There Are No Girls on the Internet - The children of “mommy bloggers” are speaking up - Stuff Mom Never Told You

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

There's a difference between posting a picture of your child on social media and making a business out of posting content about your child. New legislation aims to keep minors from being exploited onl...ine  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:01:16 or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. We talk a lot on this podcast about the ethics around, not to mention the safety of social media, especially when it involves young people. And if you've spent any time at all on platforms like Instagram or TikTok, you've no doubt seen parents who make their kids, even babies, the focal point of their entire social media presence. And sometimes this can be big business, generating a meaningful income in brand deals and partnerships. But what happens to kids when their parents use them for social media content?
Starting point is 00:02:11 It's actually kind of uncharted territory. There isn't even a ton of research on the psychological impacts because it's so new. And this is really one of those situations where technology, what it makes possible and the norms around it have evolved more quickly than our research or laws have. But here's what we do know. Young people who have had this experience of being the focal point of a mommy blog or social media account are speaking up. And now, new legislation aims to regulate how parents can legally use and profit from their kids on social media. I joined my friends Annie and Samantha over at the podcast Stuff
Starting point is 00:02:47 Mom Never Told You to discuss. And honestly, I really, really, really want to know what y'all think. Because like I said, this is totally new territory. And none of us really know how it will impact young people. So I'd love to hear your thoughts. Hey, this is Annie. And Samantha. And welcome to Stephon Never Told You, a production of Eyeheart Radio. And today we are once again thrilled, so ecstatic, joyful to be joined by the amazing world traveling Bridget Todd. I love the introductions you all give. They like truly warm my heart. Yes, well, you warm our heart by being here, especially when you're doing so much other stuff and you are coming at us. from a different location, correct?
Starting point is 00:03:50 That's right. I'm coming from you live. It won't be live when people hear this, but live for right now from Mexico City, Mexico, where it's nice and warm. Yeah, it's lovely here. It looks lovely. You've got like a healthy light glow coming in.
Starting point is 00:04:07 Behind me, where we're staying is like, has a lovely view and like all the different monuments and stuff. And then there's, I didn't know that Mexico City is so mountainous. So it's like a really, it's kind of like being in California. like a beautiful view, but then skyscrapers, yeah, 10 out of 10 can recommend. Yes. So you're having a good time. Can you give us some highlight, some food maybe that you've had?
Starting point is 00:04:32 Oh, yes. Everything I've eaten has been amazing. Honestly, it's so, so one of the reasons I wanted to come to Mexico City was because of the food. I've been told that you could go to, like, Michelin Star, super-boosy restaurants and get a delicious meal in Mexico City if you wanted to, or just get, like, like, you know, cheap tacos on the street, and that would be delicious. And so I've been eating all the things. Lots of street tacos, which are great.
Starting point is 00:04:57 Something else I like is they take breakfast very seriously here, which I am a breakfast person. I really like that. So lots of good breakfast items. Yeah. So far I've only been here since Saturday. So it hasn't been that long. But looking forward to eating all the things.
Starting point is 00:05:11 Yes. Oh, yes. So Saturday. Oh, you've been there almost a week. So I think you've gotten some variety. I'm sure you're going to have a whole lot more. but that's, I'm very jealous of, like, the breakfast because I'm sure it's all spicy and delicious.
Starting point is 00:05:23 There's something about a savory, spicy breakfast. I just, it just hits the spot. It does. It really does. Wow. I want it. Come the next to go to me. I'll be there.
Starting point is 00:05:36 Save a couch for me. Save a couch. Yes. Yes, it says, well, we're looking forward to checking back in. More food updates, hopefully. But yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to join us from a different city when you haven't been there that long. Oh, always a pleasure. And my own podcast, there are no girls on the internet, is on a hiatus.
Starting point is 00:06:00 So I feel like in this time where I'm not podcasting, having an outlet where I can be like, I saw this thing on the internet and I have to talk about it with somebody has been great for me. So thank you for having me. Yes, absolutely. And the topic you brought today is fascinating and such like a big one. And one that we have discussed a lot on the show recently because we've been kind of on a tech streak on the show. Love it.
Starting point is 00:06:32 And not to put words into anyone else's mouths. But I didn't grow up with social media. I got it late college, I would say. was the earliest that I got. Some friends of mine got it when I was in high school, but I was kind of a late bloomer, as they say, and I know it sounds kind of like back in my day, but I'm pretty thankful for it, honestly, in a lot of ways. And this kind of new phenomenon of all of our lives, but especially in this outline, Bridget, of children's lives
Starting point is 00:07:14 being on the internet is fairly new and in a lot of ways kind of disturbing, a little unsettling. I did want to ask before we get into this conversation, both of you, what was your kind of experience with social media?
Starting point is 00:07:32 And also, and you can pass on this one, because I know it's kind of a fraught subject, does your family follow you on social media? Ooh, what a good question. Well, you know, I, we just before we got on here talked about the fact that I am from the generation of beepers and that the internet was not a thing until I almost got into college essentially. Like at the tail end of everything, the beeper was due to my job. And my first job out of college, I was a child abuse investigator.
Starting point is 00:08:07 and those systems were getting online, I was still in the time where we were doing everything by hand, essentially. That was where the technology and social media was fairly new for me. I think outside of college had like MySpace and Facebook. I dabbled at first. And since then, I'm like, okay, I like the social media thing,
Starting point is 00:08:33 but I'm also very grateful, especially seeing what my nieces and nephew have gone through with social media, which they are Gen Z or so is a whole different level. I do have family that follow me. I do not like it. And now I'll post less because they follow me. Yeah. We were talking about how the first time I met you, Samantha.
Starting point is 00:08:51 This was just a couple years ago. You had a beeper on your person the first time we met in person. It was like four years ago. Yeah. My relationship with social media, I, Annie, I'm kind of like you. Like, I am so glad that I came of age in a time where social media, like, I'm glad that what I was doing on social media or like the early days of my internet usage is not still around the haunt me, or at least God, I hope not. So I was using things like live journal when I was in early high school.
