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I think this is a really weird situation. This 6year old did not make $11M. His parents did. His parents edit the videos, maintain high production value, marke
by ejcx 9y ago
I think this is a really weird situation.
This 6year old did not make $11M. His parents did. His parents edit the videos, maintain high production value, market the channel, make a constant stream of videos starring Ryan.
It's a pretty weird situation. It is kind of insane how much money his parents are raking in because of this
- astrodust 9y agoIt's not the kid in the video, it's not his parents. It's the parents of other kids and those kids that make this a surreal phenomenon. There's a lot of YouTube junk out there that's seductive and, for some groups, infinitely watchable. Sadly that's where the gold is these days.
- andai 9y agoThe looong tail.
- jhiska 9y agoI have some friends who are parents. They sometimes loan their (very young) kid a tablet to keep him distracted while they're busy. It keeps him from causing problems for himself. The kid goes to Youtube and only watches vacuum-cleaning videos. For hours. He also believes every TV is (or should ideally be) touchscreen interactable. He likes boping the people on the news. He thinks they're puppets. He's a healthy, normal kid. What I'm trying to express is that we don't know how normal kids react to Youtube and its effect on them. It can be surprising.
- astrodust 9y agoYou can let them watch mundane videos for hours and be all "eh, well" or you can intervene and try and steer their attention towards more productive things. It seems like kids have fewer and fewer toys these days and more and more gadgets. Maybe that's part of the problem.
- 659087 9y ago"6 year old's parents make $11M posting videos of their child on youtube" doesn't have the same clickbait value, though. It's kind of sad that this clickbait is already sitting the the top of HN.
- anigbrowl 9y agoThat would still be truly remarkable
- 659087 9y agoRight, but "<incredibly young child> does <thing child didn't actually do>" is a tried and tested clickbait method that seems to work every time. That's what they were going for.
- anigbrowl 9y agoOK but so what? Every 2nd news headline is clickbait these days, it's not insightful to point out the obvious in individual cases.
- wahsd 9y agoChild labor laws seem to be relevant here.
- paxy 9y agoSure, but you can say the same about every YouTube channel, and every other enterprise ever. The highlight is that the 6-year-old is the face and "brand" of the operation.
- archildress 9y agoI mean, if the headline was "6 year old's Parents Made $11m in One Year", I feel like you could post the comment: "The parents did not make $11m. The kid did. The kid is on the screen, the kid plays with the toys, and is willing to continue appearing on camera."
- betenoire 9y agoKids will play with toys all day long, whether or not anyone is paying attention. The effort, and thus the payoff, was on the parts of the parents, no?
- archildress 9y agoI don't mean to over-intellectualize, but here's an interesting question: Which is more of a commodity, a specific child that other kids would enjoy watching play, or someone to edit videos and plan content? I would say that you can hire out editing in a lot of cases or even video planning, but some people are just more magnetic than others. It's a somewhat uncomfortable truth but some kids are more... endearing than others? That is to say, there are some channels with kids that other kids would quickly bore with.
- anigbrowl 9y agoThis sort of assumes there were a bunch of peers who all started out even and he was the winner. In reality it's more a case of fortunate timing.
- user5994461 9y ago>>> Which is more of a commodity, a specific child that other kids would enjoy watching play, or someone to edit videos and plan content? The parents are much more important for the business. They are true sales people, they do a ton of marketing, they optimized the revenues perfectly and they edit the videos accordingly.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y agoMaybe both are right: Both the kid AND the parents deserve the money.
- jrochkind1 9y agoNot to mention his parents figured out something that I still don't understand but have learned: A title like "100+ cars toys GIANT EGG SURPRISE OPENING Disney Pixar Lightning McQueen kids video Ryan ToysReview" is exactly right to get hits.
- beshrkayali 9y agoElsagate video generating bot-creators also figured out the same thing. Unfortunately, people think this is smart marketing, I see it being the same as those old SEO tricks people used to do, like putting 20 catch-it-all words in their page title to get search hits. It's just pollution, just like producers making their songs the loudest. I think it just makes it worse for everyone. To me these titles kinds of titles have the exact opposite intended effect, they kinda make me sick actually. Just like this whole article tbh. For every fad there are a few people who benefit the most I guess.
- ambrosite 9y agoThe question is, how long will it be until YouTube adjusts its search and recommendation algorithms to penalize this type of title spam?
- hexane360 9y agoWell it's been going strong for 10 years, so I don't think the general trend is going away. Same for thumbnails.
- ambrosite 9y agoGoogle owns YouTube, and they adjust their search engine algorithms all the time to penalize blatant keyword spam. I don't see why they can't do the same for YouTube, unless they just don't care.
- dragonwriter 9y agoGoogle has more competition for web search than for YouTube search; they could make the latter better but face no competitive pressure to do so. There might still be a business case if there's evidence that tbad search results are reducing YouTube stickiness and ad revenue, but that may not be evident in clear data even if it is true.
- TwoNineA 9y agoWhat weird is that my kids are watching these channels and the ads playing on the iPads are Nicorette and car ads. To make things weirder, they use my Google account (I never smoked, nor do I visit any car sites or watch car videos). Good job Google! Great ad targeting! /s
- lovemenot 9y agoPerhaps Google predicts your kids' future desires. Watching super-consumerist videos is an indication of addictive personality? /s
- Gargoyle 9y agoThere are laws about child performers, their parents, and the money they make. I wonder if they apply here? I'm sure the relevant state regulators have looked into it with this kind of money at stake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Child_Actor%27s_Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Child_Actor%27s_Bil...
- 1024core 9y agoBut is he "acting" ? He's just playing with toys. Is every YouTuber "acting" ? Where does one draw the boundary between "acting" and just goofing around in front of a camera? (I'm not arguing, but it is an interesting discussion to have)
- candiodari 9y agoBy the legal definition, of course he is acting.
- astura 9y agoWhat definition is that?
- dragonwriter 9y agoThose laws seem to mostly address the child's power to contract and requirements regarding income under such contracts; this is income the parents made monetizing videos of their child. It's not clear to me that the child has any income here other than parental gifts, or that the laws you reference apply in any way to any income that the child does have.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tehlike 9y agoI am hoping kids' parents are tax sheltering some of this money.