DOD76: The Crap Our Kids Watch

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the only family podcast that's NC-17. I'm Tom Curry. I've joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:37 Eli: That's a secret cabal of theater heads. It really has nothing to do with the fact that my dick is out for the entire podcast. You can't take the NC-17 rating too seriously.

0:00:44 Thomas: What?

0:00:45 Tom: Literally nobody notices. That's the thing, Eli, is that nobody would notice.

0:00:49 Eli: That's why my YouTube channel did so badly.

0:00:52 Thomas: Look, I'm not reacting at all to the dick out part. That's totally normal. What was the theater kid thing? What was that?

0:00:54 Tom: I

0:00:58 Eli: Oh, do you not know about movie ratings being secretly determined by CEOs and CFOs of movie theater companies?

0:01:05 Thomas: Oh, theater comp - I thought you said theater kids. I was like, what does that have to do with it? Okay, gotcha.

0:01:09 Eli: No, no, theater... theater...

0:01:11 Tom: Think it'd be better if it was theater kids, though, if it was like a bunch

0:01:12 Thomas: Yeah, I really wanted to hear the story of Eli. I'm like, he has a lot of good conspiracy theories. What is this one?

0:01:18 Tom: Of

0:01:18 Eli: Just A quote,

0:01:19 Thomas: Yeah,

0:01:18 Tom: Second year NYU theater kids just sitting around listening to the watching these movies. Yeah.

0:01:20 Thomas: Watching Showgirls Yeah, oh,

0:01:25 Eli: And Les Mis given things NC-17 No, if you want to dive into that conspiracy theory, which just happens to be true, check out the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated. It is a fascinating dive into like why the rating system exists.

0:01:34 Thomas: Yeah, I remember that Yeah, I just

0:01:34 Tom: Yes. Good documentary. Yeah.

0:01:40 Thomas: Don't remember any theater kids is the thing, I don't, I

0:01:45 Eli: You know. The only thing worse than a secret cabal of theater owners specifically eliminating queer films from the mainstream media are auto- That's right, our auto ads, which I'm happy to say, nope, nope.

0:01:55 Thomas: Think the first thing might be worse, actually, let's go just in case, uh, should

0:01:59 Eli: Thomas, pretty sure they're not a

0:02:01 Thomas: We say second place, should we stay? Just... to No, okay.

0:02:04 Eli: Distant 78th compared to the auto ads. Which I'm pleased to say are now infecting me and Tom's other shows as well. Yes, soon enough, all of our shows will be interrupted by, I don't know, some fucking thing at any given second. Beckett. But if you'd like to avoid that terrible, terrible, painful, agonizing fate, you can sign up to be a patron over at patreon.com/dearolddads. You'll get a commercial-free, totally commercial-free version of every single episode. Plus you get a little extended show. We get a Little Parenting story or just a story from our lives at the end of every episode. And you get that for as little as, oh, little as a dollar a show. patreon.com/dearolddads. ads are the worst, but Thomas needs to eat.

0:02:07 Thomas: Oh,

0:02:53 Eli: Right. So, gents, I have a little tale to get us into our topic of today.

0:02:59 Thomas: Okay, I had a little tail to get centered on this is my topic. What the

0:03:02 Eli: Oh, no. Well, then by all means. No, no, by all mean.

0:03:05 Tom: I feel like I need a tail.

0:03:06 Thomas: Yeah. No.

0:03:06 Tom: I don't want to be left out. Now, God damn it.

0:03:07 Thomas: Tom. You. You. Definitely didn't have one. Only Eli and I. No, go ahead. It's fine. I'm just teasing.

0:03:11 Tom: There's a 45 minute show. We can't all tell a story.

0:03:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:14 Eli: Yeah. I have is this. My son has a cold again, and it's a tough one. It kept him home yesterday. Yesterday, he was feeling really, really sick. And the day before, he was sick, but I was like, eh, we'll do stuff. We went to the park. We sort of had a day out and about. Obviously, tired him out was not a good idea for Daddy to do, so yesterday we had a Day at Home, and I was, like, you know what? It's a Day At Home. This is a kid who has extremely limited screen time. Today, unlimited screen time. And, oh, man, it was Christmas in Maxville, right?

0:03:44 Tom: He had a fucking eyeball orgy like all day.