Starting point is 00:09:27 And I remember I was in college when we first got Facebook. And before Facebook, it was my space. So, like, I was like a scene kid, and so, like, MySpace dominated my college experience. Like, that was, like, how you understood and kept up with my gross scenester, hipster friends in college. But it's funny because even though I was dabbling with social media back then, it's so different than it is today. Like, it doesn't even feel like the same thing. I guess it technically was social media, but the implications were. so different than. I mean, back then you were spending hours making it so that when you go to
Starting point is 00:10:10 your MySpace page, it has like falling stars and an auto play panic at the disco song that nobody can pause. It was stuff like that. It was social media, but it was so different than today. The question of whether or not my family follows me on social media, I don't allow them to follow me on social media. This could be a longer conversation, but I feel like I've kind of accepted that my social media and digital presence is not actually who I am in real life. And so, you know, you should really be thinking about like when you post on social media, like, who is your audience? Who is this for? And so who I actually am, the audience for that is like my friends and family, people who know me in real life. My online persona, if you will, that's not for my friends and family.
Starting point is 00:10:59 That's what people who are interested in my podcast, interested in my content, that kind of thing. And so I draw a pretty clear distinction between the two. I almost think of my social media or my digital self as my avatar for my real self. And I don't like the idea of the two worlds kind of overlapping. So I try to keep a very clear distinction between my friends and family, IRL, and my social media persona, which I don't see as my real self, if that makes sense. I know I probably sound like somebody who just took a huge bong rip. I swear to God, I have not.
Starting point is 00:11:36 You know, that's pretty fascinating because I think that says a lot to the reality of social media. When you say it like that, there is a persona and there is this whole level of understanding that there's a difference between the person and what's seen on screen and in different accounts and different platforms. And I know as we're talking about the subject you're bringing, I have a lot of opinions, so I'm really, really excited and a lot of concerns just as being in child welfare, but in that level of what we see and what is posted and who has control of what is being posted. Absolutely. It's so complicated. And I think it's complicated for me as a grown woman in my 30s. I can only imagine how much more complicated it gets navigating this as a young person.
Starting point is 00:12:23 So I know that I came on the show quite a while ago to talk about Francis Howgan, the Facebook, this little bit of blower and what she, what her whistleblowing revealed about what Facebook and Instagram knows about how social media negatively impacts young girls. And so that was a conversation that we had. But this conversation is a little bit different because it really asked what happens when it's not the, you know, teen or the child getting on social media themselves. What happens when it's the mom or the parent who is kind of forcing, I use that word in quotes, forcing their child to be part of their social media content, part of their social media persona. And so on my podcast, there are no girls on the internet.
Starting point is 00:13:04 I did this fascinating interview with this woman, Sarah Adams, and she runs the TikTok account, Mom Uncharted. She told me that she calls her account Mom Uncharted because social media, if you think about it, is really like this uncharted territory for parenting. And we really do not know how social media will impact our kids. If you want to listen to the whole interview, check out my podcast. She's a really fascinating person, but her social media account is dedicated to explorations of kind of mom influencing and like mom run accounts and all the different ways that parents, it's honestly, it's usually moms, use their children for content on social media. She told me that social media, you know, the dynamics around it have changed so quickly.
Starting point is 00:13:48 Not that long ago, if I was to say something like, oh, sharing your kid on social media, you might think that means like posting a cute picture on Facebook where, your great aunt or your uncle or something might like it. Now, kids who are not even really old enough to understand what it means, not to mention not old enough to consent to it, can have their most intimate or sensitive or embarrassing moments seen by millions of people on social media platforms like TikTok. Right. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy,
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Starting point is 00:15:15 Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in.
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Starting point is 00:16:04 Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 and the TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. As we've said in a lot of these past episodes, this is sort of an iteration of things we've seen before. This is going to also kind of age me. But my parents once sent a video of me
Starting point is 00:16:30 as a kid to America's Funniest Home Videos. But that's like very different. Like they weren't going to make money off of it, right? Oh my God, wait. But what were you doing in the video? Never you mind. No, I was, I was alternately like so enamored with a frog and then terrified of the frog. It's just like it wasn't that funny.
Starting point is 00:16:52 But they thought it was very funny. But then it became like, you know, reality TV and we've talked about those things before as well of like kind of the dance moms situation. And then now it becomes, oh, what we're seeing on social media, where people are making money off of this content of their kids, where the kids can't consent to it, where it will probably never be able to be fully erased, if that's what they wanted, if that's what they wanted.
Starting point is 00:17:21 And then, I know we're going to talk about this later, but there's kind of all these icky issues around, like, parasycial relationships people develop with these kids. and what do we do about that? Like, is that the platform? Is it the parent that's posting this content? Like all of these questions that come from, from what at, like, one level can seem like,
Starting point is 00:17:44 oh, this is just a cute video of this kid falling over or something. But when you dig deeper than that, there's just all of these other questions. Exactly. And you put it so well, right? Like, just to level set, I don't feel like every parent who shares, content of their kid is created equal here.
Starting point is 00:18:04 Like there's a pretty big difference between, you know, sharing the occasional family vacation video or like cute picture or whatever with your friends on social media or even the wider internet. There's a difference between that, which I think most people do. And it's like, fine. And running a business that generates income from relying on an audience of millions of people engaging with your child, right? And there are so many questions that you just kind of alluded to and reasons for why
Starting point is 00:18:30 we should sort of be asking questions about what that is doing to our kids. One of the things that I think is unique about social media and technology in general is how quickly it moves. Things just move really quickly. And I think that when it comes to our kids and the impact on our kids, it would be whoof us to not move really quickly. It would be who of us to take a minute, pump the breaks, and do some real deep thought about how we want our children to be showing up on social media and whether or not it's actually good for them, psychologically, emotionally, and whether or not it's actually safe. Like in the real, you know, in every implication of the word,
Starting point is 00:19:06 like sometimes it is not safe to share so much of your child on social media with strangers. You know, first, there might be a negative psychological impact on kids. I really wanted to find, I was like, oh, I'm going to get some good, meaty research on this. But as the uncharted part of Sarah Adams' as TikTok name suggests, there kind of isn't a ton of good research out there about the way that being used for content by your parents
Starting point is 00:19:35 would impact children. And that's partly because it's just so new. Morgan sung over at NBC. She's one of my favorite internet reporters, and she's really been following this beat of young people who have been kind of turned into content by their parents. So Morgan spoke to Lindsay Cooley, who was a licensed clinical child psychologist,
Starting point is 00:19:54 who said that because social media is so relatively new, there is not really a lot of clinical research on the long-term effects of what she calls growing up online. But lately, some kids who did grow up with parents who shared every aspect of their lives on social media are starting to speak out. Morgan Sung talked to Cam, whose mom used to make content about their life. Cam said that their mom sharing every single detail of their life had a real negative impact on their mental health. And eventually they kind of stopped being open with their mom about whatever they were going through because they knew this is just, going to wind up being shared on the internet with her followers. Cam is immunocompromised and would spend a lot of time ill or sick. And rather than being there for them, Cam says that their mom would just be
Starting point is 00:20:39 filming this for content. So at times in their life where they were sick or stressed or going through something difficult, their mom would be there with a camera in their face. Right. Right. And I think that's the way you phrased it of like, you know, using... kids for content of like then you become something like a tool to to get clicks as opposed to like a child that needs care
Starting point is 00:21:09 and needs help and needs respect and how damaging that absolutely would be if you start to feel like oh it's just like my tears are just a way for you to film something and get people to watch it like what would that do to you like that's very damaging I think Yeah, and it's actually, as an adult, like, speaking of that sort of distinction between my social media life or my digital life and my real life, I don't really share a lot of my, like, real life on social media.
