How my children explain YouTube to me
Originally published on One World Platform, Internet rights
This article had been co-authored by: Hackerberry Finn and Olivor Twist
“Mum, you cannot imagine the pain of children whose parents do not understand what is a YouTuber” said to me Olivor Twist one of my twins. I said they could explain to me. “No, adults just get angry and forbid us to watch them” said Hackerberry Finn, my other twin. I had just finish to say “no, I will not, I promise” that they jumped out of their bed, and Hackerberry Finn, took his tablet and find for me ‘Pewdiepie christmas special! (12 days of drugs)‘ a sarcastic weird video by PewDiePie, this super known young-blond-swedish-boy making a lot of money due to his millions and millions of followers (36,498,571).
So here we were, 10:00 in the night listening and looking at this cartoon, realizing my children knew about meta-amphetamines, crocodile at just 10 years old. As Olivor Twist confirmed, “When we do not know what something is/means, we google it!”
It was clearly, time for me, to get educated. We looked together to few other PewDiePie performances, which I have to say left me a bit puzzled. We agreed to write a post together about YouTubers from our different perspectives and exchange with each others.
YouTubers by Olivor Twist
My name is Olivor Twist and I am talking about YouTubers (my favourite ones). YouTubers are people that put videos on YouTube. They can be gamers as in this case, they can show cuts from movies or entire movies. Some YouTubers paste sport on their channels. That does not mean that there are not people that show something else on YouTube.
1. NitroLukeDX is a Minecraft YouTubers that builds in creative mode and plays on survival mode. He plays mini-games that he builds with his builders. He sometimes has some random adventures. His age is 22 years.
2. Stampylongnose andiBallisticSquid, they play Minecraft together and they do a lot of things. Each of them has his own channel. They live in the U.K. They are funny and great as BigBstatz (another Minecraft YouTuber).
Minecraft Xbox – Air Ship Battle Royal – Squid & Stampy Vs Choo Choo & Chache
And if you want to look more: Minecraft Xbox – Quest For A Purple Wig (57) or Minecraft: Xbox – Finding Nemo – Up And Up {1}
3. Except Minecraft YouTubers there are YouTubers for other games. One of the best is Blitzwinger . He plays a lot of Lego video games (Lego Batman, Lego Star Wars, Lord of the Rings). LEGO BATMAN 3 – BEYOND GOTHAM – PART 1 – WE ARE BACK! (HD) or LEGO Star Wars 3 – The Clone Wars – Episode 01- Prologue and one of my favourite: LEGO Lord of The Rings : Episode 1 – Prologue (HD) (Gameplay)
4. There are YouTubers that do everything. The most popular one is PewDiePie. I don’t like him much because he says a lot of bad words. He is too sexual but interesting. He is not really the best.
SPONGEBOB IN REAL LIFE?
New Favorite Hair Color
I HAVE A VIKING BEARD!
5. Some YouTubers just do tutorials (the “how to…” videos). Some does professional and realistic tutorials, and some that want to look cool or funny does their so called “TUTORIALS” where they break stuff. Those YouTubers by my opinion are just trying to look stupid. How To Make Iced Coffee (stupid tutorial)
Always be sure what are you watching on YouTube because any one can upload a video there. ?
I have to be honest I use YouTube very very rarely, if it is not about human rights and civil liberties I do not click on play. While my twins are subscribers of many YouTubers, follow, interact and have their own top ten. I met the internet as a young adult, with a dial up connection things were slow. The web itself took sometimes to become my everyday habit, a place for work, pleasure or social engagement.
My twins have already few avatars on their own, their main window in the global world is YouTube, followed by google search. Lego have a very good third place and is able to keep them out of the internet quite easily. But Minecraft blew their mind. Minecraft was a discovery, a challenge a passion, the favorite game of all.
I really do not know if they discovered Minecraft trough YouTube or if they looked into YouTube to understand and learn how to build their world. What is clear to me is that they are natural Argonauts of that planet, aware of the risks but eager to explore.
YouTube by Hackerberry Finn
I like Nitro Stamp & Squid, Dan TDM and Ozzy100percent, AtlanticCraft because they builds their adventures and mini-games for the viewers and puts a lots of work in that. PopularMMos because of the ideas ad humour he has. And the final word I say is that all of them put tons of work in their videos. Writing about my favourite YouTubers was a great project. I am myself a child so now I say that YouTube is not useless. There are lots of creative people on it that inspired me and I hope they will inspire other children too.
I like him because he is really inspiring and has a great sense of humour. He plays Minecraft on a world called Survival Madness Adventures. On that world he builds on creative and plays on survival. He has a enemy called Dr. ForeHead. He is also very funny. In one of his videos he becomes a superhero and his friend Toxic Jolt is his sidekick. He gets his power in the Chaos realm and he meets another superhero named Lord of clouds. Nitro uses the powers to eliminate Dr. ForeHead. But Dr. ForeHead is as powerful as Nitro. After the fight Nitro finds out that they are brothers. His dog SirMinecraftGuy get killed by evil magic. The scientist MizelFasizel shows him his dogs secret base. The evil doctor sends a new minion after Nitro. Next he saves the Simsons world from a foe called The Eater OF Worlds.
