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ngl I wouldn't consider the infection mlp aus as childlore, since most of the people participating in it aren't children at all, but adults who were in the fandom as kids.
In FNAF 1's defense, it didn't TRY to cater to kids intentionally. ADULTS knew animatronic animals were creepy, establishments like Chuck E Cheese had long fallen out of favor. Then it was a surprise hit with kids and what do you know, it was colorful mascots that did the trick.
There's also the fact that Scott Cawthon originally made FNAF in response to criticism that one of his previous game's mascots gave off the vibes of a creepy animatronic. And he made those previous games _intending_ for them to be child friendly.
Yeah , the creator only created the game because of some comments telling that the models that he made for his past games looked scary so he did his shot at it , and ohhhh boy he had no half of an ideia how far this would go.
My issue is when people lump poppy playtime in with something like skibidi toilet or garten of banban, at the end of the day Poppy playtime is still a very gory game with some dark themes, just look at chapter 3 and some of the things in it. It's not made for kids, and I'm annoyed that Tale Foundry (who I respect and enjoy a lot) is lumping the game where kids are drugged and surgically transferred into monstrous forms with SKIBIDI TOILET.
I think people also under sell how much children are obsessed with the macabre. Children are infatuated with death and fear because those are two things they don't really understand. Not only do adults understand that old animatronixs like chucky cheese are uncanny, so do the kids. Freddy Fazbear appeals to them too because it's massively relatable. The same reason why kids were into movies like Chucky. Yeah, of course kids are gonna be enthralled by a film about a killer doll coming to life and attacking a kid! It's practically *about* their feelings
The idea of Horror Mascots being profitable enough to get its own merch towards younger demographic (like Huggy Wuggy from Poppy's Playtine) has the same energy as how R-Rated films like _Robocop,_ _Toxic Avengers,_ _Terminator_ and _Rambo_ are marketable to sell toys to kids.
Some of them also got children's cartoon adaptations - For example I remember watching cartoons based on both Robocop and _checks notes_ Attack of the Killer Tomatoes as a kid... (no, seriously, why did a fairly niche 1978 comedy-horror musical become a franchise in the late 80s and early 90s with both sequels and an animated children's series?)
Honestly given that historical context, I’m completely fine with kids latching onto popular horror just as they did with violent action movies in the 80’s. Sure it’s way more cringe than it was in the 80’s, but nothing against it personally. God knows I definitely did the same. However, the whole brain rot epidemic on the internet is horrid, like it doesn’t feel like a normal enjoyment of media anymore, it’s legit making them stupid.
the true horror is kids no longer having a safe place online, designated for them. and children wanting to ve influencers/ being concerned with how they appear online is sad, concerning, and dangerous.
even in real life, we're starting to have a lack of þird places. it sucks because it's eiþer home or school and if you live in some suburban hellscape or an insanely rural area then you kinda have nowhere to go. where do we go to play and hang out? malls are dying god dammit
Yeah, on Bluesky, someone was talking about what the Darkness from that rejected show Pibby, and one person mentioned that the darkness was likely meant to represent the loss of childhood
Kids shouldnt even be online anyway, but if your dumb enough to let a child have internet access then your probably a bad parent, anyone with a mind seeing a person shove a tablet in front of their kids face instead of teaching them knows they are a bad parent, since they only care for themselves not being bothered and not about the child itself, and that also shows they shouldn't have had kids in the first place.
@@kqlolll2618 I don't agree. It's the reality now that being online is important and expected. Companies hire via websites, school sometimes send material that way etc. And it will only become more and more important. There's no denying that. Keeping children fully way from the online world to protect them seems to me similar like not teaching them about death, smoking and other "grown up" topics. Instead of banning it, you should teach your child about it, let it gather experiences in a protected and safe environment where you can also control what they sees and explain to them what it is. Because you won't be able to keep it away from them forever. They will hear about it at school or from friends. At some points, they'll find a way to get access to it, be that at a public library, a friend's place or in some other way. We should know that much from alcohol, drugs, pornography, etc.Trying to keep your child away from something will only make that something more interesting, while at the same time does not help them to understand what's dangerous about it.
Part of the root problem is that companies are trying to be an “everything site” without separating kids and adults Combined with no places for kids in person (at least in the US) outside of schools and it leads to them being rampant everywhere
Yep, I find it quite easy, even cowardly, to summarize the situation "well in fact the children have always done it like that" or the opposite "the children were better before". If we have created child protection laws over the decades and changes in perspectives, it's not for shit
@@musicsbricabrac7195 to some extent is it’s just kids being kids , but ya the real issue is when it’s capitalized on for gain (Elsa gate and cheap slop content) But also parents need to parent and it’s gotten harder since they both need to work in this economy
@@j.2512as unfortunate as it is, it’s far too late for that now. The mistakes of adults who took the easy way out have grown to be irreparable and because of that, there is no fix, merely patches to the problem. FNAF has been able to regain control of its enormous community due the experience of the creator who was able to interact with his community every chance he got. Scott made the right move to expand Five Nights at Freddy’s as control over the children in that mess of a community was regained but the same can’t be said about Bendy and Mob’s pet project. They do not care as much as Scott did and thus, the fanbase is allowed to run rampant and inadvertently cause chaos without any leashes. I’m worried that the same thing might happen with Indigo Park but Mason has the advantage of it being known only to the target audience and thusly the fandom being subservient to him. What needs to happen is for Mascot horror creators to do what they can to minimize their fanbases to keep them under control and not cause unintended spill over. It sounds incredibly authoritarian but it’s our only choice at the moment.
@@angryrabidfoxes7380 True life has always been hard and always will be in one way or another. Its hard to properly evaluate the problems of today without hindsight.
"gone are the ways of neopets--" me, an adult, with neopets in a separate tab pulled up as we're about to celebrate the 25th anniversary tomorrow: *HEAVY SWEATING*
@@sprinkletragedy My husband is the same with Draiks XD I have a few species I'm attached to (I'm early gen z not millennial but the sentiment is still there)
I always enjoy artistic breakdowns of those kinds of games, because usually, the discussion is never about the games at the end of the day. It always boils down to artistic integrity, the lack thereof, and how much we just need media for children that has more complex nuances.
I agree, because I think the reason society isn’t doing well these days is because children aren’t doing fine. Their entertainment now is lackluster, there aren’t any spaces for them, parents are concerned about what schools are teaching them, and Their getting reheated leftovers on TV rather than fresh and original content. With the rise of indie content, it’s important to have some stuff made for kids. It may be risky, but it’s really important.
4:00 Wait, so, can "Ring around the Rosie" be considered 19-century brainrot because kids use a sinister song allegedly describing a girl that dies of Great Plague and is cremated as a game?
There is no evidence to support it being about that. That interpretation only started in the 1950s. Also English version is roses not Rosie. Suggesting more it's not about a person
@@ATHFNoobiethere’s lots of other children’s nursery rhymes that are likely about much darker topics. The podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz did an episode on nursery rhymes that goes into them more in depth!
As the parent of kids who've got autism and one of which will seek out horror stories, the scarier the better. I tried encouraging what I saw as "safer" kids horror like goosebumps but the more I tried to avoid fnaf and poppy playtime and skibidi (my youngest doesn't like most horror but loves skibidi). But eventually I realised that some kids feel real horror everyday. Like the trauma that comes from trying to live in a world that you don't feel safe in, or feel like you don't fit in, or where you never know which of the adults around you will be safe and supportive or authoritarian and cruel, intentionally or not. So I realised, my kid (the one who loves horror) has so many traumas that I need to support her through each day, so having some content that can help her process those fears and feelings can have value, even if I don't grasp it. I've never enjoyed horror as a genre but I can understand that if other adults enjoy certain genres more than others, why can't kids. Plus, even with content control and constant surveillance from me when my kids were online, I couldn't protect them from the stories because they'd hear everything on the playground anyway. We've never watched squid games, yet my kids knew everything about it, more than me (I had to watch several discussion TH-cam videos on the show to understand what they were talking about). And places like kids TH-cam are actually so full of trolls making deliberately gross and problematic videos, that it's like there is no way to fully protect our kids online. So I decided to change my approach. Instead of fighting to protect them, I decided to support them through these contents and learn to think critically about what they're consuming. I set all the family devices to the same TH-cam adult channel, that I could keep on top of on my phone without them feeling like I don't trust them, and I took more time from my day to watch content with them and have conversations about what we're watching, what it means, how it makes us feel, etc. Which also means I've had to face my own fears, cos I hate horror, especially the gross bloody stuff (due to my own childhood trauma), so I can best support my children with these interests. Instead of fighting the new cultural norms for kids thesedays, I meet them on their level and then we can work together through the content and help them better process and understand the meanings and lore and morals, etc. And my kids have been thrilled to show me these interests, I've noticed they've become less obsessive about it all now they're not having to be sneaky to keep up with their friends. They still enjoy the horror, especially the lore and layers and story telling, but in a healthier sense (I hope). I personally can't stand FNAF or skibidi, it seems so pointless to me, but then so was lonnytunes and other stuff I watched as a kid. Like one of my fav cartoons as a kid was one where Penelope Pitstop was being constantly kidnapped by dastardly so-in-so and recused by a cartoon network version of snow whites dwarfs. Like alot of playtime when I was little was of friends tying each other up with skipping ropes and scarfs on the playground and being kidnapped or rescued over n over again. If my kids played a game like that I'd be horrified lol. Better we adapt with the times through conversations, sharing knowledge and teaching our kids to think critically rather than blindly consume content. Or that's what I believe anyway, others will have their own parenting approaches that work for their families.
To those commenting about and not understanding the “daily trauma” thing… that’s ok! I’ll try to explain for those who are genuinely curious. People who have autism or other conditions/disorders where interacting with the world is hard can have happy lives and be cared for, but still have daily difficulties that can be anywhere from annoying to traumatic depending on how sensitive the person is. Imagine having a headache that won’t go away. Some days it might be a little better than others, but if a friend asks you to go on a run with them you either can’t go, or you go and have to deal with the pounding in your head the whole time. Or, if you have a friend that understands your headache condition, maybe you ask them to come over for a puzzle and some tea instead, which will still be painful for you but less so. You can’t just enjoy the time freely like they can, even if you do have a good time with them. That adds up over time and just makes you feel tired and over it, and that is a daily issue. It might not be exactly “trauma” every day, but it’s something that never quite goes away and makes everyday things feel harder than they should, yet you’re still often expected to function like everyone else who doesn’t have an eternal headache. People learn to deal with these things (I have), and can thrive alongside the difficulties, especially when they have the support of family and friends who help them deal with the “headache” in some ways so they can learn to deal with the “headache” on their own - and know when to ask for help and accommodations when they can’t - when they’re older. Hope that helps in understanding.
You were right about horror being a petri dish for this kind of stuff. I still remember being a 10-11 year old tasked with writing a horror story and mine was just a Slenderman fan fiction which ended with the protagonist's younger brother dying.
I have one problem with stuff like Poppy Playtime or Skibbidy Toilet, but it's not really with the thing itself existing or the kids interacting with it. I still remember playing hide and seek with my friends and the one searching for the others acting as Slenderman, me drawing Herobrine, and other dumb stuff like that, so I don't care about kids doing similar things with the current trends. The problem I have is the way these things form/spread. A lot of people say Skibbidy Toilet is just Gmod animations all over again, but the thing is, even if they are equally silly and dumb, the Gmod animations were just made by random people because they thought it was fun and wanted to share it with more people, meanwhile, Skibbidy Toilet is made by one person, releasing more episodes only because of how successful they are. Even if it may have changed later, at the start Fnaf was made just because Scoot wanted to, not caring about how popular it could be, while Poppy Playtime is made by a company trying to follow a formula to be as successful as possible. It just gives me this "corporate" or "manufactured" feeling, you know?