Starting point is 00:21:40 And in part, it's because of that tension that you just named. If I have something in my life that is really, truly meaningful to me, I am really uncomfortable with the idea of that being content, of that being something to generate. rate clicks of that being something that's going to have a number attached to it. Like, oh, 300 people liked that my grandfather passed away or whatever. Like, I'm, I really am not comfortable with that personally. And so I tend to keep big or meaningful real-life moments off of social media because of that, because I don't like the idea. And I'm like, no shade to anybody who doesn't feel that way.
Starting point is 00:22:21 This is just how it feels for me. It just doesn't feel right. And I think for me, it feels like it is, does a disservice to how meaningful those moments truly are in my life. I don't want to see Mark Zuckerberg's engagement metric on the back end of something that was like deeply meaningful to me in my real life. That seems to cheap. That feels a little bit cheap to me, I guess. Yeah. And it is interesting because, again, we are adults.
Starting point is 00:22:48 And if you want to post that content and you're consenting to, yeah, you're an adult so you can consent to it. then that's one thing. It still feels strange because that's a whole separate podcast, but kind of feel like, oh, here's this sad thing. I have to like it because otherwise they're going to be mad. I didn't like it. There's like this kind of social dynamic around it that feels odd because then you're like, well, I'm liking this thing that's really sad.
Starting point is 00:23:13 But if I don't do it. But I do think that, and please don't come at me, listeners, but I do think like in the same way people sometimes use like pets or puppies. to be like, oh, look how cute, click on this content, here they are. People are using their kids like that. Like, see, here's my life, here's this, like, view of my life. And like, oh, what did my kid do today to get these clicks? And if that is, like, oh, my kid is very sick.
Starting point is 00:23:41 And I am going through a hard time. Please, you know, give me these likes, give me this engagement. It does become pretty murky. Right. You know, it's interesting, too, as we were talking about the levels, like you're talking about social media etiquette, which has been a conversation on like how do you go from this, but also how social media has grown. Like, when you think of the initial Facebook, it was literally to connect with college friends for me or your past friends or high school friends that you haven't seen. So you may be updating. So I might get a picture of my old high school friend who had a child and, oh, how cute.
Starting point is 00:24:17 and it wasn't necessarily about getting likes and looks. It's just, hey, I'm updating you about my life, even to the point that like wedding announcements, funeral announcements were done on Facebook. I'm on Facebook still to remember people's birthdays and to get event invites because a lot of people used to use that as the way of getting invitations or birthday parties or even sometimes weddings, which is really odd. But the level that we have grown to is this genre of TikTok. TikTok is not a thing. You can do private and you can do small content, but it really is a race to see what can go viral
Starting point is 00:24:54 and what can make money and what can get sponsorships. And it's changed vastly from what an elder millennial like myself knew it as to what it is today. But because people are learning things so fast or getting access to things so quickly, the etiquette has been kind of lost or lost in translation, perhaps. and it's become a point that for the Gen Ziers and, I guess, newer millennials, what are those, younger millennials, baby millennials, have seen this as a norm and didn't realize
Starting point is 00:25:27 until maybe just recently as the younger generations who've been on social media all of their lives since their birth have started to call it out that this was normal and a competition and a way of possibly making a living. And it's just kind of made this whole culture completely different from what it was. even three years ago. Oh my God. That's such an insightful point. And I do think it is like, it is not just human nature.
Starting point is 00:25:54 It is a little bit. It's some of it. But it's also exactly what you said, I think. I think it's algorithmically generated platforms where whatever is extreme or over the top or whatever gets more attention. And platforms like TikTok where that is the currency is like that what gets engagement is that attention. And so you have people, so that's like its own thing.
Starting point is 00:26:19 When you add in kids to the mix, it just kind of has the potential to really be so fraught. Like I remember it was some YouTuber. I don't know her name offhand, but she was kind of like quote unquote canceled because she was known for being like a YouTuber who showed her family and her family pet passed away. And so she was making a YouTube video about how her family passed away. And I guess she accidentally uploaded the unedited footage where her child was very genuinely, authentically, upset and crying. And the parent was, you know, rather than consoling this child, trying to tell the child to contort his face so that it would be real, like, so that it would be like a really extreme picture of them crying.
Starting point is 00:27:11 because she knew that if you use that image of an extreme close-up of like a distorted face who's experiencing extreme emotion, if you use that for the thumbnail on YouTube, it gets more engagement. If you ever look at YouTube videos and you're wondering, why do all the thumbnails have people making really weird over-the-top faces that nobody really makes in real life? It's because they have figured out that the algorithm rewards videos that include faces like that. And so while this child is experiencing a genuine response, emotionally to losing their pet, mom is like, oh, make sure that you really give me a good cry face so that my YouTube video about this performs well. And so I think it's not just our nature
Starting point is 00:27:52 as humans. It is also platforms that are prompting people into behavior that they would not otherwise probably do if not for the way that platforms kind of encourage us to do this. Does that make sense? No, yeah, absolutely. I think, again, like the squeaky wheel gets the oil type of thing where you see the most dramatic or the most over the top. Like one of the things that's really thriving on TikTok is people calling out other people for cheating or thinking they're cheating. If you're so-and-so, I just saw your husband here talking to this girl. Like that's a big thing.