0:03:50 Eli: Yes, who? Had just all the possible screen time he wanted, uh, and we've been wanting to talk about the things our children watch, and I figured what better way than for me to descend into madness as my son watched a 75 minute long compilation of the ABC song. And I know what you're thinking, Eli, is it the ABCs song over and over again? Yes, but it's different cartoons singing the ABC song. Sometimes they sing it fast, sometimes they sing it slow. There's also ABC blank, which is a themed version where it's like, hey, we're gonna sing the ABCs song, but if you see a blank, ghost, duck, fucking pumpkin, Santa, whatever, we're gonna say quack instead. I think we watched seven or eight versions of that, so that was a 75 minute video. And I know what you're thinking, wow, that seems really boring. We watched four times, four times throughout the course of yesterday. I don't know how many times I heard the ABCs, but I figured what better way, uh, us to start our conversations about media our kids watches than for me to I

0:03:51 Thomas: Boy. Oh,

0:04:14 Tom: Oh God.

0:04:31 Thomas: Also,

0:04:50 Tom: Holy shit. But do you now know what rhymes with these? I think that's the most important.

0:05:01 Eli: Do I know, so much. What rhymes with these? I just long, I long to feel as good as I felt during any section of LMNOP, which is the only thing that is different in the ABC song.

0:05:14 Thomas: You're hoping for like YouTube ads, you're like, I'm gonna cancel my premium so that I can hear

0:05:17 Eli: Oh oh I would have killed for a YouTube ad, I'm

0:05:19 Thomas: Oh boy

0:05:21 Tom: Thomas, do you regulate screen time in your house with, with Arlo and Phoebe, do

0:05:21 Thomas: Do um, Max is like super YouTuber I orgy, is as Tom colorfully put it, uh, like my kids, every weekend when we try to just get through life with three kids, so we're just like, whatever you want. To want, no, not true, we've been better lately actually, um, have definitely had some weekends where we, you know, we're both busy and neither one of us remembers to like limit their screen time, we're like, oh shit, they just watch it all day. And then also, uh, you, in California, often it's so fucking hot outside that we're like, I can't in good conscience ask them to go outside, so it's like they don't have a lot of options.

Here's how my story goes with this, the evolution is, there wasn't Disney Plus, be in the beginning there was no Disney Plus, there was just, I would have to like rent or buy the Disney movies that I wanted, you know, Phoebe to maybe watch, it was just Phoebe, and it would be like, oh, we should watch Aladdin, and then I'd have to find like, well, where the fuck is that? And they're all in different places.

So I have a bunch of Disney movies that are like purchased on my Amazon account before Disney Plus that feel real, real useless now. But then Disney Plus happens, and it's like, oh my God, this is amazing, every Disney thing, basically whenever they want it. And it was great because she would watch all the good cartoons, you know, like, especially a lot of the newer ones are fucking great.

Like, and the Frog, I had never seen it, fucking great, love that one, Tangled, I hadn't really seen that, that's a great one, Eli, you gotta fucking, you got to love Tangled right, I just feel like that's an U,

0:05:35 Tom: Oh

0:06:53 Eli: Y'all get no, big fan of tangle, big fan of tingle.

0:06:55 Tom: Tangled. Was great, I, yeah, I took my that, that's an older movie. I took, took my kids to see that one

0:06:57 Thomas: Oh yeah, that is an older one,

0:06:59 Eli: It is a significant I didn't want to jump in because Thomas was like, now here's a brand spanking new track, you cats and kittens haven't heard before, Cinderella, I

0:06:59 Tom: Yeah I

0:07:05 Thomas: Yeah, well it's no, it is not the um, the era of the, what is it, I feel like you could tell me, the Disney renaissance or whatever, it isn't that that era of like Aladdin, Lion King, you know, fucking all those ones that were like the first wave of Disney being good again or whatever. I'm not the Disney historian. That's everybody but me seemingly. Um, was, that's like 2000 something that, that movie, but anyway, point is they were great. I I love the songs in them. I love doing guess the song with Phoebe where, uh, now all the kids where I can like hum the song and and they can fucking figure it out instantly. It's amazing. And then we lived happily ever after until Disney Plus introduced the fucking concept of the useless, trash, 10, 11 minute episode of a series that I guess was on TV or not, that now my kids just watch every day, all day, forever unless I make them stop. Do you know this, Scourge? Does anybody else know this? Oh,

0:08:05 Eli: Need you to be a bit more specific, what are, what TV shows, oh, the pajama yeah the pajlama ninjas the

0:08:09 Thomas: God, I don't even know the names of them, they're worthless, they're like, they're okay, I'm I uh, those ones are still a tier better than what I'm talking about, these ones are that but worse, like it's like 10, 11 minute episodes, bullshit animation, it's like animation became too easy, that's my main problem, it's too easy now, you used to have to fucking hold that piece of paper, draw the, the witch from fucking whatever, Snow White or whatever, and then like fold the piece of paper back and forth, you know, to make, to make it seem like something was moving, and then you're like, this is animation, we're like, Jesus Christ, there's no way anyone could make a whole movie of this, that's not possible, now they push a button and it's just some fucking shitty character that has two poses and they just do a voice while they're, those two, it's worthless, it's fucking worthless trash, and it's all my kids wanna watch, I'm so mad about it.