I’d even argue an over saturated vibe to it too. Because on TH-cam, the whole brain rot epidemic is being caused by masses of content farms releasing disgusting amounts of slop content on a daily, no, bi-daily basis. It’s just releasing content for contents sake, no heart or soul or thought. Just a money making machine that no one is regulating.
I thought Skibidi Toilet was harmless nonsense until the first time I walked into a toy shop and saw skibidi toilet collectible mystery figure boxes, the type where you're supposed to keep buying them until you've collected all 12-ish of them. The fact that popular internet memes are considered marketable now and have mainstream merchandise so quickly after they become popular is kind of nauseating.
If those gmod videos existed today they’d be merch of it. In fact I think a few of them did eventually get merch. Like I don’t know how to tell you this. But everything is like this today. You’re not going to find stuff that isn’t like this. And either you grow up or end up that weird adult shouting at children.
Kids have always been creepy little sh**s - always. Especially smaller children who still have that selfish streak in them. It's not a bad thing, it's part of their core development. But they ARE into scary things and always have been. It's a necessary developmental step.
As a kid I spent all my free time in the library. When I wasn't learning how to get free unsupervised access to the internet, I was checking out scary books especially about old folk lore and mythology. That ended REAL QUICK when I started telling my parents about drawing a ring to summon the devil.
Kids are creepy shits, once I was doing a birthday party and one randomly approached me, told me "my mom was in a car crash with her friend" and left me alone.
Kids have always play-pretended to kill each other, or violent play with their toys. I remember orchestrating civil wars or apocalyptic scenarios with my littlest pet shops & hot wheels, or copying crash bandicoot games to act out irl with my sibling and correcting him when he didn’t "die correctly". I was also one of those kids who liked learning & was particularly drawn to the darker aspects of history like weapons and torture Some kids are DEFINITELY into darker, morbid subjects than others. I was one of those. Some kids aren't interested in it at all and become distressed when other kids try to talk to them about it. Some kids DEFINITELY go too far, and dig too far into the dark corners of tje internet... or accidentally stumble into them. And im not sire its necessarily.. easier to do nowadays than it used to be, but there's more kids with unrestricted access and are more likely to come across it. Not quite sure what my point is here, except I guess that that its normal and even important kids explore and play around with dark subjects, but they need their own space to do that in and be protected from things that could actually scar them. Or at least, it needs to be a drip feed/gradual process so they arent completely overwhelmed by it and learn how to deal with it
Woooo that’s a crazy take! xD and I wouldn’t say all kids, like seriously I couldn’t handle horror/creepy genre stuff till I was in my early to mid teens!
Creepypasta has always been kids, some of the most famous are by tweens and teens which, sure are older but are still kids exploring storytelling. They’re subverting stuff. Im glad y’all were kind to the kids with this one
The brainrot issue is less to do with mascot horror and stuff like "Skibidi toilet" in and of itself, but the frenetic pace and sensory overwhelming nature of the content around them. Games are able to control pace through gameplay and the player, but video content in a nonstop stream thru sites like TikTok and TH-cam Shorts, dumped into youngsters' eyes with no context, and often no adult supervision, is where a lot of the concern comes from. There are reports of markedly shortened attention spans, and concerns with cognitive development. I do agree that the story elements themselves are not necessarily the culprit (I myself was equal parts horrified and fascinated as a youngster by FNAF), but the concept of brainrot here is a bit misunderstood.
I mean he talking about horror mascots specifically…. Not really umm…. Misinterpreted…. At the end of the day he did talk about lack of supervision, but that’s due to being on the Internet for too long. That will be to you and that’s the parents fault. That’s what he talked about here so it’s not really he’s not really misunderstanding. He’s pretty clear about it. Maybe it’s just your interpretation of it.
In short, kids have always been weird, and adults are worried about what they consume. It's like the Pokemon craze back in the 90s and parents thinking it was either stupid or dangerous. Or Satanic, if you were a religious nut. I'm over 30 years old and my dad still doesn't really understand my interests, and that's fine. I don't understand kids, but so long as what they're consuming isn't causing them to do bad things or say bad things, then you don't really have to get it. But yeah, supervision is the most important thing to do for them.
I mean most people dont like it not because they think its bad for kids(not entirely because of that at least) but because they think its "ruining" the comunities they like which is bs but like i get the annoyence
@@joaomigueltorresbueno4457 i think that the problem in that regard is that there isn't really a 100% efective way to divide kid fan spaces from adult fan spaces. The internet is so big and so easy to access that makes it incredibly dificult to keep kids away from adult spaces and and adults away from kid spaces. Even with age restrictions and content filters.
This video really has opened my eyes and gave me a different perspective on "brain rot". Never really thought of it just children being children and having fun with it. Thanks for the different pov Tale Foundry.
Imo, as much as kids get flak for it (even in my own mind), the worst part of brainrot has never been the kids but the creators capitalizing on it. Kids just go off and have fun with things, it's adults that create these annoying brainrot videos like "SIRENHEAD VS SONIC.EXE IN MINECRAFT???" They should be the hated ones, not the kids.
The goosebumps book series was really popular. Kids have always loved to get scared, it doesn’t mean they’re dumber or that they got brain rot. I also think those mascot horror games got some artistic integrity that’s worth looking at with sincerity. Kids are cool cause they don’t pass immediate judgement on the things and media that they engage with
That's the difference, it's a book and not a speam of shorts contents that influence even us, adults, when website like tiktok was create to make us stay longer, and consum again and again. Hype to be in some year with the next recommendation on kids
I think it's important to remember that sometimes, parents, teachers and any other concerned adults can often project their own idea of childhood onto kids as a matter of expectation, even in the unfortunate event that said kids have been witness to stuff that child should see. In this case, engaging in morbid or just childishly grim stuff can also be a means of reclaiming control in the face an unkind world, or even just as an act of rebellion.
true! in childlore studies, they call that the “utopian ideal” of children- the parents’ expectations of childhood as perfect and innocent. children push back on this through something called antithetical play, which is what you’re describing here. they create folklore in order to define their own collective identities and to push back against adult interference.
It's amazing how many adults simply do not seem to remember ever being kids themselves, or are unable to look back at their own childhoods in a more objective manner when comparing themselves or people their own age to "kids these days". I can think of equivalents in my own childhood for everything that is popular with kids now, and I can also see myself being into a lot of those things if I was their age.
Also most adults simply dont view children as human beings, and that can get worse into child abuse. My parents have been horrible and they havent treated me as anything but a human being, they want me to be a perfect doll of unrealistic standards, they want to project their childhoods on me when those cant even work anymore. But a child is a human being, and none of us fit in a box anyways, we are all different, and none of us are truly normal. My stories, and stories in general are shaped from our experiences, and even our characters carry the traits we have since.. we made them. All my characters have been people treated horribly, but i give them someone who eventually loves them and takes care of them, something i still feel as though i really dont have.
Ngl, I thought this would be about AI slop generated for kids under 6, but instead it was nothing I'd ever heard about and extremely thought-provoking! thanks
My God, I love your little intro. The music, the smooth animation, absolutely beautiful. Also, hearing you say "Skibidi Toilet" is beyond hilarious to me, haha.
Adults tend to forget that children aren’t stupid or ignorant, they just lack context. And there is honestly little difference between a child and adult, it’s just that children tend to put less restrictions on their imagination.
Kids are ignorant. That's why they lack that context. And why they need to go to school for a dozen years before they can become useful members of society.
@@perfectallycromulent Calling them ignorant is a bit harsh. How can you expect someone to understand "context" if they've only been alive for a few years? It's a bit weird to call a child "ignorant" if they haven't lived long enough to experience the world and understand that context, you know? They're not willingly choosing not to understand or not seek out different experiences, they just simply haven't lived long enough to experience it. How can you expect a 5 year old or a 15 year old to understand how the world works on their own? That's why they go to school, so they can learn things about the world and gain critical thinking skills so that they can figure things out for themselves. It isn't ignorance it's just a lack of experience because again, they're children.
Yep Well, we are starting to see an increase in developmental delay in children, the development of fine motor skills and imagination, creativity. They are the direct consequences of our own education and our actions, turning a blind eye to certain factual concerns is just as unhealthy as saying "me at the time, we weren't shit". That's because they don't have contexte, that we need to stay with us on this type of content
@@althefunkman They're still ignorant and it's not bad in this CONTEXT, but that's a fact, and because that's it, that we need, as adult, to be with them :)
Children are still basically babies, and havent been in the world for a very long time. Expecting things so harsh to them is ridiculous because,, you do know thats basically a baby right??
I’m one of those Fnaf kids, as early as 8 years old I was enjoying the games and characters and talking about its lore on the playground. To this day, it is still one of my most passionate special interests and I’m about 6 months away from being an adult. I look back and just remember how much this series made me smile, I made so many friends and picked up awesome hobbies. I was initially scared of it as a kid but that only drew me in more, considering I have a really morbid sense of curiosity (I’ve always loved parasites, other infectious diseases and disaster documentaries from as early as I can remember). The takeaway is that content like this is positive and lets kids explore things like social interaction, connecting dots of storylines, creativity and just having fun! Now I’m sitting here with my collection of Funko and Hex Fnaf plushies and figures and thankful that I did interact with Fnaf like I did
As a folklorist myself, I appreciate how you talk about it here. Something I’m always having to convey to my students is that folklore is not a thing of the past- it’s created and recreated every day. I will say, although we were largely established by anthropologists, we are our own academic discipline now! There’s certainly still a lot of overlap, but we use different approaches/methods
I do think there's a nature to kids that has always been around that parents are kind of just blind to for a while. I remember my nephews were talking about Among Us a few years back, and my mother made a crack about how kids are always pretending to fight and betray each other these days. I was, like, "'These days'!? Are you under the impression that little boys playing Cowboys and Indians in their back yards during the 1950's were pretending to make happy friends with each other?"
I'm glad this wasn't just another "x is bad for kids" or "kids are stupid" video that tends to crop up in discussions of mascot horror. Never thought about it as folklore, but that fits so well!
I'm reminded of this quote from Terry Pratchett's Hogfather (a particular favourite of mine). "It was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying." Children have always been drawn to dark subject matter and played with it. Part of how they learn to process it and how to handle the less than pleasant parts of life as they get older. The internet has just broadened how much they can find. Something I find funny, in a dark humour way, is how many of the adults who are shocked that kids exploring and embracing the dark, violent, disturbing, gross, etc., are the exact same adults who will actively ignore censorship warnings and not pay attention to what the child in their care is doing, until it negatively impacts them (the adult). The same people who will dismissively let a preschooler play Grand Theft Auto "because games are (just) for kids", and then blame the developers for exposing their child to horrible things by making a, clearly marked, MA rated video game. I feel like these sorts of people have a clear image in their heads of what they think their child is like, but don't take the time to actually engage with and learn who their child is. I have talked with children who have been playing games that seemed disturbing and juvenile, only to have their explanations be surprisingly mature, deep, and responsible. They don't want to hurt their friends, but safe scares are fun. They don't want to get eaten by a wolf/snake/monster/creature, but they know things need to eat. It's interesting. Thanks to anyone who read all this. Lots of thoughts.
May I add something more to your quote? Because another passage from Hogfather seemed to fit rather well here: "When you were grown up you only feared, well, logical things. Poverty. Illness. Being found out. At least you weren't mad with terror because of something under the stairs. The world wasn't full of arbitrary light and shade. The wonderful world of childhood? Well, it wasn't a cut-down version of the adult one, that was certain. It was more like the adult one written in big heavy letters. Everything was... more. More everything." That whole book takes such a good look at our relationship with childhood and imagination and how we cope, including the dark bits. Thank you for sharing that
I teach English to kids in kindergarten in country where it's second language and I can confirm that 5-6 years olds do love horror cartoons at very least (my colleague played them some during Halloween). Kids just love to get scared
I remember a big conversation around Coraline. Adults were afraid the movie would be too scary for children, but many children love it. There is an inherent need to protect children. We fear the monsters in fantasy because we know the monsters in real life. But we the hope we have as adults comes from seeing the children beat the monsters in those movies. The reason any of us goes out the door each morning is because deep down in our psyche, we are arming ourselves with bedsheets and paper towel rolls and taking on the monsters of the world. We should not fear children's horror, but vet and then foster it. Experience it with them, talk about it. Help them understand the difference in fantasy and reality and then encourage the fantasy safely.
