False sanitization of the internet

[Outer Heaven]

Someone shared these screenshots (from Tumblr ew ik) on a Telegram channel I follow and I thought they were spot on. Its sad how few niche spaces there are for different age groups on the internet nowadays. I remember going from sites like Club penguin and Nickelodeon to Miniclip and Poptropica to Adventure Quest Worlds as I grew up. I imagine Id probably have ended up on some groomer Roblox discord server if the current internet replaced the one from 10 years ago. Kids used to have entire MMORPGS in their browsers and now all kids have is Fortnite.

 

[Some_porcupine]

AQW! sill have it, idk why tho, playing metin2 copy (other name) tho.

 

[remember_summer_days]

What's the deal with digital urbanization? Why did everyone move from their personal blog to the sprawls of overcrowded social media? Out of convenience and then internet dwellers found themselves too overstimulated to retreat into quiet. Cities are the best place to get hold of crack. The generation that grew up with the internet made a choice, but there are those unfortunates who know not much of the old internet and less of life. Zoomers spend most of their social time online and its not on websites that encourage healthy modes of socialization, we dive on image after image without a signified. I'm not clean from this. I'm in agora because I pursued the images presented by the simulacra of my haunted nostalgia.

The boundaries blur between web content aimed at children, teens and adults. It might be the case that we reason about this issue erroneously: Think of the kids whose concern is to grow up and the adults who want rituals of childhood. Funkopops are pseudoreligious icons in the ethos of your average cons00mer. Popular social media is not consciously aimed at perverting children, it's concerned with keeping adults infantile. We desire cloying images and knowledge summarized in 280 words or less. We embrace distraction by distraction. If Club Penguin or Barbie.com still existed we would have to crash against the separation of childhood and adulthood. Now that's a concern for the death if young men meant to be adults resemble children.

Posted with a my little pony pfp

 

[Some_porcupine]

If Club Penguin or Barbie.com still existed we would have to crash against the separation of childhood and adulthood. Now that's a concern for the death if young men meant to be adults resemble children.

very nicely said.
i, too, feel it the same. shit, even this shit was made from this nostalgia, if not few more, articles, theses, all of those...
i hope it, the nostalgia, is real. or - is it this type of nostalgia that was never there - nostalgia for one can see, for example, in your signature pic?
- or like when Peter Griffin miss 80s for not (too) what they were, but how they were portraited in media - he, also, wanted NOT to grow up - ?

 

[remember_summer_days]

very nicely said.
i, too, feel it the same. shit, even this shit was made from this nostalgia, if not few more, articles, theses, all of those...
i hope it, the nostalgia, is real. or - is it this type of nostalgia that was never there - nostalgia for one can see, for example, in your signature pic?
- or like when Peter Griffin miss 80s for not (too) what they were, but how they were portraited in media - he, also, wanted NOT to grow up - ?

I've been unlucky, perhaps, but even from watching classic 80s media is really not all that wholesome and quite degen. Degeneracy is not a sign of the times, rather it has always been there. Too often we forget vaporwave is not how the 80s was like.

 

[Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意]

This hits hard and is very accurate.
Don't get me wrong, websites aimed at younger people back in the day were still semi-predatory (Runescape memberships, AQ paid for only content, hotwheels.com asking me to sign up with a CC after every fucking game I played), but there was effort needed to create a space that younger people could still go to online to hangout and socialize in a new and mystical landscape that allowed them to connect with the world.
Now we just pump kids into the popular social media mill and complain that they do stupid shit online.

I'm curious, though, if in many decades time we will see congruency between these offline and online opinions on kids spaces. Even in real life, many kids spaces are being replaced for money-grubbing institutes. I remember the days where I looked forward to going to McDonalds not because of their food, but because I was going to shred that fucking playground. Now much of that has been removed due to "hazardous conditions". This has not made McDonalds any safer, though. It has only served to create an environment that teaches kids to look forward to sitting in a shitty wait room, with nothing of interest, with the only purpose being to wait for your shitty food, made by overworked employees. Its, really, not too different from social media spaces online.

 

[eve]

they rlly hit the nail on the head with this one. i think this issue is only made worse when you consider how much kids and preteens are using technology nowadays compared to back in the early 2000's and 2010's, i mean its not only a huge part of life now but its practically necessary, even at that age.