0:08:59 Eli: Hate is so powerful, and also so nonspecific. That's what's really impressive here, right? Like, I have people I hate, but I know their names. You're just like, brown haired, brown haird, your

0:09:07 Thomas: Oh my god dude you can't keep track, it's like if I asked Tom, tell me one of the fucking characters that your son tells you it's, uh, no

0:09:15 Eli: Children's names.

0:09:20 Tom: There's a an a, or a d name in there somewhere there's like, they got, they're about yay tall, I think, a couple eyes on each of them, I don't know, they sleep here a lot, they sleep hier in the house a lot

0:09:24 Eli: There's a brown hairt in there.

0:09:32 Thomas: I had, I almost had one of them it's it's a ladybug and Cat Noir, you're something, is one, it's, they fucking suck, the point is they suck so, they suck so bad, I can't remember them, that's how bad they suck.

0:09:41 Eli: I think you're just a DMT man.

0:09:47 Tom: Okay we were just talking about this yesterday, like, like, Aislinn went through, and this was the worst thing that's ever happened, like, my kids now are in a worse place than your kids are now, and I'll get to that in a second. But, like, no, I guarantee it. They watch YouTube. They watch, well, I'll just go right there right now. But, Like, they watch YouTube almost exclusively, they don't want to watch any, like, Disney, they don't want to watch any Netflix, they don't want to, for the most part, they don't want to watch even anything produced by somebody with a modicum of competency, all any of them want to do is watch shit on YouTube, we make sure that they don't watch like really problematic shit, you know, they don't watch like, they're watching like people play video games and

0:09:47 Thomas: Okay yeah that's fantastic

0:10:29 Tom: I listen to make sure they're not saying like swearing it's

0:10:29 Thomas: I would love them to watch someone play a fucking, what, video game oh dude but it, like fine

0:10:33 Tom: The worst, it's a fucking some asshole making millions of dollars playing Five Nights at Freddy's, it makes me want to fucking kill myself in front of the TV so they have something better and more wholesome to watch, I would

0:10:37 Thomas: It is long look unless they are literally Watching those people be NPCs on TikTok or whatever, that's like the only thing that's more annoying than these shows that my kids, Disney, here's, here's what, this is a genuine fucking, we need to start a movement. I, I want a Disney filter that's just not those fucking TV shows. Give me the old hits. Give me whatever. Because now the kids, they know where they are. They know how to find them. My kids got too smart. They know, God, I asked my kids, by the way, they want me to put something on. And when I have too much work to fight them on one of those fucking bullshits I don't want to see, I'm like, all right, I don't know what that is because it's literally so horrible. My brain blacks it out. Like, I don't know what that is. They're like, no, you know, with the fucking the cat powers and the ladybug. I'm like, I don't, I don't care.

0:11:26 Tom: Rather watch that than the fucking Reruns Of Full House, we Watched Reruns A Full House For Like two Years Full House Full House

0:11:28 Thomas: And then here's what my kids have gotten to. I would love, oh my God, I would love that. Better than that. Dude, you, okay, Tom, here's the challenge. I'm going to make you watch this fucking show. I'm gonna find this show. You're gonna, you can watch it for as long as you stand. As long as you can stand.

0:11:36 Tom: Okay I

0:11:42 Eli: Yeah, I found it. I found It. It's so to peel back the curtain, and I highly recommend you Google this, because, Thomas, I'm so sorry I downplayed your pain, like, we'll, we'll take this off air where I can apologize from my heart. Because this show is called Miraculous: Colon Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir. It's five seasons and 116 episodes.

0:12:06 Thomas: Yes. And they're all the same.

0:12:09 Eli: I'm looking at the picture here. It looks like a 3D porn, right? Like you ever you, you ever see that thing that pops up, and Tom, you won't understand this, but all the people in the audience will, you know, when it pops up, and it's like, try not to come during these games.

0:12:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:12:22 Thomas: What?

0:12:22 Eli: These porno games will make you come so fast. Fuck your family in these.

0:12:20 Tom: Would

0:12:25 Thomas: Okay. I don't know what what the fuck this is either

0:12:27 Eli: These are the ads on Pornhub.

