Animation Supervisor Asleep At The Wheel

October 27, 2017 11:20 PM

Sometimes, a 15 minute long Flash animation ostensibly for children goes places where you wouldn't expect.
Ch. 1. Head Shoulders Knees and Toes ♫ (Mad Scientist Edition)
Ch. 2. If You’re Happy and You Know It ♪ (Demonic Monster Truck With Magic Hands Edition)
Ch. 3. Five Little Skeletons Jumping on the Bed ♬
Ch. 4. A Demon of Pestilence In The Form of A Monster Truck Corrupts the Fair Lands and Causes Mortal Monster Trucks To Tremble
Ch. 5. A Noble Police Truck Attempts to Rid the Lands of the Four Wheeled Demon
Ch. 6. The Foul Realms of the Pestilence Truck concluded by
Ch. 7. Hello! It’s Halloween! ♪ (Post Monster Truck Chaser Edition)
posted by benzenedream (9 comments total)

This was the wrong day to stop drinking Red Bull & bath salts.
posted by duffell at 3:48 AM on October 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

I've probably blocked this channel on Youtube Kids on our tablet. I understand why there's a post here about it, but I'm a brutal critic about what my child watches. And there's so much terrible content on there you just have to be.
posted by Catblack at 7:17 AM on October 28, 2017

Nope nope nope. Guess just gonna stop watching YouTube until November 1st.
posted by FJT at 8:00 AM on October 28, 2017

The uncanny-valley almost-seems-made-by-humans weirdness of the Youtube kids' songs rabbit-hole is definitely a fertile ground for horror in itself. After seeing this on the flood of Finger Family videos (do be aware the linked video contains youtube user cr1tikal's standard edgy swearing schtick in copious amounts), I'm pretty sure if someone told me this was all a botnet running at the behest of Satan himself to subliminally turn children into weasels I wouldn't bat an eyelid. Even without the monster truck horror segment.
posted by eykal at 8:36 AM on October 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Wow, that Finger Family... is really something. I guess it's something like the Amazon bot making phone cases out of random photos? But that doesn't explain the millions of views.
posted by a car full of lions at 9:58 AM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

I get the feeling this is actually some kind of "Too Many Cooks" prank.


But even if it isn't...well, it's not necessarily weirder than regular kid's youtube.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:51 AM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Does it make me terrible to consider using this in elementary class?
posted by Trifling at 9:58 PM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Are these channels all subscribed to each other, or do they create subscriber bots? And do they have real people autoplaying the videos to boost the view count, or is that done by bots also?
posted by subdee at 11:32 AM on November 5, 2017

The 'bots' are children left unattended with iPads as babysitters.
posted by benzenedream at 4:05 PM on November 5, 2017 [2 favorites]