I've wanted to talk about family vloggers for a while, so I thought, why not now, I'm not doing anything else. XD

Family vloggers. Many people have heard of family vloggers, and many of us have watched some. Family vloggers are eactly what they should like; they make vlogs online and the content focuses primarily on their family, mainly their children. I used to watch family channels when I was a teenager, but stopped around the time I was high school. I just lost interest, and I guess it's good that I did because holy crap, family channels have gone absolutely down the trash heap in terms of quality. I only recently got reintroduced to them since it's gotten so bad that there are active campaigns for Youtube to end family vlogging as a genre on the website. What the hell could have caused this? I'll give my thoughts on why this is happening.

I'm not going to say "back in the day" since tbh I don't even kow how long family vloggers were around before I started watching. Some people say family vlogging has been around since Youtube was invented. For all I now, I grew up on the 3rd generation of family vloggers, I have no idea. So for this blog, I'm just going to say, "back when I used to watch family vloggers", becuase it does fit. Family vlogging of my era is so much different than now, even if it wasn't the original era.

I think actually back in the day, most family vlogs were the equivalent of home movies. People would film a compliation of intersting things from their week, their vacation, just random things they think are interesting and they want to remember and want to share with people. When I started to watch, it was offically a genre and it was the family filming their daily lives to upload for the entertainment of their viewers. But I'd say most of it was pretty tame. It would be the kids playing with their pets, doing school projects, playing in the pool with friends, going to the movies, and normal things like that. I never watched videos where the kids were constantly upset or bad things were happening. 

What the heck is up with famiy vloggers these days? I swear family vloggers always seem to have some drama or trauma going on. I see titles like "Daughter got into a CAR ACCIDENT!, "Son FELL OFF A SLIDE at school?!", "We were HARASSED at Walmart", "Our neighbors YELLED at our toddler :( " all the damn time (and yeah, they always capitalize the extreme stuff). I get it Youtube loves drama, but what in the hell? Why does it seem like this is constantly happening to all of these people. And they even will take the time to make posed thumnails of the children looking sad and crying emojis, like this is a TV show or something. Which leads me to the next point, why are all of these people whipping out their cameras when all this bad stuff is happening? I never saw family vlogs in my vieweing days about the kids getting in accidents and always being injured. I feel like those things would be mentioned in passing, but never the main focus on videos. Now it's all I see because appearantly that stuff gets the views now. Videos with those titles will get astonomically more views than a video of the kids going bowling, so that's what the family vloggers will film.

I saw a video where one woman was in an area near a car accident while driving her children to school, and she got out of her car, ran over to the injured victims and filmed them without even asking them if it was okay, ran a distance away to film their smashed cars for a bit, then ran back to her kids to film them crying and terrified over seeing a car flipped over. What in the hell? How as a parent can you even think about whipping out your camera to film the vicims of a car accident just to get clicks on YOUR channel. Those people didn't asked to be filmed and have their situations put online. Not only that, but she LEFT her children to do this. Thankfully no one was seriously injured in this situation, but geez. It's still wrong. All mom had to do, if she just had to let her viewers know about this, was say after she dropped her kids off she passed an accident and leave it at that, but no. She had to film it and didn't even have the decency to censor those other people's faces.

This oversharing is what I think has ruined family channels. They have to talk about everything. Not just injures, but personal information like their daughters' first period. I'm not joking. This is an ENTIRE thing on it's own for family channels. Just search 'family vlog first period' and you'll see video after video of teen girls with pads, tampons, and fake blood on the thumbnail with fake sad faces and their parents acting fake shocked. How horrific it must be to have such personal information out there for the world to see. But it goes further, like first bra shopping, talking about , talking about pimples, and underarm hair and so on and so on. And you know what's weird, I only ever see this stuff for teenage girls. I NEVER see videos about their teen son's first "you know what" or anything else for their puberty. It's always the 13 year old girls and that is the oddest thing to me, and I honestly find it creepy. Like why does this need to be filmed, who is watching this? I highly doubt other teen girls wanna see a girl their age have their first period revealed to the world. It's disturbing when you look into this stuff. Oh but don't worry, it's not just the teens getting embarassed. Little Timmy's first time on the potty will probably also be vlogged and uploaded for the world to see. And the time he accidentally pooped in he bath tub, and the time he took of his clothes and threw off his diaper at naptime. Anything that can embarass these kids for life will be published in the name of the almighty vlog. And again I ask, who is wanting to see videos of little kids pooping on the toilet? Other family vloggers maybe????

And then you have the family vloggers of couples. These people do all that stuff I mentioned, but they're even worse becuase they have the added "bonus" of being able to make their content revolve around perceived bigotry. I see videos like, "Mother in law DOESN'T SUPPORT COUPLE AND KIDS!!", "His mom thinks she's TOO DARK???", Biracial kids face RASICM on the school playground!", all with crying children on the thumbnail of course. And first of all, I feel like a lot of these people are seriously overexaggerating for clickbait. Like an AMBW (asian man black woman) couple will take their mixed kids to Korea where everyone is pale skinned, a grandparent will remark how the child has dark skin for a milisecond, and bam, the title is made to get people riled up and in their feelings. This is so obnoxious to me. couples have enough to deal with and then you've got these people overexaggerating and lying about thier families just for clicks. I saw an ambw video once that was titled something like "We went to the market today". The very next day, I saw the video had been retitled "Man at the market says our MIXED kids are DARK." And I was stunned to see the title change. So basically the fam lives in Korea. Then went to a market. Korean dad with the kids split from the mom for a bit and they pass a man who comments on how dark the children's skin is in comparion to Koreans. Dad explains they are mixed and their mother is black and all is well. The title change would have you think the man was speaking in a negative way instead of just making a comment, uut that's what the parents WANT you to think. In family channels today, it's like you need to be miserable or injured or have something horrible going on otherwise, no one will click on the videos.