Honestly I don't really think its bad at all. As long as it doesn't encourage them to genuinely hurt people. Also hate those channels that sexualize this content and purposely direct it towards kids and monetize it on something like TH-cam kids...
This video is a lovely deep dive, in ways I did not expect. The both approaches, slow build up into that 'adults poaching kids content' I feel like hits an important internet and human core. Thank you for making this video and the way you speak life into this type of content, to flourish the points you bring home. Lotta town of salem vibes from this video (good ways).
It's ironic that the arguably most infamous brainrot mascot horror, Poppy Playtime, ultimately cleaned up its act and became a genuine successor to FNAF meanwhile FNAF has degraded to the point that even brainrot would be too good a description for it.
@@JoaoMiguelCordeiro-fl3wbyeah and they still are to this day. Fans asked for a harder ARG for chapter 4 and they delivered by making one a lot harder 🤔
I really would like an analysis on the need for adults to start a moral panic over Pop culture. It's been happening for decades upon decades and man it's weird.
As an adult, skibidi toilet isn't confusing or surprising to me in the least. It's a pretty straightforward evolution of gmod skits and YTPs. It's not new at all.
You guys remember crazy frog, Hampton the Hamster, peanut butter jelly time, Amazing horse, Badger badger badger, or oogachaka baby. What comes to my mind is the HUGE stick figure animation craze that swept kids and adults alike. Brain rot was a big part of our lives we’ve just forgot lol.
I love that you are covering child lore. It's such an interesting phenomenon. My sister and I were recounting something that was passed around our elementary school. Some kid had seen the rug rats episode about the bully that comes to the playground when it's noon and your shadow disappears. That story got passed around the playground and shared. Most of us didn't have cable at the time so we ate it up.
I get a bit annoyed when people say "kids (or something else) ruined xyz media" because sure it gets grating when something you don't like is unavoidably everywhere, but you're supposed to be able to shape your online experience yourself. You can block topics, people. Just because the whole multi-level monster madness is trending with the backrooms, it doesn't mean the version you like isn't there.
For a while, Friday Night Funkin was seen as a bad game because kids claimed that characters seen in mods like Hank from madness combat or Sonic were “from Fnf.” It also was hard because many of the popular mods were just EXE slop, and there was very little intel about the actual base game. Honestly, the Pico update has rekindled my love for Fnf, because since then, we’ve gotten more transparency with the devs, mods have been way cooler, and some songs don’t even sound like Fnf anymore, because they’re just so amazing. I predict a lot of big artists in the future will have some experience with FNF
But kids did kind of ruined the internet. Not cuz of anything _they_ did, but because evil people are now able to point _to_ kids on the internet and say "See? We need to neuter _your_ freedom in order to protect _them!"_
@@Cubeytheawesome I agree, but why is people discovering X character from FNF considered bad? it's like discovering captain falcon or marth through smash
@@Ultram-1985bNot "bad" persay, but really damn annoying. Like the classic example of your parent saying "that's zelda, right?" at a picture of Link. Misidentifying something that is so obvious to you is inherently irritating.
its so refreshing seeing a channel primarily about the deconstruction of media in an intelligent way, therefore to be an educational channel for writers and anyone else who like the content, to talk about children and "Brain Rot". definitely learned a lot of terms that help me put the whole parental fear into words, and i even remember being in those playgrounds just a decade ago, when FNAF came out and all of my friends and everyone else was absolutely loosing their mind. its like these people forgot about how insane troll face was back then, i remember trying to summon bloody marry and even some days running home from the buss because it was foggy out and i was scared of slender man because of what kids at school were saying. Things like what kids today are watching just happens, everywhere and endlessly, its not a problem, not the content really, but how its being consumed and distributed? maybe, but its culture, complicated answers is part of the topic in large. to look at "brain rot", you'd have to look a bit further up the age groups. Apathy being the subconscious goal for a lot of people, prejudice being rampant and accepted, and even rewarded. groups of people thinking its morally find to say "Your body, my choice." I would say cruelty and hatred is the "real brain rot" but it doesnt feel fitting to use such a modern term for an age old problem, even if the problem is ramped in today's culture
"They're pretending to kill each other on the playground." Me and my friends fighting a valiant last stand in the schoolyard: Yes. I honestly miss the days when the Internet wasn't just sitting in our pocket, waiting for us to become bored. Back when it took a conscious effort and a few minutes of robot screaming noises to access it.
I remember in kindergarten, we had huge Lego like bricks to play with so we naturally "entombed" a friend alive in the pyramid made of these, after pretending to cut off his legs for the devil so he couldn't run away (we were playing cultists). Some people had a memory wipe or a bland childhood if they do not remember stuff like that.
The only concern with brainrot (and the reason why it1s called that way) is precisely the tangible decrease in attention spans. Even adults are succetible to that, and "iPad children" is a real phenomenon where kids just don't develop their motor coordination properly. It's fine to let kids play some of those mascot horror games, or perhaps something like Among Us, which might be a good way to learn how to cooperate and social interaction. But it's always important to supervise them while they're at it.
Sure, maybe the original two chapters of poppy playtime were for kids but chapter 3 is not. Unless you think kids should be watching somebody having a belt buckle over their lower body so their entrails don't bleed out...
anyone else feels like there’s a weird paradox of an abundance to appeal towards kids to take their parents money and no place for them to actually enjoy their interests without people preying on them for any motives it’s like a weird landscape to be a kid on the internet i think how fnaf grew on the internet is a prime example because the story is interesting to a child, something you want to understand and your favorite youtubers are into but engaging in fnaf recently is very anti-kid bc ppl want this series to be so mature and avoid being called “childish”
@@ceregpurpleguy2906 and honestly I hate that it’s becoming more kid friendly by replacing the serial killer preying on children with a generic ai villain with a tragic backstory, like THAT feels like it’s trying to appeal to kids when the best part of the series was how children were the main victims, it’s rare to see that in horror unfortunately, and yet FNAF has become kid friendly for some annoying reason
If it isn't a difference in kind, I'd definitely say that it is a difference in magnitude. There is just SO MUCH of it. Kids absolutely need outlets for their creativity, places for their imaginations to run wild. It helps them learn how to make sense of and understand the world, but as any person training an AI knows "garbarge in, garbage out". At some point, either creators have to up the quality or kids have to be limited in their exposure. The world is becoming more and more online, and while that's not a bad thing in and of itself, the internet is fickle and plagued with corporations trying to milk consumers for their attention.
Working with kids with 10+ year, yep, that what we see. Not enough safe place, less creativity, imagination,manual manipulation. And before loopers, adult are influenced negativly by it too.
I'm an adult now, but when I was in middle school my friends and I made our own Creepypasta OCs. We did it because we thought it was fun and liked horror stories. It was never about actually hurting people. We just liked making stories.
Honestly as an adult who likes FNAF and bendy and other mascot horror it kinda makes me hate myself and feel childish for liking these things when liking horror stuff is basically my entire personality
@@redpanda6497At a certain point in the trend pipeline, it does become tailormade to appeal to children (vibrant colours, easy names, general easy appeal). It's been 15 some years, game devs are learning what format has been popular are making copies of that for pure profit.
I’m glad this video went the route it did. I remember when Spongebob was said to harm IQ, there’s always silly things like that going around. Kind of its own kind of folklore in a sense. There definitely are things kids shouldn’t be exposed to, or spend all their time on during development, but a lot of the individual videos/games mentioned really aren’t unique to what kids usually interact with. There’s definitely more concern about there not being enough outdoor play to balance it in especially young children, kids not having developed enough hand muscles to hold a pencil when they first enter school etc etc, a pretty different topic to this. If childlore is being made, that shows a lot of thought and imagination at work as well as socializing, usually. Often times it translates directly into games done outside too. Adults should still tell kids if they go too far and teach them what’s appropriate etc, but not yet something to panic over at that stage.
This reminds me of my own childhood (as it should). I had a wild imagination and was very keen on making fantasy worlds. I made up my own languages and codes/phrases, creatures, plants, cities, cultures...yeah, I poached a lot too. I read a lot. Like...a lot. I was reading four books at any given time. I took things I liked from everywhere and created whatever I wanted. It was for escapism which turned into maladaptive daydreaming, sure...but I learned through it. And that's the important part. Play is how children learn. And children pick up so much from their world. And that's why I push so very hard for children's media to have some effort and quality put into it.
OK, ok, who gave Tale Foundry permission to be the voice of reason for a topic no one else has been reasonable about? This video is perfect. Just perfect. I cannot express that enough.
im 16 and have watched a small amount of skibidi toilet episodes and i see why kids like it. It's a narrative where things only exist to be fit together later. story is simple but growing. always growing. it's similar to how the conveluted story of fnaf could be pieced together in so many different ways that it almost seemed like a new update to a game or a brand new thing that kept coming out over and over. its like having chrismas to look forward to tomorow but everyday. that's the kind of thing that i think just hooks people into things like mascot horror or the digital circus and whatnot. (i am not a skibidi toilet defender and only watched the first like 15 episodes so don't smite me)
thinking about it when i was a kid in Australia in the 00s, me and my friends ran around pretending that our school was a cod map holding imaginary guns and pretending to shoot each other. kids will do what kids do
Okay please don't tell me you think bendy and the ink machine was a knock off of FNAF because FNAF was a point and click game and then the meatly did something new. New ideas and I love the game. Plus the game was never catered for children. Poppy playtime has changed since chapter one and now going on a darker route. If anything it's the content farmers that make things brainrot
@@graycatsaderowyeah. I can’t wait for chapter 4 to release because people will be taking us fans of the series a lot more serious due to the trailers and the devs showing and saying stuff about how much darker it is 🫠
I had to ask myself a question after seeing this video. Come to think of it, I never experienced child lore other than believing in the boogeyman and other cryptic. I never spent time with other children to truly experience anything and in the end, I'd say I had a failed childhood. Although, weirdly, I have a massive obsession with death. Drawing it everywhere, studying it, thinking about it, but never in a serial killer mindset. I just want to be surrounded by it
As a patented Creepy Kid who is now an adult, and also as a game developer, I was only mildly concerned about these kinds of games being marketed towards kids. I realized that most kids who will enjoy that kind of thing would probably seek it out anyway, and it never appeared to me that these games came out of the blue, so I could totally understand why they got the traction they did. My only concern was for the very little kids who would be exposed to this stuff by their siblings and peers before they may be ready to handle it, and that's a tale as old as time 🤷
I keep thinking .... We (parents) straight up tell are kids these songs are okay .. Rock a bye baby - about dead babies? London bridge - about executions? Ring around the Rosie - dying of the plague? In fact, very few nursery rhymes are Not horrifying....
"Remember what kids did to creepypasta?", spoken as if creepypasta ever had a standard. It was never supposed to have a standard, it's free-for-all format of writing a scary story and copypasting it wherever (hence the name) meant anyone could do it. Doesn't take a child to write 'bad' fiction, either!
When you feel the need to bash Gen Alpha for watching Skibidi Toilet, just remember that we're the generation that made The Annoying Orange & Fred popular
We might have made it popular but as an adult I don’t rewatch it and very much consider it cringe. A laugh to remember in memes about age but beyond that I’ll never engage with it again. The kids will grow and one day wonder why they ever liked some of it.