Starting point is 00:28:26 And it shouldn't be. As before, like, there's a part of this like, yes, let the little women know so they can get out. But it's also purely for entertainment, for the numbers, for the likes. And then as we see with these children, more and more shocking things that. people think it's okay. I know a YouTuber, as you were talking about, another YouTuber family, we talked about this recently,
Starting point is 00:28:47 actually, in one of the episodes you came on, the couple adopted the child just for the sake of saying, we're good people and adopted this child, come on this journey with us, and then all of a sudden the child disappeared, and everybody was like, what the hell just happened? What did you do to this child?
Starting point is 00:29:01 And it's the same way as we've seen several. The couple who did the experiment with their two young boys saying, hey, we're going to say that one of your brothers died, your pretend brother died, just go along with it so we can make money. And this was a whole experiment on the kids for entertainment. The audience is supposed to know that this is a joke. We're just testing the kids.
Starting point is 00:29:24 Let's see how the kids react. And it was so traumatizing to watch these kids pretending like they're lying but questioning why we're doing this and then having it filmed and everybody saying, what are you doing? This is so mentally damaging to your child, you're doing this for the sake of TikTok to show what? So the example that you brought up earlier, the family, the YouTube family that adopted a child,
Starting point is 00:29:50 they're going to return to them. They make a little surprised guest appearance in this episode. I think you're right. I think that there is, I honestly think, it goes back to something that you said, Sam. I think it's a situation where because the internet has moved so quickly, like from where it was, when I was updating my MySpace profile in my dorm room in college to today,
Starting point is 00:30:15 that wasn't that long. I'm old, but I'm not that old, right? That wasn't that long ago. And where we were then and where we are now are completely different. So it's moved so quickly. And I think it's a situation where not like the cultural norms around what is and is not acceptable, healthy, okay to do a good idea to do whatever, those have not kept up with how quickly the technology has moved.
Starting point is 00:30:41 And so we now can film our kids inside of our house and quickly uploaded to TikTok or YouTube and get a million views. Our society has perhaps not progressed to a place where it's like, but should we? And I would argue that our laws have also not kept up with that. And so I do think there's something about the speed with which the Internet has changed and become so ubiquitous in our lives
Starting point is 00:31:02 that we have not pumped the brakes and allowed for cultural norms, societal norms, the law, to all catch up to where we are right now. And especially the fact that kids are involved, we absolutely should be taking the time to be a little bit more introspective and slow down a little bit to have a cultural reset about what is it is not okay
Starting point is 00:31:24 when it comes to filming children for strangers online. Right. And it kind of always reminds me of the thing that I had to tell kids as Snapchat and all those different things were existing, again, reminding them, you may think it's not on the Internet, but it's on the Internet. So just as a reminder, but also the government is very quick to use things like this to go after the marginalized communities.
Starting point is 00:31:49 And that's a whole different conversation, I know. But having to try to explain to both parents and to children, like, hey, you posting this picture of your half-naked child actually can be considered child porn, and you can be arrested on a felony. and then being completely shocked and then also letting the kids know, hey, you're just sending it yourself, even though you're doing it with your quote-unquote consent. As a minor, you don't have the ability to consent.
Starting point is 00:32:13 But it's only going after specific things and specific morality rather than what the root of the problem is with the social media. Oh, my God. Sam, this is kind of a non-sequitur. I had the, like, the most, like, weird conversation with a stranger on TikTok, it was, for whatever reason, I get surfaced a lot of content about hallucinogens, like hallucinogens drugs. TikTok thinks I'm very interested in expanding my mind. And there was a woman who looks like a woman of color to me talking about how she enjoys using mushrooms. And it's like, oh, like come follow me for my, like, beautiful day on mushrooms.
Starting point is 00:32:47 And it did look like a beautiful day. Like she's at the beach. She's like going for a swim. Looks fantastic. Then she goes to her car and it, like, she's like, oh, I had to drive home. And I was like, honey, this is a video, you're a woman of color, and this is a video of you admitting to a crime. I, like, this is not me judging you or me saying this,
Starting point is 00:33:08 but it is me knowing that, like, I've seen people, I've seen people who are going through, like, contentious marital situations to get CPS calls on them. I've heard, like, I've heard horror stories of people who just uploaded stuff to the internet without thinking about it. And then they lost a job. They lost a scholarship. The courts got involved.
Starting point is 00:33:28 somebody else was like, why is that the first thing that you jump to? And I was like, I understand that like it sucks. And I don't want to be the person to have to tell you this and like rain on your parade from your nice day that you were trying to show with the internet. But I want to be the person that tells you the truth. And the truth is that especially for people of color, you, I mean, nobody should be admitting to a crime on video. That's just like end that there.
Starting point is 00:33:53 Do what you're going to do if you're not hurting anybody, whatever. But like, be smart about it. Like, don't have this new era of social media where we don't necessarily have the cultural norms firmly established anymore, the guardrails, if you know what I mean? Don't let that false feeling of freedom make you think that we actually do have freedom online, especially if you're marginalized.
Starting point is 00:34:18 I would, that is just like a rule of thumb. Don't admit to crimes on the Internet. That's just like, I don't care how much engagement it gets you. That's just an overall. But as you're saying, for the person who's like, why do you have to go to that, like, pessimistic view? And I know I'm always joking about the fact that I'm pessimistic. But the reality is it's really privileged for someone to not have to even worry about it. That's the problem.
Starting point is 00:34:39 The problem about this is I have been on this side of where I see police officers, I see court systems, actually go after specific individuals because they've profiled them from jump and then find the social media accounts and use every bit they can from that because they're profiling. Once again, and that, I know we use that as generalized terms in the bigger picture, but it happens on social media as well, as well as the fact that there was a perfect example of this dude whose really big TikToker got really big because he was funny, everybody loved him. They thought he was just hilarious. He just cuts into a video and then tells a random fact. That was his whole thing. And then people found and dug into his earlier post where he brings his child where the child says all this whole thing.