0:12:28 Thomas: Eli this might just be you

0:12:29 Eli: These are PornHub ads. Everyone got it. And trust me, everyone's loving this. The PornHub ads, they, it looks like someone took those Porn Hub ads and made them into a kid's show. This is, now Tom, again, I want to acknowledge the streamer pain in a second, but this is the description of the show, and I think we should all keep in mind, as the writers' strike, that one of them wrote this. Just, let's not be too sympathetic, is all I'm saying. Marinette seems to be a normal teenage girl. She dreams of becoming a fashion designer, is a bit awkward, and has a crush on a classmate. But she has a secret other teenagers don't have: she lives a double life as a crime fighting superhero known as Ladybug. She uses her superpowers to help protect her native Paris from supervillain Hawk Moth. She is assisted, reluctantly, by fellow hero Cat Noir, even though she insists she doesn't need him. A stance she might not take if she knew his alter ego is her crush, Adrian. Together, Ladybug and Cat Noire help keep Paris safe from Hawk Mouth and other villains. It looks real bad,

0:12:29 Thomas: Okay yeah it's the worst yeah

0:13:36 Eli: Thomas. Let me say.

0:13:37 Thomas: I was gonna say I can't tell you how much better that description sounds than what the thing is. Like, it's just, okay, Tom, okay, you watch, I will watch that.

0:13:41 Tom: Rather watch that every day of my life than than a middle -aged

0:13:46 Thomas: Here's the challenge, no, here's the challenge, you, turn on that, you turn that, I'll turn on Full House, we'll see who dies first.

0:13:46 Tom: Man screaming at Five Nights at Freddy's. I, a middle-aged man, scream, dream yelling at Five Nights at Freddy's, but Okay Of

0:13:57 Eli: This is our first livestream event. We're going to do it on Patreon. Well, we're going to start a simulcast where you watch Five Nights at Freddy's and Tom watches Miraculous Shatner. I forgot. Hey, Thomas, again, I would like to apologize because I cannot remember. A gun to my son's head right now. I would be like, oh, sorry, buddy.

0:14:14 Tom: Course

0:14:01 Thomas: My god there is no reward Shatnor you can't remember it yeah it's impossible and the dialogue is so, it's so bad, it's, oh my God, it's bad. It so

0:14:21 Eli: I'll be the referee. This is great. We can do like a charity fundraiser with it. I love this.

0:14:25 Thomas: Bad that now it's so bad because they asked me for that, or it was a different one, too, uh, another they watch, and I'm like, I don't know where to find it, and they go, oh, it's on Netflix. I'm, I'm like, what? What? They know what app everything is on now. They found a Netflix one that's even worse, I think. I can't remember. Because like I said, it leaves my mind immediately. It does a defense mechanism. Like, so I don't, you know. Instead, I bring up my biggest trauma. And that's actually better for my brain, for my mental health.

0:14:37 Eli: Of course they do. Yeah.

0:14:38 Tom: They Do, yeah, what

0:14:50 Eli: Or Or you just Go into a fugue state instead. Can you a hot tip? Never install Alfred on any of your devices because My Son So

0:14:57 Tom: The shit Is Alfred

0:14:57 Thomas: I don'T know what that is.

0:14:58 Tom: What The fuck is Alfred this Sounds terrible

0:14:59 Eli: Alfred Is a Mac app that like supercharges Spotlight and basically whatever you think Spotlight was supposed to do for those you don't know it's like an in computer search on a Mac, um, and it's pretty good, but Alfred is really good, and your son who is Incredibly Speech Delayed can learn to use it. So now he, he just touches Alfred on the iPad and he's like, we'll bust slow motion. And Alfred's like, oh you want to watch Wheels on the Bus in slow motion on YouTube? And I'm like, Alfred, you fucking snitch. I'll shoot you in the head.

I'll destroy. I'm going to take this iPad out back and I'll dunk it in water. Now Tom, I do want to talk about the pain of streamer watching. I'm not experiencing yet because I definitely want to talking about it. But here is my son's jam in the limited iPad time that he gets, right? Because yesterday we were on the big TV, so I was technically in control of the remote, out I could make it not happen. But the thing that my son watches now is puzzle versions of his favorite songs. Are you aware of

0:15:14 Thomas: I need to get this.

0:15:30 Tom: Puzzle

0:15:31 Thomas: Yeah.

0:15:56 Tom: What

0:15:56 Eli: This phenomenon, I'm

0:15:57 Thomas: Puzzle versions.