 

[power gem]

some of this just seems like looking back on the past with rose-colored glasses (i know it's silly to criticize that on agora road of all places). it's naive to think that groomers didn't hang out on early 00s kids sites and that properties like webkinz and neopets didn't primarily exist to show ads & sell sweatshop merch to kids. hell, during the height of its popularity neopets was run by scientology cultists. the difference, I think, is that the manner of exploitation was more transparent and understandable than it is today.

i remember that there were controversies about "immersive advertising" on children's websites at the time - someone posted an excellent thread about this a while ago. but i don't think that online immersive advertising is fundamentally different from product placement in movies or the numerous cartoon shows that were just thinly veiled toy commercials. kids get to be entertained in exchange for products being shilled at them. the shilling is done by public entities who can theoretically be held accountable if they go too far.

the same is not true for Android Store Hello Neighbor Ripoff #204891 or "Elsa Spiderman Pregnant Injection Finger Family Rape Murder.mp4 (500M views)". the ease with which people can make a few bucks by sticking google ads and microtransactions onto something turns children's creators into paperclip maximizers. someone in Chandigarh is coming to steal your child's innocence because they learned that the youtube thumbnail with Frozen Anna getting her bare ass spanked with a paddle gets 0.05 more views per day than the one with her fighting a Minecraft creeper.

 

[LostintheCycle]

I expected it to be dumb because it was Tumblr, but that was actually a pretty good post. I saw it in the niche K-Zone website (which I talked about in this other post) which had a similar thing. Used to be the coolest space for young boys top hang out, but now it's just a junkpile and not a place you could hang out on anymore. Personally I never really hung out on these sites that much, I found YouTube pretty early and just watched a ton of DanTDM and Stampy.
Also has anyone noticed that it's incredibly easy to find risque videos on YouTube? For all the sanitary bullshit they've done, it used to be significantly harder to find any titties on YouTube when I was eleven, now you can find sexy videos in abundance. It's ironic.

 

[h00]

Man I used to spend hella time on poptropica, lego.com, hotwheels.com, miniclip, newgrounds, and STICKDEATH.COM
Didn't even know computers could like... *download* and play games until I was double digits.

God bless the flash era.
God bless when "but its coolMATHgames" or "but its funBRAIN" would work as a get out of jail free card in the computer lab

 

[№56]

it's naive to think that groomers didn't hang out on early 00s kids sites and that properties like webkinz and neopets didn't primarily exist to show ads & sell sweatshop merch to kids. hell, during the height of its popularity neopets was run by scientology cultists.

This is all absolutely true but the real problem is that those kind of websites just don't exist anymore. There are no dedicated "children's websites" or "teen websites" on the modern mainstream internet, just kid-themed accounts and "content creators" that are hosted on the same platform as their adult-themed counterparts. Even if sites like Neopets and AOL's "Just For Kids" attracted shady characters and existed mostly to market stuff to children, they still acted as a boundary between the adult internet and the kid internet and were explicitly designed to minimize exposure to inappropriate topics. The closest thing to that today is Youtube Kids, and it's a broken mess that goes too far in the opposite direction by completely removing any interaction between users.

 

[ignika98]

It feels like barely anything is made for kids anymore. Cartoons are made for lonely millennials, toys are made for manchild "collectors", video games are made for adult NEETS, theme parks are overrun with soyboys looking to "relive their childhood", there's nothing left that's just for kids. I feel really bad for them.

 

[Outer Heaven]

This is all absolutely true but the real problem is that those kind of websites just don't exist anymore. There are no dedicated "children's websites" or "teen websites" on the modern mainstream internet, just kid-themed accounts and "content creators" that are hosted on the same platform as their adult-themed counterparts. Even if sites like Neopets and AOL's "Just For Kids" attracted shady characters and existed mostly to market stuff to children, they still acted as a boundary between the adult internet and the kid internet and were explicitly designed to minimize exposure to inappropriate topics. The closest thing to that today is Youtube Kids, and it's a broken mess that goes too far in the opposite direction by completely removing any interaction between users.

Exactly. All of these games had severe restrictions on chat as well. AQW only allowed users verified by their parents to join servers with open chat and even then you'd be chat banned for cursing and whatnot. Similar systems existed for most of these games, restricting chat to premade options. Its not even remotely comparable to something like Fortnite where you can join voice chat with randoms or social media sites that allow PMs from strangers.

Meanwhile League of Legends bans you for saying retarded even though Riot knows all their players are above 16. The internet is so gay nowadays man.

 

[Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意]

It feels like barely anything is made for kids anymore. Cartoons are made for lonely millennials, toys are made for manchild "collectors", video games are made for adult NEETS, theme parks are overrun with soyboys looking to "relive their childhood", there's nothing left that's just for kids. I feel really bad for them.

Relateable. I remember when people would make fun of me for collecting kids toys as a teenager. Now they make fun of me for not having a diversified portfolio of cheaply made, almost identical kids toys.

 

[LostintheCycle]

toys are made for manchild "collectors"

I have a lot to say about toys. I'd say this is a small part of this. What's really wrong is that most toys for kids is low-brow shit.

