this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Slightly off topic, but it just dawned on me that the youngest generation might not have as universal of a childhood compared to some before.
Like, everyone in school knew what SpongeBob was. Maybe you didn't have a TV or you didn't like watching it, but you knew the characters and the general gist of what happens in the show.
With kids on such giant platforms like YouTube, there's so much variety, I wonder if the "brand recognition" will be as strong in 10 years.
I’m sure most kids know about Skibidi Toilet, the Paul brothers and Mr Beast.
What’s worse, is that the Paul brothers and Mr Beast use their influence to promote products directly to the children. Like Prime.
Many shows when we were kids were just drivers for toy sales though. Product placement was also huge and unregulated.
True, but I like Transformers so it’s ok
I don't remember the people behind Power Rangers using their influence to get me to agree to being put through what amounts to torture for the hope of getting enough money to pay my bills though.
That’s odd, because I seem remember lots of pro-capitalist messaging on TV when I was growing up.
We were pressured to buy the toys, but we didn't have anything on the order of IRL Squid Game.
I was playing with your idea of getting put through torture to get money to pay the bills - if you interpret that as encouraging us to get a job under capitalism, it’s basically what that amounts to!
There were a good few game shows with that theme.
I imagine that 10-20 years from now, there will be a lot more young adults bonding over vague memories of videos that they loved when little, but that they can't find a shred of anymore. Creators will have risen and fallen through the years. Some will shut down their channels and retire, others will be demonetized, and yet more will simply disappear without a trace. There won't be a backlog of every kids' video on YouTube; it's not like PBS or Nickelodeon, where popular shows might get officially archived. Instead, people will be left vaguely describing plots they can't fully remember, all the while getting a weird look from those who don't know what they're talking about. They may even come to think, "Maybe I just dreamed it all up?" and give up on their search for nostalgic connection.
Until the day one person finds an old screenshot from whatever the show was and shares it. That's when everyone will flip out because, Holy shit, that's it! That's the show! At which point, they will collectively and slowly realize just how messed up the show actually was.
I'm 29 and this is already the case. A lot of the early 2000s internet is already getting hard to find, and even a lot of early YouTube feels like it's been scrubbed clean, or had stuff auto-muted/removed due to copyright that drastically affects the content. Not to mention all the flash animations and whatnot that might not have made it to somewhere as big as Newgrounds. There's a lot of stuff I remember watching that seems to be utterly lost
Early 2000's internet was best internet
I've noticed with my kids it's more about streamers. They all know them by name. They'll talk about their latest videos like we would with TV show episodes.