I always love seeing a deliciously sane video by Tale Foundry. One of my favorites on your channel was the video about "Why Kid's Stories Should Be Darker" or something, and this is just as good. Love to see your stuff Talebot!
Adults always forget the "brainrot" they engaged with as children, and they panic when they see what their kids are doing. Skibidi Toilet is just the latest incarnation of insane GMOD animation. We had our own with TF2 memes. TikTok is just Vine 2. No, there is no meaningful difference. And when those kids grow up they will either remember them fondly, forget them too, or cringe as they remember.
@@Bo77Sam89 Can't think of any examples off the top of my head, it's been years but I am certain there were. Maybe The Heavy is Dead but I am not sure whether this counts cuz it's recent lol
Your videos often start out sounding like a "kids these days" rant and in the end it's actually insightful lol. I genuinely get angry when people trivialize childhood as if we haven't all been there.
People forget what being a kid is like, there were loads of ghost stories, urban ledgends, songs, and games we all played that adults would deem brain rot.
My best friend and I in elementary school played at Sonic and a heroic Bowser fighting Ivo and evil Mario, which eventually developed into a crew of original creations of my own.
3:20 when I was ten years old, I had a seemingly undying obsession with Nyan Cat that lasted two years. proof this phenomenon is nothing new. The difference is, Nyan cat wasn't exploiting children for views, it was just a bunch of different people making fan animations, fan games, their own versions, covers, etc.
This is such an important discussion. I'm so tired of young adults teasing or out right belittling their younger family members or just kids in general for enjoying these things. I was about 10 years old when FNAF1 released. I liked FNAF because of the funny reactions Markiplier had and the interesting ideas GameTheory had. I remember telling my dad and stepmom about the lore! Oh they looked horrified when I started mentioning child murder in the middle of a restaurant. That was when William Afton was still known as 'Purple Guy'. When Sirenhead was a big thing on the internet my little brother, about seven at the time, told me in earnest that it was real. He was terrified because to him it was out there. He also told me scientists had recreated dinosaurs and such is the mind of an imaginative child, but he scared himself because there are content creators out there who profit off of creating low effort videos that specifically target this 'brainrot'. This is not an issue of children consuming media it's an issue of modern algorithms of the internet. It's a brainrot feedback loop or an echo chamber and children do not have the experience to push themselves out of it.
As the parent of a kid who has just started to delve into this stuff, this video is greatly appreciated. It's given me some great context for its existence and why it's important for them. I mean I was an early internet culture kid and some of the stuff we watched and laughed at was bizarre too lol.
Child and adult brains work differently, so there will always be things that are entertaining to a child that just seem strange to an adult. And I think we should accept that just because you don't understand the humor, doesn't mean its dangerous.
Actually if a kid finds something violent possibly games that involve guns or death or they watch TH-camrs who tend to swear entertaining, it can be dangerous for a child… but not in the way you think. The child might pick up these traits and use it in their everyday life. That’s why so many kids and teenagers use swear words in everyday life. It mostly comes from this content. They also tend to be extremely toxic and controlling. That’s why it’s dangerous
@TheSmortPigeon Its not human nature to be violent. If a violent child plays videogames its more likely because they're already violent. Not the other way around. Simply observing violence, while desensitizing you to violence, won't make you violent.
@@TheSmortPigeon From the papers I've read, while yes there is some small but noticeable effect (again, mostly believed to come from desensitization), it is minimal and not to the point of being dangerous. There was a period where everyone believed seeing violence led to doing violence, and so there are a lot of older papers claiming so. But if you look at newly published, higher quality papers then there is not a clear link between violent media and people committing crime or other dangerous forms of violence. If I remember correctly there is a correlation between watching a lot of martial arts media and getting into martial arts, or watching a lot of gun focused media and getting into recreational shooting. But "learning to fight/shoot" is not the same as "being violent". But please, if you have any specific papers that prove otherwise then please let me know and I'll read them when I have time.
Bull. Shit. I’ve found many articles say that kids imitate these behaviors in videos or content they consume. I even looked up if they don’t affect it at all! And guess what? The second article says that it could cause more aggressive or violent behaviors! Even if it’s small it eventually gets bigger until it isn’t healthy anymore!
A good series on youtube that has talked about child folklore amongst other folklore is Monstrum hosted by Emily Zarka who has a phd in folk lore. She has gone over creepy pastas and the like as well as traditional monsters from all over the world. The fact is that creepy things have been grabbing the attention of kids for ever. Heck how many fairy tales and nursery rhymes have darker origins. Yes some people do go around taking these children's stories and making them edgier, but for goodness sake the original Pinocchio had him die by being hung on a tree. Its also been a way for kids to deal with dark things in their real life. There is a reason people grow up and are surprised Lizzy Borden was real.
I'm in university now, and every time I hear someone say that Skidibi Toilet is a sign of how messed up this upcoming generation is, I just think of Annoying Orange and Minecraft parody songs and old creepypastas that were spread throughout the playground when I was a kid. It feels very similar to how I grew up, even though I didn't have proper internet access until I was a teenager.
I did not really think about the whole "brain rot" thing in a while and this video was a great perspective on it. I remember how weird kid's TV and the Internet used to be when I was little. The Internet at the time was a frontier. You had videos like those on Newgrounds (TH-cam was not even an idea at the time afaik) which were sometimes as nonsensical as it gets (if you know Charlie the Unicorn or the parody of the Devil Went Down to Georgia, you know exactly what I mean), what my parents no question would see as "brain rot". The Internet is changing still and in some ways is completely alien to me. I feel like a part of not understanding some of these things is just me, well, not being a kid any more, but hey such is life. Heck, my father grew up in a time where TV was view as "brain rot", especially with Saturday morning cartoons he used to watch. It seems like a pattern if anything.
Hello, so glad I found your channel. I get a lot out of your videos. You help me to understand a lot of aspects of storytelling that I just took for granted or didn't recognise at all originally. I especially like how you are able to help me make sense of a whole lot of my childhood and to appreciate the legitimacy of kids culture. Adults often forget what being a kid was like.
I like the turn this video takes. I can say I was the same as today's kids when I was their age, and so was my dad honestly. The things kids like change, but not the kids.
During the beginning I was terrified that this was going to be another jab at kids liking horror. I'm glad you took the time to illustrate that kids aren't ruining a thing by being interested in it and that the real issue is that people are seeing these things as avenues for money more-so than for creating a cohesive story.
Finally! I feel like I'm always yelling into a void when I tell people that this cycle of "oh my god what are the kids watching/playing!" is the same one that's been repeated for decades, if not centuries. I believe it was Plato, or some other notable ancient Greek philosopher who believed that the next generation of kids are somehow worse-behaved or otherwise less than the generations before them. It never really ends up being true. Different technology, same kids, largely the same behavior. I don't know why I thought one of these days the adults would see the cycle and stop judging things which they don't understand (i.e., kids and the stuff they're into), but nope, too many of them are trapped in their own limited perception and certainty that it is bigger than it is.
I was a little worried this video was just going to be a bunch of pearl-clutching, but it wasn't. I'm so very glad Tale Foundry was nice to kids and emphasized writing good stories and not pandering.
I love Mascot Horror. I was already terrified of mascots ( for other reasons ) but this added on to it. I don’t think it’s weird that kids latch onto these things. It’s scary, bright and colourful. It’s like a moth to a flame for kids. The issue with it though is kids not being told the difference between reality and the world they’re consuming online. Parents don’t regulate what their kids see and they just let them have full internet access and let them run away with it. Thats not okay; parents need to actually RAISE their kids. Not the iPad. Alongside this kids need a third space they can go to online and in real life. They’re trying so hard to grow up because they have nowhere to go because we’ve curated it that way. And it’s sad. We bring them into the world only to make them feel unwelcome and that needs to change
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Mr.talefoundry you looked at the wrong things this what you showed was no brain rott
Wall it is brain rot, it’s not good example of it. Good work on the child lore stuff I’ve bin doing it for years without noticing
ngl I wouldn't consider the infection mlp aus as childlore, since most of the people participating in it aren't children at all, but adults who were in the fandom as kids.
Wanted to watch this but it’s night
Damn it
@@TheTaleFoundry damn, you rwally know nothing about Skibidi toilet, omg, ive never been dissappointed in you until now
In FNAF 1's defense, it didn't TRY to cater to kids intentionally. ADULTS knew animatronic animals were creepy, establishments like Chuck E Cheese had long fallen out of favor. Then it was a surprise hit with kids and what do you know, it was colorful mascots that did the trick.
There's also the fact that Scott Cawthon originally made FNAF in response to criticism that one of his previous game's mascots gave off the vibes of a creepy animatronic. And he made those previous games _intending_ for them to be child friendly.
Yeah , the creator only created the game because of some comments telling that the models that he made for his past games looked scary so he did his shot at it , and ohhhh boy he had no half of an ideia how far this would go.
And the fact that it didn't have gratuitous realistic gore like most horror media had, made it safe atleast visually, to kids.
My issue is when people lump poppy playtime in with something like skibidi toilet or garten of banban, at the end of the day Poppy playtime is still a very gory game with some dark themes, just look at chapter 3 and some of the things in it. It's not made for kids, and I'm annoyed that Tale Foundry (who I respect and enjoy a lot) is lumping the game where kids are drugged and surgically transferred into monstrous forms with SKIBIDI TOILET.
I think people also under sell how much children are obsessed with the macabre. Children are infatuated with death and fear because those are two things they don't really understand. Not only do adults understand that old animatronixs like chucky cheese are uncanny, so do the kids. Freddy Fazbear appeals to them too because it's massively relatable. The same reason why kids were into movies like Chucky. Yeah, of course kids are gonna be enthralled by a film about a killer doll coming to life and attacking a kid! It's practically *about* their feelings
The idea of Horror Mascots being profitable enough to get its own merch towards younger demographic (like Huggy Wuggy from Poppy's Playtine) has the same energy as how R-Rated films like _Robocop,_ _Toxic Avengers,_ _Terminator_ and _Rambo_ are marketable to sell toys to kids.
Don't forget Alien and Aliens. I had xonomorph toys.
Some of them also got children's cartoon adaptations - For example I remember watching cartoons based on both Robocop and _checks notes_ Attack of the Killer Tomatoes as a kid... (no, seriously, why did a fairly niche 1978 comedy-horror musical become a franchise in the late 80s and early 90s with both sequels and an animated children's series?)
@@Stephen-Fox Attaaaaaaack of the killer tomatoooees!
Why are you everywhere
Honestly given that historical context, I’m completely fine with kids latching onto popular horror just as they did with violent action movies in the 80’s.
Sure it’s way more cringe than it was in the 80’s, but nothing against it personally. God knows I definitely did the same.
However, the whole brain rot epidemic on the internet is horrid, like it doesn’t feel like a normal enjoyment of media anymore, it’s legit making them stupid.
the true horror is kids no longer having a safe place online, designated for them. and children wanting to ve influencers/ being concerned with how they appear online is sad, concerning, and dangerous.
even in real life, we're starting to have a lack of þird places. it sucks because it's eiþer home or school and if you live in some suburban hellscape or an insanely rural area then you kinda have nowhere to go. where do we go to play and hang out? malls are dying god dammit
Yeah, on Bluesky, someone was talking about what the Darkness from that rejected show Pibby, and one person mentioned that the darkness was likely meant to represent the loss of childhood
The true horror is that kids _can't_ have such a safe space. Eventually but inevitably, it gets accounts that _aren't_ kids...
Kids shouldnt even be online anyway, but if your dumb enough to let a child have internet access then your probably a bad parent, anyone with a mind seeing a person shove a tablet in front of their kids face instead of teaching them knows they are a bad parent, since they only care for themselves not being bothered and not about the child itself, and that also shows they shouldn't have had kids in the first place.
@@kqlolll2618 I don't agree.
It's the reality now that being online is important and expected. Companies hire via websites, school sometimes send material that way etc. And it will only become more and more important. There's no denying that.