Starting point is 00:35:26 homophobic and racist comments, which obviously was taught by him and he's encouraging it, and everybody's getting pissed at both the child and him. And this is what he's done, not realizing that he was going to blow up. But that's the consequence. It's like not only have you ruined your own reputation, you've already ruined your child. Oh, my God. And it's like, I could only see that as like a parenting fail. If your kid heard you using slurs and repeated that, and you knew that was behavior that they
Starting point is 00:35:56 were exhibiting, that is one thing then being like, I should film this for the internet because it's funny. That is, like, I guess that's what I'm saying. I'm not being very eloquent about it, but I do think that we are in this point where I don't know that people universally understand that not every moment is okay to be sure on the internet. And, you know, I would hope for that parent in that situation to be like, we need to have a conversation about what is and it's not okay to say.
Starting point is 00:36:26 The fact that this parent was like, ooh, get the camera. This is going to be great. Put this on the internet. That really tells me that I think that we are in a place where perhaps people are not asking the question of should I be filming this? What are the consequences? This is it going to be good for my kid. Like, I think that we just need to have a little bit more introspection about what we share to the internet for strangers. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:36:47 And again, it is this layer of safety that people think because they don't see people's reaction. They just record it and move on with their day until the consequences. that they're safe to do this and maybe they're thinking they're being relatable or maybe their trauma bonding with people, which is in itself like, why are you doing this and it's doing at the expense of a child thinking maybe I don't know if it's legitimate or if it's a ruse saying that I'm just trying to teach you. I'm just trying to share our, you know, our downfalls and I'm trying to be real. But it's again at the expense of a child's emotions and trauma. So that exact thing is the reason why I wanted to talk about this, because I had a moment where I saw this video on
Starting point is 00:37:28 TikTok, and I have to say, like, I was personally triggered by this TikTok that I saw. And it was this video of a black mom who was washing her black child's like braids, right? And so this, so she had a camera set up where she was holding her child over the sink to like scrub her scalp. And this little girl was like, maybe she's like seven or eight. She is bawling her. her eyes out. She is so upset, right? And so I'm a black woman. I have braids now. I've had braids for most of my life when I was a kid. Like a lot of black women, my hair has been something that is like a complicated thing. Like a lot of black women have complicated feelings about their hair. And I have many a memory of crying while getting my hair done, crying while getting my
Starting point is 00:38:16 braids taken, you know, taken out or put in. And I remember quite viscerally what a vulnerable position that I was in in those times. I'm not saying that like moms shouldn't do their kid's hair if they cry, but I'm saying I remember that being an emotional experience for me that I was very vulnerable in. And I think a lot of black women know what I'm talking about. And so this child is sobbing while this is happening. The mom is like, everybody, millions of people are going to see how you're acting right now. And the little kid is like, what do you mean? And she's like, I'm filming this. And the little girl starts crying even more. And she's like, why are you filming this? And her mom is like, I'm filming it.
Starting point is 00:38:53 for a hair tutorial. And even though this is a little kid, she's pretty sharp, she says, why don't you film a hair tutorial on your own head? And it just broke my, like something about watching that video of like, I remember what it was like
Starting point is 00:39:06 to be in distress. Now, I'm not saying that was like a traumatic experience for her. Kids cry for all kinds of reasons all the time, right? We were all kids once we remember, but she's clearly in distress, even if it's temporary distress.
Starting point is 00:39:20 And so her mom talking to the camera in this moment, and being like millions of people are going to see this in the moment really just made me sad. And the mom was saying like, oh, well, like in the comments of this TikTok, she was saying like, well, I want to show other black moms out there
Starting point is 00:39:37 how you deal with a stressful hair wash day or and other people who were supporting her were saying like maybe she's looking for a community of moms and wants to build community in solidarity online. I could sort of see that. But ultimately, the number one responsibility of a parent should be to create a safe environment for your kid.
Starting point is 00:39:56 And all of this other stuff, like I can understand maybe sort of kind of wanting to demonstrate, like, oh, here's how I as a black mom get through a tough hair washing day. But those are strangers. Your responsibility when your child is in distress is to provide a safe environment for that child. Who cares about these strangers in your head that you are thinking about entertaining or whatever via this content?
Starting point is 00:40:21 And that's kind of what I'm talking about. Like how have we reached a point where folks have kind of forgotten that your number one responsibility is to your child and to create a safe environment for that child? Even if that means that this community of fictional moms looking for support might have to get at someplace else, right? Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman helped make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel,
Starting point is 00:41:02 help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.
Starting point is 00:41:25 And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-Ehart to get started. That's 844-844-I-Hart. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. Every episode we're cutting through the noise.
Starting point is 00:42:01 Breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context and ask the questions everybody wants answered. Sports slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live there. them. Listen to SportsSlic on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. And I know, as you said, at the beginning, there hasn't been a lot of research in this.
Starting point is 00:42:50 I know I read one article about how things like this does a road like the trust a kid has in their parents, because if it's like, they can kind of sense, oh, well, they're doing this for some other reason, or there might be a trick behind this. they might be trying to manipulate an emotion out of me for someone else. But also something that I wanted to go back to that you wrote about was this idea of feeling like there's an invisible audience. Yeah, I found this fascinating. So Lindsay Cooley, the licensed clinical child psychologist that spoke to Morgan's song at NBC,
Starting point is 00:43:23 Cooley said that adults whose formative years were shared online may never grow out of experiencing what she described as the invisible audience. Basically, we have all kind of probably felt that the invisible audience. is this kind of adolescent ideal that everybody is paying attention to you and scrutinizing your behavior at all times. Now, most of us probably felt that way at one time or another in our lives, but we usually grow out of it as we mature and become more self-aware and get a deeper sense of self.
Starting point is 00:43:52 Lindsay Cooley says that kids who are always being filmed for content might have a harder time breaking out of that mindset because they essentially grew up on a stage. They grew up knowing that they had to perform and turn it on. And so if that is your everyday lived experience, you might have a much harder time growing out of that phase
Starting point is 00:44:11 when you think that everybody's looking at you, when you are feeling like everybody is scrutinizing you and feeling like you're being perceived with eyes on you all the time. And really, I can kind of understand that. Like I can understand why four kids who are constantly on the stage of the internet, why that would then be a hard thing to kind of break out of.