Also, let's adress the elephant in the room. Is it just me or do more family chanels than ever have huge families? Like 6+ children I mean. When I used to watch, most of these people had 4 children at the most. Now everywhere I look I see "Family of 16 weekly grocery haul (to this day, I still have no idea what a 'haul' is in youtube terms)", "Going on vacation with 10 kids??!!11!", "One parent left alone with 8 kids!!!". Really, what is going on? Why are all family vloggers part of massive families these days. And no, I am not anti-big family, like some people are. I find that so weird to dislike a family just becasue they ahve a lot of kids. If that's what they want and can care for, let them be. HOWEVER, I do find it hella suspicious that so many family vloggers have big families when it's been proven that birth and pregnanacy related videos are super popular on Youtube. Look, I'm not saying these people are only having kids to use them as content for youtube. Some people just want big families and there' no issue with that. BUT, is it not odd how some of these people will straight up take the camera with them in the delivery room and film every single moment of the delivery process. Then they'll edit into a damn near two part movie to upload for their channel. THEN they'll film another video to give you the name reveal for the baby? Like bruh, you don't need three 30 minute long videos to show off a baby and reveal their name. It doesn't feel like the expereince is genuine, it just feels like content for the channel.

That's how everything feels with these family vloggers. People who are critical of the genre will always give the example that a family vacation to Disneyland or Sixflags will never just be a vacation, it's work. A birthday party at Chuck E Cheese is work. The school football game is work. Going out to dinner is work. Shopping for back to school uniforms is work. Anything and everything is portentail content for the channel and the camera must be on. I always wonder how it must look to random people in these vlogger's towns, seeing them walk around with a camera everywhere. A camera out while going to shop at the damn target. Seeing them bust out a camera while they're eatind dinner. A camera at the local pool, a camera at the park, a camera EVERYWHERE. I've never seen a family vlogger or any vlogger for that matter in my city and I feel like I'd look at them crazy if I saw them holding a camera talking about what they're buying in a dollar tree...

And on the topic of how everything is work, isn't it ironic that most of these family vlogger parents don't seem to work? I rarely see any of these folks with jobs outside of making Youtube their career. Back when I watched Youtube, the parents had other jobs. Like I know one fam that had their own business and they ran it from home and a nearby office, so they could film frequently. But they had seperate jobs from Youtube. Modern family channels seem to only do Youtube and the parents don't work at all. And I'm not at all the type of person to say 'only a 9-5 in a cubical in an office is a real job'. No. I don't even have an issue with Youtube being a profession. The issue to me is the fact that these parents are using their children as the content in the Youtube channel. It's basically the children being the money bringers to the family and that bothers me. A child shouldn't have that kind of weight on their back. Imagine a parent saying, "Well honey, I know you might want to just enjoy time out with your friends tonight, but you need to bring the camera and film everything becasue we need content to bring money in. You wouldn't want us to not have enough money to pay the light bills would you?" That's basically my issue with these parents not working and making the children alone what brings in the views and money. That's not fair to them.

And here's the biggest thing for me, the safety of these children is damn near nonexistant. These vloggers film their homes, their neighborhoods, their cars, their local stores, their children's schools, etc without a care in the world. All of this is enough to be stalked and their children abducted. They mention their children's full legal names (enough for identity theft), they film the full interior layout and exteriors of their homes for house tours (robbery), they let people know when they will leave for vacation (robbery). Their viewers know their children's likes and dislikes (abduction), where they like to go, what they like to do, who their friends are, where they live and so on. The parents are never vauge about this stuff and will gladly reveal where what city they live in, and with Google maps it's easy as hell for any only wacko to find them. Back when I watched family vloggers, they were a bit more vague about their identities, not mentioning last names, not revealing specifics on where they lived, not filming the exterior of their house (just the interior which allows for more protection), not showing their car, and so on. Now though? "Hey what's up guys, this is the Hartman family straight out of Dallas, Texas and we're back with another vlog!!!!!!! I'm Max Hartman and I'm here with my kids, Molly, Millie, and Martin Hartman, and today we're going to our favorite park down the street from our big blue house." You think I'm exaggeating and okay, maybe to an extent. But no really, many vloggers do intros like this and are fine putting all of their personal information out there. And I wonder where is the concern for your children's safety? Why must your viewers know what city you live in or where your favorite park is? Again, it's oversharing and it's dangerous, and I don't think these people will stop unti a one of their kids go missing...

And none of this is even counting the abuse. I remember hearing about the "prank family channel", Daddyo5 and let's just say, I don't even want to repeat what happened in that family and how Youtube allowed it to be published. I've already gone on for long enough honestly, so I'll leave it here. Maybe I'll do a part two later. But yeah family channels are a shadow of what they once were. No more making memories, now it's doing anything possible for views and money, even child endangerment.