Keeping children fully way from the online world to protect them seems to me similar like not teaching them about death, smoking and other "grown up" topics. Instead of banning it, you should teach your child about it, let it gather experiences in a protected and safe environment where you can also control what they sees and explain to them what it is. Because you won't be able to keep it away from them forever. They will hear about it at school or from friends. At some points, they'll find a way to get access to it, be that at a public library, a friend's place or in some other way. We should know that much from alcohol, drugs, pornography, etc.Trying to keep your child away from something will only make that something more interesting, while at the same time does not help them to understand what's dangerous about it.
Part of the root problem is that companies are trying to be an “everything site” without separating kids and adults
Combined with no places for kids in person (at least in the US) outside of schools and it leads to them being rampant everywhere
Yep, I find it quite easy, even cowardly, to summarize the situation "well in fact the children have always done it like that" or the opposite "the children were better before". If we have created child protection laws over the decades and changes in perspectives, it's not for shit
@@musicsbricabrac7195 to some extent is it’s just kids being kids , but ya the real issue is when it’s capitalized on for gain (Elsa gate and cheap slop content)
But also parents need to parent and it’s gotten harder since they both need to work in this economy
there should be no separation, kids should not be online , period.
@@j.2512 Good luck with that
@@j.2512as unfortunate as it is, it’s far too late for that now. The mistakes of adults who took the easy way out have grown to be irreparable and because of that, there is no fix, merely patches to the problem. FNAF has been able to regain control of its enormous community due the experience of the creator who was able to interact with his community every chance he got. Scott made the right move to expand Five Nights at Freddy’s as control over the children in that mess of a community was regained but the same can’t be said about Bendy and Mob’s pet project. They do not care as much as Scott did and thus, the fanbase is allowed to run rampant and inadvertently cause chaos without any leashes. I’m worried that the same thing might happen with Indigo Park but Mason has the advantage of it being known only to the target audience and thusly the fandom being subservient to him. What needs to happen is for Mascot horror creators to do what they can to minimize their fanbases to keep them under control and not cause unintended spill over. It sounds incredibly authoritarian but it’s our only choice at the moment.
"kids these days, back in my day; kids smoked and went to war"
Fr though 💀
Nope back then people were skinny and weak unlike 50 years earlier.
Jeez ok great great great grand parent , 0-0
You know there’s something to be said about neither era being problem free
@@angryrabidfoxes7380 True life has always been hard and always will be in one way or another. Its hard to properly evaluate the problems of today without hindsight.
"gone are the ways of neopets--"
me, an adult, with neopets in a separate tab pulled up as we're about to celebrate the 25th anniversary tomorrow: *HEAVY SWEATING*
NO BUT SAME-
Millennials still having an attachment to Neopets is my favourite thing. I have approximately 20 Lennies and I have no intention of stopping, haha.
@@sprinkletragedy My husband is the same with Draiks XD I have a few species I'm attached to (I'm early gen z not millennial but the sentiment is still there)
I always enjoy artistic breakdowns of those kinds of games, because usually, the discussion is never about the games at the end of the day. It always boils down to artistic integrity, the lack thereof, and how much we just need media for children that has more complex nuances.
I agree, because I think the reason society isn’t doing well these days is because children aren’t doing fine.
Their entertainment now is lackluster, there aren’t any spaces for them, parents are concerned about what schools are teaching them, and Their getting reheated leftovers on TV rather than fresh and original content.
With the rise of indie content, it’s important to have some stuff made for kids. It may be risky, but it’s really important.
good children's media at large has been slowly fading away, sadly.
What about Bluey?
As a parent, that show is a godsend.
4:00 Wait, so, can "Ring around the Rosie" be considered 19-century brainrot because kids use a sinister song allegedly describing a girl that dies of Great Plague and is cremated as a game?
oh my god
imagine 200 years into the future people start singing the huggy wuggy song not knowing what it meant
Thats not true its a myth. Its not actually about the plague at all.
Research has shown that there isn’t any connection to the black plague, no one’s really sure where exactly it came from
There is no evidence to support it being about that. That interpretation only started in the 1950s. Also English version is roses not Rosie. Suggesting more it's not about a person
@@ATHFNoobiethere’s lots of other children’s nursery rhymes that are likely about much darker topics. The podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz did an episode on nursery rhymes that goes into them more in depth!
As the parent of kids who've got autism and one of which will seek out horror stories, the scarier the better. I tried encouraging what I saw as "safer" kids horror like goosebumps but the more I tried to avoid fnaf and poppy playtime and skibidi (my youngest doesn't like most horror but loves skibidi).
But eventually I realised that some kids feel real horror everyday. Like the trauma that comes from trying to live in a world that you don't feel safe in, or feel like you don't fit in, or where you never know which of the adults around you will be safe and supportive or authoritarian and cruel, intentionally or not.
So I realised, my kid (the one who loves horror) has so many traumas that I need to support her through each day, so having some content that can help her process those fears and feelings can have value, even if I don't grasp it. I've never enjoyed horror as a genre but I can understand that if other adults enjoy certain genres more than others, why can't kids.
Plus, even with content control and constant surveillance from me when my kids were online, I couldn't protect them from the stories because they'd hear everything on the playground anyway. We've never watched squid games, yet my kids knew everything about it, more than me (I had to watch several discussion TH-cam videos on the show to understand what they were talking about). And places like kids TH-cam are actually so full of trolls making deliberately gross and problematic videos, that it's like there is no way to fully protect our kids online.
So I decided to change my approach. Instead of fighting to protect them, I decided to support them through these contents and learn to think critically about what they're consuming. I set all the family devices to the same TH-cam adult channel, that I could keep on top of on my phone without them feeling like I don't trust them, and I took more time from my day to watch content with them and have conversations about what we're watching, what it means, how it makes us feel, etc. Which also means I've had to face my own fears, cos I hate horror, especially the gross bloody stuff (due to my own childhood trauma), so I can best support my children with these interests. Instead of fighting the new cultural norms for kids thesedays, I meet them on their level and then we can work together through the content and help them better process and understand the meanings and lore and morals, etc. And my kids have been thrilled to show me these interests, I've noticed they've become less obsessive about it all now they're not having to be sneaky to keep up with their friends. They still enjoy the horror, especially the lore and layers and story telling, but in a healthier sense (I hope). I personally can't stand FNAF or skibidi, it seems so pointless to me, but then so was lonnytunes and other stuff I watched as a kid. Like one of my fav cartoons as a kid was one where Penelope Pitstop was being constantly kidnapped by dastardly so-in-so and recused by a cartoon network version of snow whites dwarfs. Like alot of playtime when I was little was of friends tying each other up with skipping ropes and scarfs on the playground and being kidnapped or rescued over n over again. If my kids played a game like that I'd be horrified lol.
Better we adapt with the times through conversations, sharing knowledge and teaching our kids to think critically rather than blindly consume content. Or that's what I believe anyway, others will have their own parenting approaches that work for their families.
Why do you say that the child of yours who loves horror had so many traumas? I would like to understand better. Just asking out of intrigue.
I don't understand why you can't stand fnaf
Your kid does not experience trauma everyday, unless you're abusing them or something.
Living in a world hostile to the way you *are* is traumatic as hell; you sound like a good and thoughtful parent
To those commenting about and not understanding the “daily trauma” thing… that’s ok! I’ll try to explain for those who are genuinely curious.
People who have autism or other conditions/disorders where interacting with the world is hard can have happy lives and be cared for, but still have daily difficulties that can be anywhere from annoying to traumatic depending on how sensitive the person is.
Imagine having a headache that won’t go away. Some days it might be a little better than others, but if a friend asks you to go on a run with them you either can’t go, or you go and have to deal with the pounding in your head the whole time. Or, if you have a friend that understands your headache condition, maybe you ask them to come over for a puzzle and some tea instead, which will still be painful for you but less so. You can’t just enjoy the time freely like they can, even if you do have a good time with them. That adds up over time and just makes you feel tired and over it, and that is a daily issue. It might not be exactly “trauma” every day, but it’s something that never quite goes away and makes everyday things feel harder than they should, yet you’re still often expected to function like everyone else who doesn’t have an eternal headache.
People learn to deal with these things (I have), and can thrive alongside the difficulties, especially when they have the support of family and friends who help them deal with the “headache” in some ways so they can learn to deal with the “headache” on their own - and know when to ask for help and accommodations when they can’t - when they’re older.
Hope that helps in understanding.
You were right about horror being a petri dish for this kind of stuff. I still remember being a 10-11 year old tasked with writing a horror story and mine was just a Slenderman fan fiction which ended with the protagonist's younger brother dying.
I have one problem with stuff like Poppy Playtime or Skibbidy Toilet, but it's not really with the thing itself existing or the kids interacting with it. I still remember playing hide and seek with my friends and the one searching for the others acting as Slenderman, me drawing Herobrine, and other dumb stuff like that, so I don't care about kids doing similar things with the current trends. The problem I have is the way these things form/spread. A lot of people say Skibbidy Toilet is just Gmod animations all over again, but the thing is, even if they are equally silly and dumb, the Gmod animations were just made by random people because they thought it was fun and wanted to share it with more people, meanwhile, Skibbidy Toilet is made by one person, releasing more episodes only because of how successful they are. Even if it may have changed later, at the start Fnaf was made just because Scoot wanted to, not caring about how popular it could be, while Poppy Playtime is made by a company trying to follow a formula to be as successful as possible. It just gives me this "corporate" or "manufactured" feeling, you know?
I’d even argue an over saturated vibe to it too.
Because on TH-cam, the whole brain rot epidemic is being caused by masses of content farms releasing disgusting amounts of slop content on a daily, no, bi-daily basis.
It’s just releasing content for contents sake, no heart or soul or thought.
Just a money making machine that no one is regulating.
I thought Skibidi Toilet was harmless nonsense until the first time I walked into a toy shop and saw skibidi toilet collectible mystery figure boxes, the type where you're supposed to keep buying them until you've collected all 12-ish of them. The fact that popular internet memes are considered marketable now and have mainstream merchandise so quickly after they become popular is kind of nauseating.
If those gmod videos existed today they’d be merch of it. In fact I think a few of them did eventually get merch.
Like I don’t know how to tell you this. But everything is like this today. You’re not going to find stuff that isn’t like this.
And either you grow up or end up that weird adult shouting at children.
Yea anything that gets popular these days has to be shoved everywhere and has to be corporate.
That's part of a broader thing about how corporate interests effect everything else.
How fitting this comes out when Piglet's Big Game has become "Baby's first Silent Hill."
I've already gotten two separate news articles about it...
Me too
Finally, the normies get to talk about one of my favorite games!
definitely didnt expect to see a tale foundry video with poppy playtime in the thumbnail in my notifs
Nor did I thought Brain Rot would be related to scary
I guess it’s becoming its own horror genre
honestly anyþing from Tale Foundry is pretty good so regardless of Poppy Playtime being on it... I had to click 🎉🎉
Same I didn’t expect that
@@fjordivae3007 þorn user spotted! neat.
The effects that it’ll have on kids is terrifying
Kids have always been creepy little sh**s - always. Especially smaller children who still have that selfish streak in them. It's not a bad thing, it's part of their core development. But they ARE into scary things and always have been. It's a necessary developmental step.
As a kid I spent all my free time in the library. When I wasn't learning how to get free unsupervised access to the internet, I was checking out scary books especially about old folk lore and mythology. That ended REAL QUICK when I started telling my parents about drawing a ring to summon the devil.
Kids are creepy shits, once I was doing a birthday party and one randomly approached me, told me "my mom was in a car crash with her friend" and left me alone.