Minecraft Xbox Lets Play – Survival Madness Adventures – Dr. ForeHead [58]
Dr. ForeHead starts an evil series on his channel with his minions General Drible, Sweat chicks, Capitan bat poop & Droid boogie. The evil guys make mini-games like Nitro. Now they plan to turn Nitro into a dog. Before that Dr. ForeHead & General bones, an evil skeleton, team up. But Nitro & his friend 100/percentOzzy escape. Now Nitro is a dog and in a another dimension. Meanwhile Capitan bat poop is holding captive Dr. ForeHead.
Nitro has got 35.000 subscribers and he is still growing.
Next are Jobuz & The CodyMalvrick. They are known as The AtlanticCraft. They play Minecraft. They have got 1,888,298 subscribers. They also make mods. In their series Dream Craft Cody is the Sith lord and Joe is the Jedi turned to Sith. They use mods and they are great builders. All their series are: Fellowship, Crazy Craft, Clash of Clans, Dream Craft, Prison, Fine Nights at Freddy’s. Their YouTuber friends are: LitleLizardG & TinyTurtleG (G stands for gaming). They also make awesome animations and make servers.
Ozzy100Percent, is Nitro Lukes friend. His enemy is General bones the evil skeleton pirate. Ozzy’s series is 100% Adventure. He has a girl friend called Gabzie. Ozzy in his series is a ninja. His enemy series is called Skull island. In the story General bones & Dr. Forhead capture him. Ozzy escapes from the evil spire. Ozzy has much humour and he is a great builder. He has got 7000 subscribers because he just started.
The next is Stampylongnose. He plays minecraft, Tereria & Skylanders. He has got 6.000.000 subscribers. He has lots of humour. His best friend iBallisticSquid is also very nice. Stampy’s favourite food are cakes. His series are: Stampy’s lovely world, Tereria, Quest to kill the Wither, Skylanders & Islands of Iden. His enemy, in Stampys lovely world, is Hit the target. Stampy in Minecraft has been in space, on the moon, in a submarine, in a hot air balloon & on a ship fight. His ship is called S.S.Stampy. His enemy wants to steal his dogs and kill him.
iBallisticSquid. Now his user name is iSlipperyFellow. His series are: Crazy craft, Squiddy Sundays, Islands of Iden, Attack of the B-Team, Race to the moon & Slippery Survival. He has lots of humour. He has got a great friend called by him Ash. I like him because he likes cheese. He has got 2,458,350 subscribers.
Stampy & Squid Failing At An Intro (from the Magic Animal Club)
PopularMMos is also known as Pat & Furious Destroyer. His girlfriend is SuperGirlyGamer known as Jen. His series are: Season 8, Lucky Block challenge, Mob battles & Mod showcases. He has got over 4.000.000 subscribers. I like him because of his humour. He now makes videos of a Minecraft team park called NochLand.
Dan TDM (TDM stands for The Diamond Minecart) is a YouTuber that I like very much and he makes custom adventures, Colosseum challenge, diamond dimensions & mod showcases. He is awesome. He has a friend Dr. Trayorus & he has an enemy called Denton. He has at the moment 5,000,000 subscribers.
As parent, I have this little apprehensive voice which insistently underline the potential dark-exploitative-internet. The bullies, the trolls, the sexual predators, the sexist-misogynist and last but not least the commodifiers of desires.
They are all there. And they could take away my children, hurt them and control their personae. But then there are Olivor Twist and Hackerberry Finn teaching me their way into YouTube, speaking English as natives, building a world for me them and the many uncles, aunts, friends. Worlds that respect these different people.
My world of magic was into my mind, I spoke it only with my three sisters. We were used to save all people we loved into this magic world of us (watches were the doors). But for us, we stayed in the real tough world and we were fighting the bad guys, we were escaping ambushes, building fortress, raise revolutions. I guess is the same with them.
YouTube is incredibly vast and dangerous. I do not like many of the things PewDiePie does and I find hidden messages that neither Olivor Twist or Hackerberry Finn at their age can possibly recognize. The overexposure of the self, the triviality of the challenges, the constant modification and re-make of videos just for pure entertainment is scary.
Anything for a laugh, laughs bring clicks and clicks brings moneys and there is anything that cannot be ridiculed. But after looking at him with them, I feel more clear about.
And while reading to them my post, I learned Hackerberry Finn unsubscribe from PewDiePie and left a comment to him that sounds more or less like this “Stop making yourself cool, cause you are making yourself more stupid that you already are”. And Olivor Twist do not watch him any more because he has just too many *bip words (if u did not know, bip stands for bad words) and that’s it.
So even if captivating and with millions of followers this two young avatars made up their mind and decided ‘The magical animal club” crew with Stampy, IBallisticSquid, and many others are worthier their time and attention.
