into for a while before that. Though that show did get him obsessed with walruses to the degree that he wants to be one for Halloween.

My daughter has been a Wild Kratts super fan for like 2 years and will drop words like 'subnivean zone' into casual conversation which leaves her mother and I scrambling to google up what the hell she is talking about. It's a good problem to have imo.

N.B.: I love them to pieces, and I assure you I interact with them plenty. But I'm glad of not having to deal with "Paw Patrol, but not THIS episode" every couple minutes when I'm trying to get some work done.

― looser than lucinda (Ye Mad Puffin), Sunday, October 15, 2017 4:25 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, my son is too young to bring up a program on his own so there’s usually this ten minute quest to figure out which Daniel Tiger episode someone talks about a pie in or something.

― President Keyes, Sunday, October 15, 2017 9:42 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also yeah, I'm glad we're past this phase and my daughter can for the MOST part figure out which episode she wants to watch. Because otherwise it's me diving into http://dtrain.wikia.com/wiki/Episode_List or whatever.

So much Dinosaur Train. But I realized that they seem to want to be scientifically accurate by having to travel through time in order to see all the different species some of which existed closer to us than to other dinosaurs.

I also realized that full size pteranodons, standing, would probably be about the size of human adults so the main characters are roughly the size of adults and children which is kind of awesome for scale purposes.

Dinosaur Train is mostly tolerable. I initially rolled my eyes about it because the premise seemed like focus-grouped boy catnip: hey, what do boys like? Trains! Great. What else? DinosaurS! Okay, awesome.

- There's also TWO shows featuring dinosaur/truck hybrids. All male, of course. Children's television is already gender-segregated enough, come the fuck on.

- The carnivores eat "meat," which is - literally - a pile of meat. The show does not address (nor should it) who the meat used to be, because they otherwise make a great show of learning about and befriending all manner of creatures.

- Why is the only technology steampunky-af trains? They can get it together to do trains and submarines, but then they stop there and everything else is done with sticks and rocks.

Of course, lots of suspension-of-disbelief required for a grownup to watch children's television. Bubble Guppies features mermaids who are underwater but who still have a fire department. And deserts.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51N9SD6MW8L.jpg

I had a long talk with my daughter yesterday about whether Moana is a princess.

Went to lots of interesting places; we discussed metafiction, cultural appropriation, and power imbalances. Kids these days are woke af.

She’s the daughter of the village chief.

We’ve also had productive conversations about Moana.

“What’s a demigod? Is that half god half human?”

“Yes and now we need to have a long conversation about theology.”

Right, the topic starts with "the daughter of a chief is not a necessarily a princess and different cultures treat these topics differently" etc.

(I have to physically stop myself from my normal Pocahontas digression here. Pocahontas is the daughter of a chief, not a princess ffs. And she did not get romantically busy with John Smith, ffs; she was like 12! They were friends, but she married a totally different dude. Disney is garbage, etc. But we don't need to do that one because I already flogged it to death years ago and anyway we did Virginia history in fourth grade.)

Anyway the movie has the line "you're wearing a dress and you have an animal sidekick, that makes you a princess," so we get to talk about fourth wall, "meta-" etc., and the degree to which contemporary children's movies sometimes subvert tropes while simultaneously reinforcing them.

Unfortunately my son found a series of weird-ass unlicensed fan videos that are premised on Maui/Moana marrying and having kids, which we agree is insane, so we get to address fair use and shipping and fanfiction while also addressing consent, power, age gaps, the obliteration of platonic friendship....

That all makes my brain hurt. Glad my kid just likes to sing the songs and doesn’t ask questions.

Ha, be glad we didn't feel the need to talk about whether Lin-Manuel Miranda counts as an appropriator of Polynesian culture. Or whether Puerto Rican ancestry gives him a "well, that's kind of an islander" get-out-of-jail-free card. Or whether (half-Maori New Zealander) Jemaine Clement is okay, but maybe should not have done a David Bowie impression because wypipo, etc.

All of which are real Internet takes of varying degrees of performative wokeness.

how old is your kid?

Ten.

ugh
https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2

I am 99.9% sure all the videos we watch are fine but from now on I'm gonna build up a playlist of things I have personally vetted and only watch those. I might have come across ones with hideous blasts of crying (and switched it off immediately).

Most of the crying videos we've seen are actually not that sinister, tbh. I'm surprised the author couldn't figure out what was happening in the video; the outsider figure cries when the heads/faces don't match up, giggles/cheers when they do. It's easily the least sinister form of the type of video he's describing (we've encountered some very unfortunate claymation-esque pooping Elsa/Spiderman videos as well as some super macabre Thomas the Tank Engine videos; there was also a homemade video with Peppa Pig toys that ended with Peppa accidentally hitting George in the head while playing where George ended up lying in a pool of blood and Peppa was yelling "GEORGE, WAKE UP" at him before we turned it off).

The crying videos ARE annoying as sin, though.

hah, I knew this bump would be about that

is that last video completely AI-generated or was that dreamed up by an actual person? feels like a James Ferraro art project but even then it's too weird and haphazardly random. I had no idea this world existed.

the ironic thing is that a bunch of parents afraid of their kids being exposed to this stuff are now gonna have their YouTube recs loaded with it, and I now do