Starting point is 00:44:31 Yeah, and that's another issue here, is the issue of, privacy. And as we also mentioned at the top, these parisocial relationships that people can form with children who, again, probably never consented to any of this, right? Yeah, that's something that I find really interesting, I guess I'll say, is this, the way that adults on the internet can form these parisocial relationships with kids, they don't even know. You know, and on one hand, I kind of get it, right? Like, they've been let in. on these very intimate relationships with these kids.
Starting point is 00:45:07 And so I can understand forming a bond, right? And how that line of what is it is not appropriate and what you are and are not entitled to can become blurred. There was this mom influencer on TikTok recently who decided that she was going to stop showing her kids on social media after sort of providing quite a bit of content solely about her kids. And her followers were upset. Like they weren't just like, cool as your kids,
Starting point is 00:45:33 do what you feel is best. They were not happy about that. And they felt really entitled to see and interact with these kids that they don't even know. And so I remember this was around Christmas time when this influencer announced that. And one of her followers made a video that was like, can we at least see the children for Christmas? Like, I just want to see them for Christmas. And how they could not accept that they were not going to be able to see and interact with kids that they didn't know. And it might, I don't feel like all of these people have bad intentions.
Starting point is 00:46:03 intentions or anything, but it is absolutely not healthy for an adult stranger to feel entitled to see kids that they don't even know. Like, that's just not healthy. You know, of course, I have to go real dark with it as you're being very kind and being like, these are not, they just really like these kids and they think the relationship is adorable. But here's the prime example of where we can talk about grooming and what happens when these relationships or these young kids become sexualized by the audience or by the followers and not necessarily being done by the parents. They may be completely innocent of it, thinking they're playing cute little dress-up,
Starting point is 00:46:43 matching mommy type of look, which is often a thing. But this becomes a real dangerous road of grooming and sexualization of young children. Just I know there was one specific woman who went through a young girl's account. meaning they were probably really young, maybe with a parent, showing what kind of followers these accounts had. And they were typically, for more examples, like middle-aged men commenting about how beautiful they were and how all these things are like how good they looked in this outfit or all these things and how concerning it is that the parents aren't realizing that compliment is not cute.
Starting point is 00:47:22 It's not a cute compliment. And you shouldn't sit there and like them and say, thanks for supporting my child, which has been the response. And it's so dangerous when you see that this is becoming normal. Exactly. So I do think that there are people out there that are just like, oh, I just love this baby. And I have slipped into an unhealthy fixation on this baby, perhaps not badly intentioned. Yes.
Starting point is 00:47:45 But you are so right that there are people for whom they do have bad intentions. And it is about sexualization and grooming. And it's gross. Like, what I want to talk about today is like just the tip of the iceberg with how dangerous and gross this stuff can get. Because truly it's just like very dark. There is a trend called roleplaying. No, not Dungeons and Dragons role playing like that. This is what people, Annie, I bet you were like, oh, roll playing.
Starting point is 00:48:18 What was that? So this is a trend that I actually have not heard of until I researched for this episode where people on the internet will steal photos of other people from social media and make new fake accounts of these people with made-up stories and identities. Now, sometimes this can be, like, mostly harmless other than the fact that, like, it's not cool to be taking pictures of kids from the internet.
Starting point is 00:48:43 But, like, some people are doing this just, and it's not necessarily harmful. But in other cases, some of the backstories and, like, fictional situations involving the identity of children and the pictures that they are using are sexual. And so there's this influencer, Katie Rose Pritchard.
Starting point is 00:49:02 She told Good Morning America that one day that she discovered all these social media accounts made for each one of her kids, but they were actually strangers pretending to be her like very young toddler children typing in like baby voice
Starting point is 00:49:15 in captions on Instagram. She told Good Morning America that she noticed that among these role playing posts on social media they used hashtags like, kid RP or baby RP to indicate that's what it is and that there's like a massive community of people doing this, some of whom are describing obviously sexualized fictional situations involving her toddlers. And probably unsurprising, she was enraged and horrified. And I think,
Starting point is 00:49:44 you know, there's so many different avenues to this. But one is that it's obviously a social media platform accountability issue, Katie Rose Pritchard said that she reached out to Instagram to have this content taken down. And then at first, Instagram told her that people making fake accounts of her kids and putting them in these sexual fictional situations was not against their community guidelines. But eventually she kept having her followers report the content. And Instagram did eventually take it down. So she decided that she was going to stop posting pictures of her kids on social media, even though she was an influencer and this had, you know, resulted in brand deals and partnerships and all of that, but that it just wasn't worth it because she was like, even though Instagram eventually did the right thing and took these pictures of my kids down,
Starting point is 00:50:29 who knows where they could be? She was like, I'll never know how far their pictures traveled, what dark corners of the internet her kids' images are on. And that is really scary. Yeah. And, you know, just to add a wrench in this whole thing is with the ideas of deep fakes and, AI technology, which takes straight from content from the internet, there are so many disturbing things that's out there, just knowing half of that and that being faked and what it's being used for. And again, there's no loss to truly stop this. This is kind of like the freedom of speech as long as you're not violating that child and you're doing images that resemble and say this is not truly them. All you have to do is alter something. And they can escape the law because there is no law for it. And with the realization that once you put it on the internet, there's
Starting point is 00:51:20 no ownership, true ownership, as much as you would like to think there is. There's no true ownership to the content that you are posting. Yeah, to your point about deep fakes, mom uncharted on her TikTok has talked about, again, it's so dark that I hate to even go there, but like there are marketplaces for deep fakes. People have been, like here's an image of a person, not always an adult, sometimes it's a child, I would like to see digitally manipulated like AI generated images of this child in sexual situations. That is a thing that happens. And I know that it is dark. And it's like, on the one hand, you feel awful when someone's like posting up cute picture of their kid being like, well, did you know that this could out wind up on
Starting point is 00:52:06 a marketplace on the dark side of the internet? But I have to say the truth. It's like, it's like, what is happening? And I think it's a reason why more and more influencers are, and people in general are keeping their kids off of the internet. Like, I don't have kids, but if I was a parent, I don't think I would put my kids on social media. I just, I think that with all that I now know, and I didn't always know this, I know this from research, from now that I know all the different really dark, criss-up gross corners of the internet out there, I just feel like it would be a safer bet to not... Like, I don't know what it would give me
Starting point is 00:52:47 to introduce that into my kids' life. And this, you know, this is a growing thing these days. The influencer that I was just talking about, she wrote on Instagram, I can be angry at Instagram all day long and nothing will change until we change. Instagram is not to blame for the exploitation of my children. I am.
