How YouTube Can Accidentally Exploit Your Kids

Have you seen this recent YouTube phenomenon? It features a cute 3 year old girl explaining the plot of Star Wars. She has great lines like, “Don’t talk back to Darth Vader, he’ll get ya!” and “he tried to block the little poke ball” and calls Obiwan, “Obie Kenobi”.

The point is, it is damn cute and thousands of people have watched it and have made comments on the YouTube page. But then something happened.

It was a subtle move. The author of the video disabled the comment feature on the video. Then he posted the following update to the video:

02/26/08 Update: Wow. What was expected to be a short movie that would circulate within a small circle of friends has turned into something much more very quickly. I’m thrilled that so many people have enjoyed this video but also somewhat mortified that I added this without my daughter’s knowledge or consent. Maybe someday she will find some humor in it.

Comments: Have been disabled. I think they have run their course. To those who have sent positive comments, thank you very much. You’ve made us appreciate what we have even more than we already do. To those of you who’ve said you’ve changed your mind about having children, well, have at it.

Business inquiries/agents: Thanks for your interest. At the current time we have no intention of exposing our little one to the destroyer of youth that is the entertainment industry. Hopefully if she chooses to follow this path on her own someday she will find a door still open for her.

Other things:

She has never seen Pokemon so I don’t think she’s making a reference to the ball on that show. I think she just means pokey ball as in “a ball that is pokey.” (And yes, I know what the pokey balls really are! Stop emailing )

Three year olds can’t read. I’m sure there are exceptions to that rule.

Here’s the scary thing. When you post a video on YouTube and share it to the general public, there is a chance that it will catch fire and it will be plastered all over the internet. Then jackasses will post creep, absurd, or downright racist comments about your kid!

Let this be a lesson. Be careful.