Kids have always play-pretended to kill each other, or violent play with their toys. I remember orchestrating civil wars or apocalyptic scenarios with my littlest pet shops & hot wheels, or copying crash bandicoot games to act out irl with my sibling and correcting him when he didn’t "die correctly". I was also one of those kids who liked learning & was particularly drawn to the darker aspects of history like weapons and torture
Some kids are DEFINITELY into darker, morbid subjects than others. I was one of those. Some kids aren't interested in it at all and become distressed when other kids try to talk to them about it. Some kids DEFINITELY go too far, and dig too far into the dark corners of tje internet... or accidentally stumble into them. And im not sire its necessarily.. easier to do nowadays than it used to be, but there's more kids with unrestricted access and are more likely to come across it.
Not quite sure what my point is here, except I guess that that its normal and even important kids explore and play around with dark subjects, but they need their own space to do that in and be protected from things that could actually scar them. Or at least, it needs to be a drip feed/gradual process so they arent completely overwhelmed by it and learn how to deal with it
According to my mom, when I was a kid I'd often stand silently in the dark at night (I still kinda do that sometimes). This always freaked her out.
Woooo that’s a crazy take! xD and I wouldn’t say all kids, like seriously I couldn’t handle horror/creepy genre stuff till I was in my early to mid teens!
Creepypasta has always been kids, some of the most famous are by tweens and teens which, sure are older but are still kids exploring storytelling. They’re subverting stuff. Im glad y’all were kind to the kids with this one
Was Kris strub (creator of candle cove) a kid at that time?
Nah i heard a glimpse of a creepypasta of In the night garden and i was traumatised
The brainrot issue is less to do with mascot horror and stuff like "Skibidi toilet" in and of itself, but the frenetic pace and sensory overwhelming nature of the content around them. Games are able to control pace through gameplay and the player, but video content in a nonstop stream thru sites like TikTok and TH-cam Shorts, dumped into youngsters' eyes with no context, and often no adult supervision, is where a lot of the concern comes from. There are reports of markedly shortened attention spans, and concerns with cognitive development. I do agree that the story elements themselves are not necessarily the culprit (I myself was equal parts horrified and fascinated as a youngster by FNAF), but the concept of brainrot here is a bit misunderstood.
You're right
Cocomelon is a bigger threat
Cocomelon is just awful.
I mean he talking about horror mascots specifically…. Not really umm…. Misinterpreted…. At the end of the day he did talk about lack of supervision, but that’s due to being on the Internet for too long. That will be to you and that’s the parents fault. That’s what he talked about here so it’s not really he’s not really misunderstanding. He’s pretty clear about it. Maybe it’s just your interpretation of it.
In short, kids have always been weird, and adults are worried about what they consume. It's like the Pokemon craze back in the 90s and parents thinking it was either stupid or dangerous. Or Satanic, if you were a religious nut. I'm over 30 years old and my dad still doesn't really understand my interests, and that's fine. I don't understand kids, but so long as what they're consuming isn't causing them to do bad things or say bad things, then you don't really have to get it. But yeah, supervision is the most important thing to do for them.
I mean most people dont like it not because they think its bad for kids(not entirely because of that at least) but because they think its "ruining" the comunities they like which is bs but like i get the annoyence
@@joaomigueltorresbueno4457 i think that the problem in that regard is that there isn't really a 100% efective way to divide kid fan spaces from adult fan spaces.
The internet is so big and so easy to access that makes it incredibly dificult to keep kids away from adult spaces and and adults away from kid spaces. Even with age restrictions and content filters.
Turns out this time it is actually stupid and dangerous.
Never expected a mascot horror episode from Tale Foundry but I ain't complainin
I believe they did make a mascot horror episode before
He did already. Nostalgia horror episode.
Agreed
At 6:25, something legit clicked inside me when you said Folklore
That makes, like so much sense. It’s always been like this, always iterative
This video really has opened my eyes and gave me a different perspective on "brain rot". Never really thought of it just children being children and having fun with it. Thanks for the different pov Tale Foundry.
Imo, as much as kids get flak for it (even in my own mind), the worst part of brainrot has never been the kids but the creators capitalizing on it. Kids just go off and have fun with things, it's adults that create these annoying brainrot videos like "SIRENHEAD VS SONIC.EXE IN MINECRAFT???" They should be the hated ones, not the kids.
The goosebumps book series was really popular. Kids have always loved to get scared, it doesn’t mean they’re dumber or that they got brain rot.
I also think those mascot horror games got some artistic integrity that’s worth looking at with sincerity.
Kids are cool cause they don’t pass immediate judgement on the things and media that they engage with
That's the difference, it's a book and not a speam of shorts contents that influence even us, adults, when website like tiktok was create to make us stay longer, and consum again and again. Hype to be in some year with the next recommendation on kids
@@musicsbricabrac7195 thankfully kids still read Goosebumps too. They made a graphic novel of The Haunted Mask!
@@musicsbricabrac7195 Goosebumps still exists! They made The Haunted Mask into a graphic novel recently
I think it's important to remember that sometimes, parents, teachers and any other concerned adults can often project their own idea of childhood onto kids as a matter of expectation, even in the unfortunate event that said kids have been witness to stuff that child should see. In this case, engaging in morbid or just childishly grim stuff can also be a means of reclaiming control in the face an unkind world, or even just as an act of rebellion.
true! in childlore studies, they call that the “utopian ideal” of children- the parents’ expectations of childhood as perfect and innocent. children push back on this through something called antithetical play, which is what you’re describing here. they create folklore in order to define their own collective identities and to push back against adult interference.
@sophiatalksmusic3588 I had no idea it had its own set of terms. That's so cool!
It's amazing how many adults simply do not seem to remember ever being kids themselves, or are unable to look back at their own childhoods in a more objective manner when comparing themselves or people their own age to "kids these days".
I can think of equivalents in my own childhood for everything that is popular with kids now, and I can also see myself being into a lot of those things if I was their age.
Also most adults simply dont view children as human beings, and that can get worse into child abuse. My parents have been horrible and they havent treated me as anything but a human being, they want me to be a perfect doll of unrealistic standards, they want to project their childhoods on me when those cant even work anymore. But a child is a human being, and none of us fit in a box anyways, we are all different, and none of us are truly normal.
My stories, and stories in general are shaped from our experiences, and even our characters carry the traits we have since.. we made them. All my characters have been people treated horribly, but i give them someone who eventually loves them and takes care of them, something i still feel as though i really dont have.
"just let people groom your kids reeeeee"
Ngl, I thought this would be about AI slop generated for kids under 6, but instead it was nothing I'd ever heard about and extremely thought-provoking! thanks
Same. Though do think Ai slob is problem because kids deserve better.
My God, I love your little intro. The music, the smooth animation, absolutely beautiful.
Also, hearing you say "Skibidi Toilet" is beyond hilarious to me, haha.
How good is the intro music!!
Reminds me of the movie coraline!
it gave me extreme whiplash LMAOOOO
Adults tend to forget that children aren’t stupid or ignorant, they just lack context.
And there is honestly little difference between a child and adult, it’s just that children tend to put less restrictions on their imagination.
Kids are ignorant. That's why they lack that context. And why they need to go to school for a dozen years before they can become useful members of society.
@@perfectallycromulent Calling them ignorant is a bit harsh. How can you expect someone to understand "context" if they've only been alive for a few years? It's a bit weird to call a child "ignorant" if they haven't lived long enough to experience the world and understand that context, you know? They're not willingly choosing not to understand or not seek out different experiences, they just simply haven't lived long enough to experience it. How can you expect a 5 year old or a 15 year old to understand how the world works on their own? That's why they go to school, so they can learn things about the world and gain critical thinking skills so that they can figure things out for themselves. It isn't ignorance it's just a lack of experience because again, they're children.
Yep
Well, we are starting to see an increase in developmental delay in children, the development of fine motor skills and imagination, creativity. They are the direct consequences of our own education and our actions, turning a blind eye to certain factual concerns is just as unhealthy as saying "me at the time, we weren't shit". That's because they don't have contexte, that we need to stay with us on this type of content
@@althefunkman They're still ignorant and it's not bad in this CONTEXT, but that's a fact, and because that's it, that we need, as adult, to be with them :)
Children are still basically babies, and havent been in the world for a very long time. Expecting things so harsh to them is ridiculous because,, you do know thats basically a baby right??
I’m one of those Fnaf kids, as early as 8 years old I was enjoying the games and characters and talking about its lore on the playground. To this day, it is still one of my most passionate special interests and I’m about 6 months away from being an adult. I look back and just remember how much this series made me smile, I made so many friends and picked up awesome hobbies. I was initially scared of it as a kid but that only drew me in more, considering I have a really morbid sense of curiosity (I’ve always loved parasites, other infectious diseases and disaster documentaries from as early as I can remember). The takeaway is that content like this is positive and lets kids explore things like social interaction, connecting dots of storylines, creativity and just having fun! Now I’m sitting here with my collection of Funko and Hex Fnaf plushies and figures and thankful that I did interact with Fnaf like I did
If you like fnaf, I suggest you to watch the nightmare fredbear encounters by foxy faction and family comes first a short horror film based on fnaf.
As a folklorist myself, I appreciate how you talk about it here. Something I’m always having to convey to my students is that folklore is not a thing of the past- it’s created and recreated every day. I will say, although we were largely established by anthropologists, we are our own academic discipline now! There’s certainly still a lot of overlap, but we use different approaches/methods
I do think there's a nature to kids that has always been around that parents are kind of just blind to for a while. I remember my nephews were talking about Among Us a few years back, and my mother made a crack about how kids are always pretending to fight and betray each other these days.
I was, like, "'These days'!? Are you under the impression that little boys playing Cowboys and Indians in their back yards during the 1950's were pretending to make happy friends with each other?"
That's really funny
You've managed to explain this in a way I haven't seen anyone else do, and it's opened my eyes a little. I guess we all learn something new everyday.
Bro explained this so well. He would do a perfect dad.
I'm glad this wasn't just another "x is bad for kids" or "kids are stupid" video that tends to crop up in discussions of mascot horror. Never thought about it as folklore, but that fits so well!
I'm reminded of this quote from Terry Pratchett's Hogfather (a particular favourite of mine). "It was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying."
Children have always been drawn to dark subject matter and played with it. Part of how they learn to process it and how to handle the less than pleasant parts of life as they get older. The internet has just broadened how much they can find.
Something I find funny, in a dark humour way, is how many of the adults who are shocked that kids exploring and embracing the dark, violent, disturbing, gross, etc., are the exact same adults who will actively ignore censorship warnings and not pay attention to what the child in their care is doing, until it negatively impacts them (the adult). The same people who will dismissively let a preschooler play Grand Theft Auto "because games are (just) for kids", and then blame the developers for exposing their child to horrible things by making a, clearly marked, MA rated video game. I feel like these sorts of people have a clear image in their heads of what they think their child is like, but don't take the time to actually engage with and learn who their child is.
I have talked with children who have been playing games that seemed disturbing and juvenile, only to have their explanations be surprisingly mature, deep, and responsible. They don't want to hurt their friends, but safe scares are fun. They don't want to get eaten by a wolf/snake/monster/creature, but they know things need to eat. It's interesting.
Thanks to anyone who read all this. Lots of thoughts.
May I add something more to your quote? Because another passage from Hogfather seemed to fit rather well here:
"When you were grown up you only feared, well, logical things. Poverty. Illness. Being found out. At least you weren't mad with terror because of something under the stairs. The world wasn't full of arbitrary light and shade. The wonderful world of childhood? Well, it wasn't a cut-down version of the adult one, that was certain. It was more like the adult one written in big heavy letters. Everything was... more. More everything."
That whole book takes such a good look at our relationship with childhood and imagination and how we cope, including the dark bits.
Thank you for sharing that
I teach English to kids in kindergarten in country where it's second language and I can confirm that 5-6 years olds do love horror cartoons at very least (my colleague played them some during Halloween). Kids just love to get scared
This is probably the most mature take on this topic I’ve seen in a looooong time.