Starting point is 00:53:05 They have no responsibility and usually come back with we have no control over what our users posts. They simply do not care. And it's, I think that Instagram is really abdicating responsibility here. But on the other hand, Katie is not wrong about this. That like it really, if platforms aren't going to do anything to keep young people safe online, they should, in absence of them being leaders and doing what they're supposed to be doing to keep kids safe, we have no choice but to act.
Starting point is 00:53:36 And I know that that is, like, it should not be that way. But if platforms are going to allow the kind of dark stuff involving kids that they do allow, we have to be the ones who are making good decisions to keep our kids safe. Right. Well, obviously, as you said at the very beginning, as a parent, your first responsibility is the safety of your child. It should be. And that's kind of the intent to begin with. And so even though, yes, you may not be doing any of these dark and despicable.
Starting point is 00:54:06 things. You're like, I've, I keep talking about it, but like, I have had nightmares of the darkness that happens to children, unfortunately, because of the things that I have witnessed personally. Like, that's just a thing that will always be ingrained in my head. It's terrifying, it's awful, and I hate that that's a part of my psyche and that that's part of the thing that I share with people, but it is really naive to believe that everything is sunshine and puppy. dogs because I would love that. That would be amazing. That's why I can't watch dark things because I don't want to live in that world, but I've seen it. And, you know, as you've researched more things, it gets uglier and uglier. And as Instagram should be held responsible for some things,
Starting point is 00:54:53 it is also that, again, the parent's responsibility at the very jump for to protect a child. And unlike, it sounds like this one influencer did an amazing job in trying to back, because you don't think about that. It's an amazing, it's a great thing to not have to think about that, but to win your face with it to realize you need to do some damage control. But there's those out there who, as long as they get the money, as dark as that seems, it doesn't seem to care. And there's no law to protect the children, it seems.
Starting point is 00:55:22 Exactly. So this is something that really bums me out, grosses me out. Because you might be thinking like, surely parents are not knowingly making money off of their kids' content being served up to adult creeps, but I'm sorry to report. that that is what is happening with some of these like mom run accounts. Sarah of Mom Uncharted told me that she sees these mom run accounts of young girls, ostensibly a platform to share their daughters like modeling pictures or like gymnastics pictures. But when you click in, as you were saying, the people who are following that page are
Starting point is 00:55:56 grown men, the people who are saving the images. So if you post something on TikTok or post something on Instagram, so you can see who saves it, the people saving that are grown men. And when you click into these profiles of the people following, oftentimes it's like not, it doesn't take, you know, a detective to see like, okay, this is an image of a grown man, who are they following, accounts like hot young bikini girls, things like that. Like it's pretty clear what's going on.
Starting point is 00:56:24 And then these men will leave comments on pictures of their kids that are like, wow, what a hot picture. And mom will go in and like that comment, right? And so it's sort of this weird thing where it's done. under this kind of like plausible deniability of like, oh, it's just a modeling page. Like, you're the one sexualizing my kid, but come on. Like, you know what this is. I've even seen some of these accounts go so far as to sell images of like, you want to buy a photo
Starting point is 00:56:53 set of my daughter's gymnastic pictures or even buy their used clothing. Like, we know, like, we all see what's happening. They can hide behind. This is a modeling thing. You know, this is, you know, whatever. It's clear what's going on. You are making money from exploiting your kid, and that is just what's happening.
Starting point is 00:57:13 I think at the very least, let's just call it what it is. Don't dance around it. Don't use this plausible deniability. Everyone knows what's going on. Cut the crap, you know? Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.
Starting point is 00:57:36 Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman helped make you funnier. week my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Starting point is 00:57:59 or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as long. large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-Ehart to get started. That's 844-844-I-Hart. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning,
Starting point is 00:58:34 the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down,
Starting point is 00:59:05 give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered. Sports slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people. people who live them. Listen to SportsSlic. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slicelife-Live 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. We recently did an episode on YouTube, and this is a very similar situation happening where there are videos of young kids, mostly young girls, and I'm getting several comments like this from grown men.
Starting point is 00:59:41 And as we've been alluding to this whole time, There aren't specific laws in place to protect kids from this, correct? That's right. And so when you think about it, it's kind of weird that there's not, right? Like, when it comes to kids making money off of their labor, we have all kinds of, like, rules and policies and regulations in place here in the United States. You know, media companies that work with kids for, like, films or commercials or modeling or whatever, they have very strict labor laws.
Starting point is 01:00:14 Like, I used to do, like, child modeling and child acting. acting when I was a kid. They have very, very specific labor laws. But the Fair Labor Standards Act, a 1938 law that addresses excessive child labor, and the California Cougan Act, which protects child actors, neither of those have been updated to include children online, like the children of influencers, children who are being used as content. And so it is definitely a situation where our technology has advanced quicker than our laws have, because they're currently zero laws that in the United States that regulate how children work on social media and how they can appear in ads on social media that generate money. But that actually might be changing soon.
Starting point is 01:00:58 Morgan Sung reported that an 18-year-old college student named Chris McCarty wanted to advocate for kids' rights to privacy after learning about that influencer, Mika Stelfer, the one who you might recall, we were just talking about, she wanted to adopt a special needs child. She did adopt that child extensively shared intimate content about the health needs of her adoptive child before deciding that those medical needs were too much and having him, quote, rehomed, as she put it. Well, that inspired Chris McCarty to start advocating for the way that kids are used online and, like, advocating for protections for these kids.