Everyone has his/her own eye-openers, Hackerberry Finn and Olivor Twist are increasingly mine. They guided me into subscribers world, and the art of being a YouTuber. Anyone could get lost into YouTube, it’s the contemporary tentacle world of Oz and is very important to recognize the yellow brick road and distinct among the various myriads of fellows.
I realized how important is I make sure Hackerberry Finn and Olivor Twist learn the netiquette, and I keep myself update with the slang of the internet as it grows, because it is the coded language of social interactions.
And yes, mainstream YouTubers are the representation of our mainstream world which is for my taste far too much sexist and consumerist. And yet I will talk instead of preaching, I will accept Olivor Twist and Hackberry Finn offer to share with them my thoughts. I understand how trick, the powerful experience of accessing the world on demand, can be, but the twins will make it incredibly rich and adventurous.
There is a new playground and it’s the internet. Playing always asks for interaction, risks, cry and joy. It is inevitable. The frightening novelty is the fact that do not exist formally closed rooms and that any time anyone could enter any place and experience anything.
This is not solvable and I do not think is worthy making the access too complicate, obscure and distressed.
I have learned YouTube. I’m spending hours listening side by side Hackerberry Finn and Olivor Twist to their favourites YouTubers: voices, accents, laughs. They have written down a glossary explaining me about skin, mod, multi-player servers and so on. They are fast in learning and discovery, I’m good at deepening, contextualized and make connection. I imagine this as an additional parental dimension. Their are good at reading the many charts, decode and implement the new language/instruction; still too young to recognize the subtle traps of sellers and seducers.
There is not a safe internet as there is not a safe world. In the virtual as real there are bullies. In the virtual as the real there are safe harbour. What matter is that anyone, any time do not take his/her travel completely alone. Buddies are key for any safe journeys. They take turns, have complementary perspective, exchange opinions, discuss but most of all are the trusted shoulder to count on when the bad and the worse unleash against us.
Filters, parental control, all this tech-prevention cannot replace or protect. They are the illusion, the vitamins given to children hoping they will always be healthy. I do not have faith in those one-fit-to-all-chemical-standards. But I do believe in education, dialogue, curiosity and self-determination.
Once Hackerberry Finn and Olivor Twist asked us to sit down and listen to them. They had something important to say. “You have to promise, you will not get mad at us if we will choose to do stupid jobs”. When we asked to explain better they said: “Jobs that does not come out of schools and studying such as YouTubers”.
I have made my way trough the many worries of my parents thanks to their trust in my ability to recognize what is good and what is bad and most of all what makes me happy, truly happy and not just temporary thrilled. The internet brings the world into our children lives faster than before, deeper than before so we need to learn this and all the internet our children might live in. And we need to remind to our children of the others dimension: the one of flash and bones bodies, and of time and emotions. These are not helped by the internet, its multidimensionality is not complete. Internet does not forget, forgot or heal, humans do.
GLOSSARY
by Hackerberry Finn and Olivor Twist
YouTube is a very popular site these days and is made to be able to see videos. It is part of the Internet world where people put documentary, movie clips & videos for entertainment. It contains gaming, sports, scenes, music and news. In my eyes as a child I see you Tube as: my favourite You Tubers as well as videos about history, video games & space exploration. You should not always trust You Tube so much or believe to because it’s a part of the internet which is also not trustable.
YouTubers are people that upload videos for entertainment and people that do it for no particular reason. They place videos on YouTube and anyone can be one (so be careful). These people decide shall they show gaming, sports, scenes, music and news and of course they can choose shall they be serious or not.
The You Tubers I know are the ones I described in my document named You Tube in a child’s eyes. If you haven’t read that I’ll say their names. They are: NitroLukeDx, Ozzy100/percent, Stampylongnose, iBallisticSquid, PopularMMose & Dan TDM. There are different types of YouTubers. They can be gaming (play video-games) & do other stuff. The YouTubers I watch and follow are all gaming.
Minecraft: is a cube game in which the only limit is your imagination. It is so wonderful and so popular in the last 3 years and so reviewed that instead of gaming it can be called “a separate section”. It is great because you can do everything and everything is in your power. You have it on laptop, desktop, X-box and play-station. In this super cool awesome game you can build and survive the life of a player. Mode are an addition to what the game has and gamers can install them. There are three game modes: creative, survival & adventure mode; A skin is how characters look and it makes you look different. Texture packs change the look of blocks, monsters, weapons, armour & animals, which means how things and blocks looks around you. There are different views: third person view & first person view.
In Minecraft there are 3 perspectives from which you can see yourself playing:
- First person view is like watching from your eyes.
- Second person view is like watching from behind you
- Third person view is like watching at yourself as you have a camera in front of you or from the right side.
Terraria: It’s a two dimension game with mods and 3rd person view, has two world and you can only survive. It is based on pixels like Mineraft but its much bigger and harder than Minecraft. You can play multi-player and fight against evil. Its also super cool awesome. Its very well done, very exciting & interesting. It has more bosses, weapons, armor, materials & features than any other game I know. It has no modes & no cheats. It has features like armor & weapons with special abilities, weapons bosses that change game modes & much more. When you have big house non played characters will come to visit you and they will sell you stuff.