ASMR 4 Kids Lots of toys are variations of Youtube trends like this: ASMR, slime, oddly satisfying, DIY, etc.

There are hundreds of gross sensationalist toys like this.

I feel so sorry for this kid. But anyway, a lot of 'surprise' toys are made to make kids hooked on collecting bits of plastic which are typically not very interesting to play with.

Apparently Addison Rae is some famous Tiktok or Youtube star. She launched a line of dolls, one of them being this 'Body Positivity' one. They made her slightly chubbier than other dolls, which is fine in of itself, but seriously? If I were a young girl and my parents bought me this, I would be insulted that my parents think I'm fat and need consolance. That besides, it's also an influencers doll which serves to promote herself in this fake positive light.

I pay attention to toys because I have a little brother and I think play is very important to children -- this is also why I'm very interested in education -- so play should be facilitated by well made toys. I think well made toys are versatile and non-restrictive, sometimes simple. Like, a foam sword is simple but very versatile. Construction toys like LEGO are good examples, though LEGO has been ruined by their insistence on selling third-party IP tie-ins, and by collectors whose serious big boy sets fill up a portion of some toy stores now.

I think a lot of people might remember the 'Poopsie Slime Surprise Unicorn'

It sold out super quickly, but I bet you it's main function now is filling space in the toybox. It's a bad toy, not so much because it's gross but because it performs a very small set of functions and would be unwieldy to adapt to other kinds of play because it's big and heavy, and probably wouldn't be very mobile. All it can do is a dance, make some sounds (like most toys on the shelves), and take a glitter shit if you follow the complex process. The most fun a kid would have with this is opening up their birthday present to see the thing they saw on youtube in front of them.

Kids can be infinitely entertained just by sticks, rocks, grass, and other kids. A good toy should be tools of play that only add onto what a child's own ambitions are in play, which is something that motorised dancing dolls, plastic collector items, and ASMR pop-it fidget spinners do not provide in my opinion, even if children seem to like them superficially.
Toy rant over

 

[elia925-6]

I have a lot to say about toys. I'd say this is a small part of this. What's really wrong is that most toys for kids is low-brow shit.

View attachment 49406
ASMR 4 Kids Lots of toys are variations of Youtube trends like this: ASMR, slime, oddly satisfying, DIY, etc.

View attachment 49407
There are hundreds of gross sensationalist toys like this.

View attachment 49408
I feel so sorry for this kid. But anyway, a lot of 'surprise' toys are made to make kids hooked on collecting bits of plastic which are typically not very interesting to play with.
View attachment 49409
Apparently Addison Rae is some famous Tiktok or Youtube star. She launched a line of dolls, one of them being this 'Body Positivity' one. They made her slightly chubbier than other dolls, which is fine in of itself, but seriously? If I were a young girl and my parents bought me this, I would be insulted that my parents think I'm fat and need consolance. That besides, it's also an influencers doll which serves to promote herself in this fake positive light.

I pay attention to toys because I have a little brother and I think play is very important to children -- this is also why I'm very interested in education -- so play should be facilitated by well made toys. I think well made toys are versatile and non-restrictive, sometimes simple. Like, a foam sword is simple but very versatile. Construction toys like LEGO are good examples, though LEGO has been ruined by their insistence on selling third-party IP tie-ins, and by collectors whose serious big boy sets fill up a portion of some toy stores now.

I think a lot of people might remember the 'Poopsie Slime Surprise Unicorn'
View attachment 49410
It sold out super quickly, but I bet you it's main function now is filling space in the toybox. It's a bad toy, not so much because it's gross but because it performs a very small set of functions and would be unwieldy to adapt to other kinds of play because it's big and heavy, and probably wouldn't be very mobile. All it can do is a dance, make some sounds (like most toys on the shelves), and take a glitter shit if you follow the complex process. The most fun a kid would have with this is opening up their birthday present to see the thing they saw on youtube in front of them.

Kids can be infinitely entertained just by sticks, rocks, grass, and other kids. A good toy should be tools of play that only add onto what a child's own ambitions are in play, which is something that motorised dancing dolls, plastic collector items, and ASMR pop-it fidget spinners do not provide in my opinion, even if children seem to like them superficially.
Toy rant over

The kids section of youtube is creepy and disturbing

 

[Aral]

@LostintheCycle I've always felt weird as fuck about those kinds of toys. It has something borderline fetishistic (for the poop toys, scatophilic) to it. I mean by the time kids are old enough to have these toys, they're way over the poop joke stage. That just reminded me that I feel bad about whoever played in this commercial:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU5ADuXI56Q

I remember also the controversy with the Troll doll that would make weird noises whenever a spot in her private area was pressed. Not to mention that girlsgogames and other kids' websites are now completely littered with really gross stuff that makes me think the creators have weird fetishes. Kids' stuff nowadays is getting weirder and weirder. I miss that 2008 era when I was running on LPS, my parents' camera, Schleich toy horses and even a couple times bought a LPS plush I registered online (a bit like webkinz iirc?).