I remember a big conversation around Coraline. Adults were afraid the movie would be too scary for children, but many children love it.
There is an inherent need to protect children. We fear the monsters in fantasy because we know the monsters in real life. But we the hope we have as adults comes from seeing the children beat the monsters in those movies. The reason any of us goes out the door each morning is because deep down in our psyche, we are arming ourselves with bedsheets and paper towel rolls and taking on the monsters of the world.
We should not fear children's horror, but vet and then foster it. Experience it with them, talk about it. Help them understand the difference in fantasy and reality and then encourage the fantasy safely.
I am reminded of something Terry Pratchett once wrote:
"Imagination tends to upset those who dont have it."
14:19 "I'm sure their game is great" I appreciate the optimism, but it most certainly is not
Honestly I don't really think its bad at all. As long as it doesn't encourage them to genuinely hurt people.
Also hate those channels that sexualize this content and purposely direct it towards kids and monetize it on something like TH-cam kids...
Yh that's my main issue with Mascot Horror (& it's not even the game creator's fault!).
@@0racle.sunrise3570 tbf it sorta is on poppy's playtime's behalf considering some of the stuff they upload in their channel.
Like the amazing digital circus it didn't deserve this treatment!
@@0racle.sunrise3570 YES! SAME!
"but how does it affect you that the next generation is growing up on degenerate fetish porn" Muh let people enjoy things!!!!
This video is a lovely deep dive, in ways I did not expect. The both approaches, slow build up into that 'adults poaching kids content' I feel like hits an important internet and human core. Thank you for making this video and the way you speak life into this type of content, to flourish the points you bring home.
Lotta town of salem vibes from this video (good ways).
It's ironic that the arguably most infamous brainrot mascot horror, Poppy Playtime, ultimately cleaned up its act and became a genuine successor to FNAF
meanwhile FNAF has degraded to the point that even brainrot would be too good a description for it.
Mob is the definition Of taking criticism
Right?
@@JoaoMiguelCordeiro-fl3wbyeah and they still are to this day. Fans asked for a harder ARG for chapter 4 and they delivered by making one a lot harder 🤔
I really would like an analysis on the need for adults to start a moral panic over Pop culture.
It's been happening for decades upon decades and man it's weird.
The fact people still remember Hello Puppets kind of surprises me. Also, I'll die on the hill that "My Friendly Neighborhood" is the best one.
As an adult, skibidi toilet isn't confusing or surprising to me in the least. It's a pretty straightforward evolution of gmod skits and YTPs. It's not new at all.
nah it's not evolution, it's degradation
Exactly! I remember going "This is what people are upset about??" after watching some
fax
st is litterally part of gmod humor
You guys remember crazy frog, Hampton the Hamster, peanut butter jelly time, Amazing horse, Badger badger badger, or oogachaka baby. What comes to my mind is the HUGE stick figure animation craze that swept kids and adults alike. Brain rot was a big part of our lives we’ve just forgot lol.
I love that you are covering child lore. It's such an interesting phenomenon. My sister and I were recounting something that was passed around our elementary school. Some kid had seen the rug rats episode about the bully that comes to the playground when it's noon and your shadow disappears. That story got passed around the playground and shared. Most of us didn't have cable at the time so we ate it up.
I get a bit annoyed when people say "kids (or something else) ruined xyz media" because sure it gets grating when something you don't like is unavoidably everywhere, but you're supposed to be able to shape your online experience yourself. You can block topics, people. Just because the whole multi-level monster madness is trending with the backrooms, it doesn't mean the version you like isn't there.
For a while, Friday Night Funkin was seen as a bad game because kids claimed that characters seen in mods like Hank from madness combat or Sonic were “from Fnf.”
It also was hard because many of the popular mods were just EXE slop, and there was very little intel about the actual base game.
Honestly, the Pico update has rekindled my love for Fnf, because since then, we’ve gotten more transparency with the devs, mods have been way cooler, and some songs don’t even sound like Fnf anymore, because they’re just so amazing.
I predict a lot of big artists in the future will have some experience with FNF
Yeah, I was gonna say, that comment was... uncharacteristically mean. Tale Foundry usually has such chill vibes. :/
But kids did kind of ruined the internet. Not cuz of anything _they_ did, but because evil people are now able to point _to_ kids on the internet and say "See? We need to neuter _your_ freedom in order to protect _them!"_
@@Cubeytheawesome I agree, but why is people discovering X character from FNF considered bad? it's like discovering captain falcon or marth through smash
@@Ultram-1985bNot "bad" persay, but really damn annoying. Like the classic example of your parent saying "that's zelda, right?" at a picture of Link. Misidentifying something that is so obvious to you is inherently irritating.
1:42 dang you can tell it’s bad if he draws skibidi toilet
its so refreshing seeing a channel primarily about the deconstruction of media in an intelligent way, therefore to be an educational channel for writers and anyone else who like the content, to talk about children and "Brain Rot". definitely learned a lot of terms that help me put the whole parental fear into words, and i even remember being in those playgrounds just a decade ago, when FNAF came out and all of my friends and everyone else was absolutely loosing their mind. its like these people forgot about how insane troll face was back then, i remember trying to summon bloody marry and even some days running home from the buss because it was foggy out and i was scared of slender man because of what kids at school were saying. Things like what kids today are watching just happens, everywhere and endlessly, its not a problem, not the content really, but how its being consumed and distributed? maybe, but its culture, complicated answers is part of the topic in large. to look at "brain rot", you'd have to look a bit further up the age groups. Apathy being the subconscious goal for a lot of people, prejudice being rampant and accepted, and even rewarded. groups of people thinking its morally find to say "Your body, my choice." I would say cruelty and hatred is the "real brain rot" but it doesnt feel fitting to use such a modern term for an age old problem, even if the problem is ramped in today's culture
Am I the only one who sees skibidi toilet and just sees the unbroken tradition of Badger Badger Badger, All Your Base, and Rejected?
you get it! it only seems weird once you’re outside that cultural circle it was created in.
@@sophiatalksmusic3588 still feel weirder than 2010's anyways...
"They're pretending to kill each other on the playground."
Me and my friends fighting a valiant last stand in the schoolyard: Yes.
I honestly miss the days when the Internet wasn't just sitting in our pocket, waiting for us to become bored. Back when it took a conscious effort and a few minutes of robot screaming noises to access it.
I remember in kindergarten, we had huge Lego like bricks to play with so we naturally "entombed" a friend alive in the pyramid made of these, after pretending to cut off his legs for the devil so he couldn't run away (we were playing cultists). Some people had a memory wipe or a bland childhood if they do not remember stuff like that.
The only concern with brainrot (and the reason why it1s called that way) is precisely the tangible decrease in attention spans. Even adults are succetible to that, and "iPad children" is a real phenomenon where kids just don't develop their motor coordination properly. It's fine to let kids play some of those mascot horror games, or perhaps something like Among Us, which might be a good way to learn how to cooperate and social interaction. But it's always important to supervise them while they're at it.
Sure, maybe the original two chapters of poppy playtime were for kids but chapter 3 is not. Unless you think kids should be watching somebody having a belt buckle over their lower body so their entrails don't bleed out...
Yeah. Not to mention that chapter 4 is gonna have corpses of toys in it 🫠
Who thought a video essay on brainrot would be oddly touching. Love your videos.
anyone else feels like there’s a weird paradox of an abundance to appeal towards kids to take their parents money and no place for them to actually enjoy their interests without people preying on them for any motives
it’s like a weird landscape to be a kid on the internet
i think how fnaf grew on the internet is a prime example because the story is interesting to a child, something you want to understand and your favorite youtubers are into
but engaging in fnaf recently is very anti-kid bc ppl want this series to be so mature and avoid being called “childish”
To be fair the main villain in FNAF is a serial killer who targets children so…
@@StitchwraithStudios yeah, it's literially NOT safe for kids
@@ceregpurpleguy2906 and honestly I hate that it’s becoming more kid friendly by replacing the serial killer preying on children with a generic ai villain with a tragic backstory, like THAT feels like it’s trying to appeal to kids when the best part of the series was how children were the main victims, it’s rare to see that in horror unfortunately, and yet FNAF has become kid friendly for some annoying reason
Mentioning crazy bones smacked me with nostalgia like a truck!
If it isn't a difference in kind, I'd definitely say that it is a difference in magnitude. There is just SO MUCH of it.
Kids absolutely need outlets for their creativity, places for their imaginations to run wild. It helps them learn how to make sense of and understand the world, but as any person training an AI knows "garbarge in, garbage out".
At some point, either creators have to up the quality or kids have to be limited in their exposure. The world is becoming more and more online, and while that's not a bad thing in and of itself, the internet is fickle and plagued with corporations trying to milk consumers for their attention.
Working with kids with 10+ year, yep, that what we see. Not enough safe place, less creativity, imagination,manual manipulation. And before loopers, adult are influenced negativly by it too.
All entertainment is a spiral. But it goes outward, not inward.
I'm an adult now, but when I was in middle school my friends and I made our own Creepypasta OCs. We did it because we thought it was fun and liked horror stories. It was never about actually hurting people. We just liked making stories.
It's a very interesting tale in social media
Honestly as an adult who likes FNAF and bendy and other mascot horror it kinda makes me hate myself and feel childish for liking these things when liking horror stuff is basically my entire personality
I used to be the same way, but everyone has their own thing they enjoy that's different. Ours just happens to be weird horror.
@ I guess but being a fan of “children’s horror” makes me feel lesser and like I can’t be taken seriously
If you like it, you like it.
Nobody really cares enough to judge.
@@StitchwraithStudios It's not children's horror. Just kids like it. But I understand how you feel.
@@redpanda6497At a certain point in the trend pipeline, it does become tailormade to appeal to children (vibrant colours, easy names, general easy appeal). It's been 15 some years, game devs are learning what format has been popular are making copies of that for pure profit.
I’m glad this video went the route it did. I remember when Spongebob was said to harm IQ, there’s always silly things like that going around. Kind of its own kind of folklore in a sense. There definitely are things kids shouldn’t be exposed to, or spend all their time on during development, but a lot of the individual videos/games mentioned really aren’t unique to what kids usually interact with.
There’s definitely more concern about there not being enough outdoor play to balance it in especially young children, kids not having developed enough hand muscles to hold a pencil when they first enter school etc etc, a pretty different topic to this. If childlore is being made, that shows a lot of thought and imagination at work as well as socializing, usually. Often times it translates directly into games done outside too. Adults should still tell kids if they go too far and teach them what’s appropriate etc, but not yet something to panic over at that stage.
This reminds me of my own childhood (as it should).
I had a wild imagination and was very keen on making fantasy worlds. I made up my own languages and codes/phrases, creatures, plants, cities, cultures...yeah, I poached a lot too. I read a lot. Like...a lot. I was reading four books at any given time. I took things I liked from everywhere and created whatever I wanted. It was for escapism which turned into maladaptive daydreaming, sure...but I learned through it. And that's the important part. Play is how children learn. And children pick up so much from their world. And that's why I push so very hard for children's media to have some effort and quality put into it.
Quck! Cut out this part 2:24 and post wherever you can!
OK, ok, who gave Tale Foundry permission to be the voice of reason for a topic no one else has been reasonable about? This video is perfect. Just perfect. I cannot express that enough.