Starting point is 01:01:36 McCarty started the site, quit clicking kids, which is described as an advocacy and education site to combat the monetization of children on social media. and when Chris was a senior, they cold emailed like a bunch of lawmakers and eventually ended up working with Representative Emily Wicks to craft HB 1627, which is a bill that would protect, quote, the interest of minor children featured on for-profit family vlogs by requiring the parents of kid influencers to set aside part of that revenue from their content into a separate fund so that their kids can access them into adulthood. And it would also grant the children of influencers the right to request the permanent deletion of their likeness names or photos from any internet platform or network that provided compensation to the individual's parent or parents in exchange for that content. And so platforms under this new legislation, platforms would have to take reasonable steps to permanently delete video segments of such
Starting point is 01:02:30 children. That was one of the things that like in researching for this episode and reading the accounts of young people who were the used solely, like they were like the sole focus of their parents' content, one of the things that they say is, I can't delete it from me. I had no choice in the matter. I was not able to consent. And now when you Google my name, all this stuff, intimate stuff comes up about me, intimate stuff about my health, my body, my life, all comes up. And there is no way to remove it. And so I don't know how this legislation will shake out. I'll keep you posted. But I do think it's time that we really had our laws and our norms catch up with where we are, technologically. And I think, you know, I think I think it's time.
Starting point is 01:03:15 You would think that we would have learned through the child actor stuff of all the young actresses that had either that money stolen or gone through so much abuse, all those things. You would have thought we would learn from those mistakes because some of these young kids making multi-millions of dollars. So like you would think that with that kind of revenue, which is rare, but those are the ones who are getting the money are the younger kids at this point in time that we would actually find a way by now that would protect these kids because inevitably they're the ones who kind of bring it to bring it to as it is like we're not it's not the older people who are creating these new things and new new trends and new ways of communicating is the
Starting point is 01:04:01 younger kids who are doing this and learning how to do it better and or being used for it like It's one of those things. It should be for them. So why wouldn't it automatically protect them? Exactly. Like I love cute kids on the internet as much as anybody else in a healthy way. But like Corn Kid. I don't know if you guys remember Corn Kid.
Starting point is 01:04:22 He was this like adorable little kid who was interviewed at a state fair eating corn. And he was like, when I had it with butter, everything changed. And he was like an overnight sensation. And I remember thinking like, oh, what happened to Corn Kid? How was he doing? And Corn Kid is, quote, retired. And I just loved that, you know, somebody in his life was like, hey, we've had this overnight, unexpected viral fame.
Starting point is 01:04:47 Let's, you can retire. You know, this doesn't have to be something that you, you know, do. This doesn't have to be something. I think I did see that he was on cameo. But this doesn't have to be something that you, you know, make your entire identity. And you're just a kid. You don't have to, you know, decide to go into internet, social media stardom, entertaining strangers because you had this one viral moment.
Starting point is 01:05:10 And so I really heartened me to see that somebody in his life gave him the space and the language of being like, oh yeah, I'm retired as Kornkid to make a choice for himself and protect his identity a little bit, protect his peace. Because I do think like, yeah, the internet is forever. And I really feel for these kids who don't get a choice in becoming these internet ston and have to live with it for life. And I think, you know, I do think the tide is turning a little bit. I think that we're seeing more and more, one, more and more children who were used in
Starting point is 01:05:48 this way as content speaking up about what that experience was like for them. And I think we're seeing more and more influencers stop showing their kids on social media or do so in ways that are a little bit more thoughtful, right? So you'll see influencers not showing their kids' face or including their kids in their content, but just showing their hands, the back of their head, so that it's not just, you know, performing on command for the entertainment and monetization of your platform. Right. And you know, I think people took a page out of the big celebrities who realized, who lived in the limelight, we're like, we're not putting our children through that
Starting point is 01:06:26 and go through everything to try to cover, at least, like, protect their identities, and I've done so much better recently. I mean, not some, but you know, and that they're learning, this could be really damaging, like you said. And that corn kid is so cute. He literally, I think they asked him much later after everything went viral, like, what do your friends think of that? And they're like, my friends don't know. They don't know anything about this because the parents did such a great job in keeping him isolated away from all of that because they didn't want him to be scrutinized, made fun of or any of that because so many of them. Because he kind of, I guess, is it a meme?
Starting point is 01:07:00 Was he a meme? A gift, maybe? it eventually became that that so many of those goods who were gifts or memes were really humiliated as adults. Yeah. Like, I think it was BuzzFeed
Starting point is 01:07:12 doing a series of what happened after these people became memes. They actually have a really good one. If you remember the girl, this is going to maybe date me and people who are younger going to be like,
Starting point is 01:07:22 what the fuck I'm talking about? But girl who was photographed with pigtails and a headgear holding goosebumps books, if you, she is a very, Her story is very fascinating.
Starting point is 01:07:33 But yeah, it's like these people that we see on the internet and because we're engaging with them through a screen, we can kind of forget that they're real people who have to go on to live real lives and the real world or they don't just exist frozen in time in this meme where we first encountered them. They are real people. Are you, Ermergard?
Starting point is 01:07:53 Yes, her. Hermigard. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Well, as always, this has been so informative of Bridget, thanks for bringing it to our attention. Thanks for making the time to come on. And I'm sure we'll update on this one
Starting point is 01:08:08 because clearly we all have a lot of thoughts about this. So I would love to come back to this one. Well, where can the good listeners find you? Well, you can find me over at my own podcast. There are no girls on the internet. The episode that we did with Mom Uncharted is super interesting. She's just a really interesting person. I would definitely recommend checking it out.
Starting point is 01:08:27 And follow me on Twitter at Bridgett Marie, on Instagram at Bridget Marie. or on TikTok at Bridget Makes Podcasts. Yes. Love it. Love it. Go check all of those things out if you haven't already listeners. And yes, thank you again, Bridget.
Starting point is 01:08:43 Can't wait to do this again next a month. Update on the food as well. Yeah, maybe we'll do it from Mexico City, but you all come visit. Oh, I would love that. I just heard an invitation. I'm coming. Come, come. The bags are getting packed.
Starting point is 01:08:59 The bags are getting packed. Party in Mexico. Oh, I can't wait. Well, listeners, if you would like to contact us, you can, our email, Stuffmedia, MomStuff at iHeartMedia.com, you can find us on Twitter at MomStuff Podcast or on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff On Ever Told You. Thanks, as always to our super producer, Christina.
Starting point is 01:09:18 The best. The best. And thanks to you for listening. Stuff On Never Told You's projection of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, you can check out the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends.
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