In terms of kids having fun with just anything, I recall I made an "RV" for my LPS that was just a blue box, one of the kind you can lock and you find in hardware stores, I had drawn windows and doors and a windshield on paper, used whatever accessories I had to make the interior, and I would play with that thing for hours. Now that box has pens in it, but I realize now how creative it was, and how important it is for kids to be able to get creative, which severely lacks now. My mother used to work partly in the schools of my small town and says that few kids in this new generation are actually creative. For the most part, they wait to be told to do something. They don't really think outside the box. I'm not surprised. I think that now also if you put them outside without directions and without an iPad or a phone, they'd be kinda... lost?

Needless to say I'm scared for my little sisters who are Alphas (2016 and 2020). I'm afraid of not being able to bond with them altogether due to how differently we grew up.

 

[bees]

It feels like barely anything is made for kids anymore. Cartoons are made for lonely millennials, toys are made for manchild "collectors", video games are made for adult NEETS, theme parks are overrun with soyboys looking to "relive their childhood", there's nothing left that's just for kids. I feel really bad for them.

They still make a lot of shit for kids they just don't put any effort or creativity into it, kids get an endless stream of Cocomelon Johnny Johnny Yes Papa Color Egg Fun With Finger Family Slime Unboxing.

 

[bees]

I have a lot to say about toys. I'd say this is a small part of this. What's really wrong is that most toys for kids is low-brow shit.

View attachment 49406
ASMR 4 Kids Lots of toys are variations of Youtube trends like this: ASMR, slime, oddly satisfying, DIY, etc.

View attachment 49407
There are hundreds of gross sensationalist toys like this.

View attachment 49408
I feel so sorry for this kid. But anyway, a lot of 'surprise' toys are made to make kids hooked on collecting bits of plastic which are typically not very interesting to play with.
View attachment 49409
Apparently Addison Rae is some famous Tiktok or Youtube star. She launched a line of dolls, one of them being this 'Body Positivity' one. They made her slightly chubbier than other dolls, which is fine in of itself, but seriously? If I were a young girl and my parents bought me this, I would be insulted that my parents think I'm fat and need consolance. That besides, it's also an influencers doll which serves to promote herself in this fake positive light.

I pay attention to toys because I have a little brother and I think play is very important to children -- this is also why I'm very interested in education -- so play should be facilitated by well made toys. I think well made toys are versatile and non-restrictive, sometimes simple. Like, a foam sword is simple but very versatile. Construction toys like LEGO are good examples, though LEGO has been ruined by their insistence on selling third-party IP tie-ins, and by collectors whose serious big boy sets fill up a portion of some toy stores now.

I think a lot of people might remember the 'Poopsie Slime Surprise Unicorn'
View attachment 49410
It sold out super quickly, but I bet you it's main function now is filling space in the toybox. It's a bad toy, not so much because it's gross but because it performs a very small set of functions and would be unwieldy to adapt to other kinds of play because it's big and heavy, and probably wouldn't be very mobile. All it can do is a dance, make some sounds (like most toys on the shelves), and take a glitter shit if you follow the complex process. The most fun a kid would have with this is opening up their birthday present to see the thing they saw on youtube in front of them.

Kids can be infinitely entertained just by sticks, rocks, grass, and other kids. A good toy should be tools of play that only add onto what a child's own ambitions are in play, which is something that motorised dancing dolls, plastic collector items, and ASMR pop-it fidget spinners do not provide in my opinion, even if children seem to like them superficially.
Toy rant over

You said it. Seeing the shit my niece and nephew have that passes as toys these days makes me sick, especially that "Shopkins" shit, anybody with half a brain can see exactly what that one is all about so really no need to go into that.

There is a conspiracy to deprive kids of their imagination and creativity.

 

[bees]

You said it. Seeing the shit my niece and nephew have that passes as toys these days makes me sick, especially that "Shopkins" shit, anybody with half a brain can see exactly what that one is all about so really no need to go into that.

There is a conspiracy to deprive kids of their imagination and creativity.

This also goes into kids games as well. I grew up playing Roblox and seeing the way it has changed over the years is the perfect example for whats happening, what used to be a platform that encouraged children to be creative and play and maybe learn some programming along the way has turned into a way to milk their parents credit cards and bombard them with consumerist advertising bullshit. They had a fucking Gucci ad campaign at one point for fucks sake.