Remap Recommends, Volume XIV

Remember when you’d walk into a local music, book, or video store and there’d be an adorable section where the employees would recommend what they were interested in that month? 

Welcome to our little version of it, called Remap Recommends. 

It's a chance for the staff at Remap to let you know what they've been playing, reading, listening to, or watching.

Patrick Recommends: Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing

For many parents, the basic question in front of them is: should I share photos of my children online? OK, that’s not a basic question. Does sharing them to Facebook, so aunts and uncles can see them, despite the ills of Facebook, count? But let’s handwave those issues and boil it down to whether or not you are simply going to share digital album photos via text message, or, as most do, use private social accounts.

My children, however, did not ask to be the children of a journalist. Nor did I anticipate that becoming a parent would suddenly create a rich resource of ideas to report on, which is why I ended up starting off Crossplay in the wake of Waypoint’s implosion. I found myself asking questions about screen time, video games, and technology that I couldn’t find good answers for online, so I ultimately decided the best way to answer them was for me to answer them myself.

But I also set rules for myself. I don’t use their names. (Instead, I refer to them as oldest/youngest or their ages.) I generally do not publish pictures, and if a picture is unavoidable in order to explain what’s going on, their faces are blurred. I’ll share personal stories, but if it feels too personal, especially with my oldest, then that one is kept inside the family. I’ve slipped up here and there, but in general, I’m trying to use our experiences without exploiting them. 

To me, I’m walking a fine line. But in watching Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing, you witness a bunch of parents and deeply exploited children springing past any semblance of a line. Watch and scream as a bunch of parents convince themselves what their kids are doing, what they’re allowing their kids to do, is both safe and a creatively worthy endeavor. It has nothing to do with all the money it’s bringing in for everyone, while the algorithm consumes.

But even in my line of work, I can see how you can start convincing yourself “well, that’s okay,” because it’s true that the more personal you get, the more people respond. ("Personal" posts drive more subs.) It’s a combination of the parasocial and the algorithm, but in my most charitable moments, I can see how people climb a ladder that ends in exploitation, rather than executing malice in search of profit.

I don’t think it’s a perfect documentary and lets the parents off the hook, but it’s a worthwhile look at what’s happening on places like YouTube. It’s an extreme example, perhaps, but when you start walking backwards, you start seeing versions of this behavior all over the place, in which parents use their children if not for profit, then attention.

Rob Recommends: Baseball?

Every year I fall in love with the baseball playoffs and think, “I should watch more regular season games.” And every year I make it a few weeks into the season before I go, “Actually, the hell with that.” Except this year, I’m loving America’s pastime.