Thank you so much for finally a person on the net to give a balanced well rounded take that doesnt blame gen alpha for stuff all kids do
I'm very happy with the way this video went. This is exactly how it works.
im 16 and have watched a small amount of skibidi toilet episodes and i see why kids like it. It's a narrative where things only exist to be fit together later. story is simple but growing. always growing. it's similar to how the conveluted story of fnaf could be pieced together in so many different ways that it almost seemed like a new update to a game or a brand new thing that kept coming out over and over. its like having chrismas to look forward to tomorow but everyday. that's the kind of thing that i think just hooks people into things like mascot horror or the digital circus and whatnot. (i am not a skibidi toilet defender and only watched the first like 15 episodes so don't smite me)
Excellent video, Tale Foundry. Now it's time to go spread the word through whispers....
thinking about it when i was a kid in Australia in the 00s, me and my friends ran around pretending that our school was a cod map holding imaginary guns and pretending to shoot each other. kids will do what kids do
Okay please don't tell me you think bendy and the ink machine was a knock off of FNAF because FNAF was a point and click game and then the meatly did something new. New ideas and I love the game. Plus the game was never catered for children. Poppy playtime has changed since chapter one and now going on a darker route. If anything it's the content farmers that make things brainrot
I thank mob games for making chapter 3 way darker, i can finally say that i like the game without being called a 10 year old
@@graycatsaderowyeah. I can’t wait for chapter 4 to release because people will be taking us fans of the series a lot more serious due to the trailers and the devs showing and saying stuff about how much darker it is 🫠
I’m so, so sorry that you had your go down that rabbit hole
you can hear tale foundry breaking character as he talks in agony about brain rot
I had to ask myself a question after seeing this video.
Come to think of it, I never experienced child lore other than believing in the boogeyman and other cryptic.
I never spent time with other children to truly experience anything and in the end, I'd say I had a failed childhood.
Although, weirdly, I have a massive obsession with death. Drawing it everywhere, studying it, thinking about it, but never in a serial killer mindset.
I just want to be surrounded by it
Remind me to never let you be within a mile radius of my dad's gun cabinet.
@xIstenbul lol. I'm a pacifist with the mind of the grim reaper. I won't cause any harm
It's understandable, the curiosity is there, maybe it's more sad or more optimistic, it can be for a lot of things.
As a patented Creepy Kid who is now an adult, and also as a game developer, I was only mildly concerned about these kinds of games being marketed towards kids. I realized that most kids who will enjoy that kind of thing would probably seek it out anyway, and it never appeared to me that these games came out of the blue, so I could totally understand why they got the traction they did. My only concern was for the very little kids who would be exposed to this stuff by their siblings and peers before they may be ready to handle it, and that's a tale as old as time 🤷
I keep thinking .... We (parents) straight up tell are kids these songs are okay ..
Rock a bye baby - about dead babies?
London bridge - about executions?
Ring around the Rosie - dying of the plague?
In fact, very few nursery rhymes are Not horrifying....
Remember Hangman, the childhood game where you had to guess the word before the man was fully drawn and hanged on a streetlight? Yeah...
I always thought it was “rock a-my baby” guess I was wrong
"Remember what kids did to creepypasta?", spoken as if creepypasta ever had a standard. It was never supposed to have a standard, it's free-for-all format of writing a scary story and copypasting it wherever (hence the name) meant anyone could do it. Doesn't take a child to write 'bad' fiction, either!
When you feel the need to bash Gen Alpha for watching Skibidi Toilet, just remember that we're the generation that made The Annoying Orange & Fred popular
We might have made it popular but as an adult I don’t rewatch it and very much consider it cringe. A laugh to remember in memes about age but beyond that I’ll never engage with it again. The kids will grow and one day wonder why they ever liked some of it.
@@mittensfastpawIt's almost like they're children :O
I always love seeing a deliciously sane video by Tale Foundry. One of my favorites on your channel was the video about "Why Kid's Stories Should Be Darker" or something, and this is just as good. Love to see your stuff Talebot!
Adults always forget the "brainrot" they engaged with as children, and they panic when they see what their kids are doing. Skibidi Toilet is just the latest incarnation of insane GMOD animation. We had our own with TF2 memes. TikTok is just Vine 2. No, there is no meaningful difference. And when those kids grow up they will either remember them fondly, forget them too, or cringe as they remember.
Finally someone said it
Honestly were Gmod and Team Fortress 2 memes worse than what kids have now?
@@Bo77Sam89 Can't think of any examples off the top of my head, it's been years but I am certain there were.
Maybe The Heavy is Dead but I am not sure whether this counts cuz it's recent lol
@@MrBern-ex3wq honestly the parodies of the heavy is dead were pretty good, but the original was just… confusing.
Your videos often start out sounding like a "kids these days" rant and in the end it's actually insightful lol. I genuinely get angry when people trivialize childhood as if we haven't all been there.
People forget what being a kid is like, there were loads of ghost stories, urban ledgends, songs, and games we all played that adults would deem brain rot.
4:14 Well yeah that's the whole point. The character is supposed to look cute and kid friendly until... BOOM! Suprise! He is secretly evil!
And maybe that is a warning to them. But without guidance, it could be damaging.
True@@justkiddin84
My best friend and I in elementary school played at Sonic and a heroic Bowser fighting Ivo and evil Mario, which eventually developed into a crew of original creations of my own.
3:20 when I was ten years old, I had a seemingly undying obsession with Nyan Cat that lasted two years. proof this phenomenon is nothing new. The difference is, Nyan cat wasn't exploiting children for views, it was just a bunch of different people making fan animations, fan games, their own versions, covers, etc.
This is such an important discussion. I'm so tired of young adults teasing or out right belittling their younger family members or just kids in general for enjoying these things. I was about 10 years old when FNAF1 released. I liked FNAF because of the funny reactions Markiplier had and the interesting ideas GameTheory had. I remember telling my dad and stepmom about the lore! Oh they looked horrified when I started mentioning child murder in the middle of a restaurant. That was when William Afton was still known as 'Purple Guy'.
When Sirenhead was a big thing on the internet my little brother, about seven at the time, told me in earnest that it was real. He was terrified because to him it was out there. He also told me scientists had recreated dinosaurs and such is the mind of an imaginative child, but he scared himself because there are content creators out there who profit off of creating low effort videos that specifically target this 'brainrot'. This is not an issue of children consuming media it's an issue of modern algorithms of the internet. It's a brainrot feedback loop or an echo chamber and children do not have the experience to push themselves out of it.
As the parent of a kid who has just started to delve into this stuff, this video is greatly appreciated.
It's given me some great context for its existence and why it's important for them.
I mean I was an early internet culture kid and some of the stuff we watched and laughed at was bizarre too lol.
I will defend Choo Choo Charles because it was a genuinely fun "horror" game that didn't try to take itself seriously and pulled it off spectacularly
I would argue bladi's basics did it first but eh
Tale bot talking about skibidi toilet was not on my bingo card
Child and adult brains work differently, so there will always be things that are entertaining to a child that just seem strange to an adult. And I think we should accept that just because you don't understand the humor, doesn't mean its dangerous.
Actually if a kid finds something violent possibly games that involve guns or death or they watch TH-camrs who tend to swear entertaining, it can be dangerous for a child… but not in the way you think. The child might pick up these traits and use it in their everyday life. That’s why so many kids and teenagers use swear words in everyday life. It mostly comes from this content. They also tend to be extremely toxic and controlling. That’s why it’s dangerous
@TheSmortPigeon Its not human nature to be violent. If a violent child plays videogames its more likely because they're already violent. Not the other way around. Simply observing violence, while desensitizing you to violence, won't make you violent.
Literally yes. Kids mostly become violent based on what they watch or observe.
@@TheSmortPigeon From the papers I've read, while yes there is some small but noticeable effect (again, mostly believed to come from desensitization), it is minimal and not to the point of being dangerous. There was a period where everyone believed seeing violence led to doing violence, and so there are a lot of older papers claiming so. But if you look at newly published, higher quality papers then there is not a clear link between violent media and people committing crime or other dangerous forms of violence. If I remember correctly there is a correlation between watching a lot of martial arts media and getting into martial arts, or watching a lot of gun focused media and getting into recreational shooting. But "learning to fight/shoot" is not the same as "being violent". But please, if you have any specific papers that prove otherwise then please let me know and I'll read them when I have time.
Bull. Shit. I’ve found many articles say that kids imitate these behaviors in videos or content they consume. I even looked up if they don’t affect it at all! And guess what? The second article says that it could cause more aggressive or violent behaviors! Even if it’s small it eventually gets bigger until it isn’t healthy anymore!
A good series on youtube that has talked about child folklore amongst other folklore is Monstrum hosted by Emily Zarka who has a phd in folk lore. She has gone over creepy pastas and the like as well as traditional monsters from all over the world. The fact is that creepy things have been grabbing the attention of kids for ever.
Heck how many fairy tales and nursery rhymes have darker origins. Yes some people do go around taking these children's stories and making them edgier, but for goodness sake the original Pinocchio had him die by being hung on a tree. Its also been a way for kids to deal with dark things in their real life. There is a reason people grow up and are surprised Lizzy Borden was real.
I'm in university now, and every time I hear someone say that Skidibi Toilet is a sign of how messed up this upcoming generation is, I just think of Annoying Orange and Minecraft parody songs and old creepypastas that were spread throughout the playground when I was a kid. It feels very similar to how I grew up, even though I didn't have proper internet access until I was a teenager.
I did not really think about the whole "brain rot" thing in a while and this video was a great perspective on it. I remember how weird kid's TV and the Internet used to be when I was little. The Internet at the time was a frontier. You had videos like those on Newgrounds (TH-cam was not even an idea at the time afaik) which were sometimes as nonsensical as it gets (if you know Charlie the Unicorn or the parody of the Devil Went Down to Georgia, you know exactly what I mean), what my parents no question would see as "brain rot". The Internet is changing still and in some ways is completely alien to me. I feel like a part of not understanding some of these things is just me, well, not being a kid any more, but hey such is life. Heck, my father grew up in a time where TV was view as "brain rot", especially with Saturday morning cartoons he used to watch. It seems like a pattern if anything.
People freaking out over the hug song clearly forgot that children would sing the "Lizzie Borden" song while jumping the rope.
Hello, so glad I found your channel. I get a lot out of your videos. You help me to understand a lot of aspects of storytelling that I just took for granted or didn't recognise at all originally. I especially like how you are able to help me make sense of a whole lot of my childhood and to appreciate the legitimacy of kids culture. Adults often forget what being a kid was like.
I like the turn this video takes. I can say I was the same as today's kids when I was their age, and so was my dad honestly. The things kids like change, but not the kids.
sugcat
Rain world
During the beginning I was terrified that this was going to be another jab at kids liking horror. I'm glad you took the time to illustrate that kids aren't ruining a thing by being interested in it and that the real issue is that people are seeing these things as avenues for money more-so than for creating a cohesive story.
Great work as always! I could never thank you enough
Finally! I feel like I'm always yelling into a void when I tell people that this cycle of "oh my god what are the kids watching/playing!" is the same one that's been repeated for decades, if not centuries. I believe it was Plato, or some other notable ancient Greek philosopher who believed that the next generation of kids are somehow worse-behaved or otherwise less than the generations before them. It never really ends up being true. Different technology, same kids, largely the same behavior. I don't know why I thought one of these days the adults would see the cycle and stop judging things which they don't understand (i.e., kids and the stuff they're into), but nope, too many of them are trapped in their own limited perception and certainty that it is bigger than it is.
I was a little worried this video was just going to be a bunch of pearl-clutching, but it wasn't. I'm so very glad Tale Foundry was nice to kids and emphasized writing good stories and not pandering.
I love Mascot Horror. I was already terrified of mascots ( for other reasons ) but this added on to it. I don’t think it’s weird that kids latch onto these things. It’s scary, bright and colourful. It’s like a moth to a flame for kids.
The issue with it though is kids not being told the difference between reality and the world they’re consuming online. Parents don’t regulate what their kids see and they just let them have full internet access and let them run away with it. Thats not okay; parents need to actually RAISE their kids. Not the iPad. Alongside this kids need a third space they can go to online and in real life. They’re trying so hard to grow up because they have nowhere to go because we’ve curated it that way. And it’s sad. We bring them into the world only to make them feel unwelcome and that needs to change