0:15:57 Tom: The f**k does that even mean, puzzle versions Of a song? Oh

0:15:59 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:00 Eli: So glad you asked. They take songs that kids like, like Wheels on the Bus, and they play them in different speeds and with different effects, effects on the screen so It'll Be Like Why I

0:16:12 Tom: No, I Wouldn't Own A Screen, I

0:16:15 Thomas: What? What, why, how is that a puzzle, why Because fuck us, that's why, yeah

0:16:19 Eli: Don't fucking know what

0:16:23 Tom: I would go down and flip the f**king circuit breaker on the house and never turn it back on there's

0:16:27 Eli: Here's the thing, my boy, he fucking loves that, he's laughing and singing along, doing the voice with it, so I'm just like, he's getting tremendous joy from this all Screen time is poison for his eyeballs and daddy's already been to H.B. Lovecraft and looked Cthulhu in the Eyes and laughed so Like I Haven't

0:16:45 Thomas: I Don't Know you haven't Seen Cat Noir And fucking Ladybug, I think that's actually Whatever You Just said with

0:16:48 Eli: Seen Cat Noir, I Want To get back to that, but Tom, take us into the world of streamer because I'm actually like, I'm half terrified and half excited for my Child's First Parasocial Relationship, take Us There

0:17:00 Thomas: A white Supremacist

0:16:58 Tom: Nothing To be excited About No There's There Is There is nothing at all to be excited about, it's thing is like your kids, if they're anything like all four of my kids, and my nanny, and then like my nannie's friend who comes over, so like they all watch the most useless, pointless, awful screaming random random shit that's, they're all attracted to a type of humor that has no like connection to events past, previous, or future, where it's just like a random thing happened, or isn't it great when the microphone clips and like it's juste like screech sounds in the middle of like Watching somebody play it

0:17:01 Eli: Yeah Exactly

0:17:01 Thomas: Yeah, yeah Boy Tim and Eric really ruined the world for us You know, oh

0:17:43 Eli: Cutaways

0:17:44 Tom: You Know, I, I actually was, I was thinking about this the other day. Like, do you remember when, and this is a long time ago, I'm an old man, but like, when Family Guy first came out, Family Guy Kind Of started doing this like random insert thing into the show where you'd be watching the show, it'd be about something, there would be like A random Cutaway Aside Family Guy's a piece of shit show that like was funny For The First half Season That Show Was that

0:17:53 Thomas: Man This

0:18:01 Eli: Yeah Wow Oh Tom Wow

0:18:01 Thomas: This is So Insulting To family. Oh no, it was so good. It was really good. I don't know about it now, but like it was fucking great.

0:18:10 Tom: Show Is funny for a half a season and then it just fell Apart but Like Awful Show But Like But

0:18:13 Thomas: Three fantastic seasons. Came back for some more good seasons.

0:18:14 Eli: Okay So Some Of us, some of us were raised on the doodly-doo, Tom, and Some of them are deeply Hurt by Your Do

0:18:19 Thomas: Yeah. That's

0:18:21 Tom: Like Imagine Because here's what YouTube essentially has become, at, at least the YouTube that my kids tend to watch, is it's, it's either in two categories, so it's this random shit that's like all the cutaways from Family Guy with none of the structure to contextualize it at all. It's just the random shit, then it's done with screech voice audio and intentional, like bad mic clipping and stuff, so like the sound is like fingers on a chalkboard.

0:18:45 Thomas: Tim and Eric. That's Jim and Eric's influence,

0:18:47 Tom: It's, it's the actual worst thing that you could possibly put on a television.

0:18:48 Thomas: I think. Yeah, that's pretty bad. That's pretty good.

0:18:51 Tom: It's horrible.

0:18:52 Thomas: So Then ask them to watch a video game. Then you're problem solved because that's fucking great.

0:18:56 Tom: Well, But the thing is, like... like, my kids are old enough now to where, like, can make suggestions, but unless I'm just going to be a giant overseer on their screen time, which just isn't really appropriate at their age, I don't think, like... know, they're going to watch whatever they're gonna watch as long as it's appropriate. You know what I mean? I'm not going to, like, say, hey, you have to watch Bob's Burgers because I think that show is better written than this shit you're watching.

You can suggest it, and I will, sometimes, but they'll take my suggestions 99 times out of 100, though. They're not... they want to watch the garbage that all their peers are watching, and the problem is that that then influences their sense of humor. So, like, when we were all growing up and everybody, like, can have some relatable moment where... and like a bad cultural example would be like those stupid Budweiser commercials came out and everybody was, bad, you know, like a bunch of fucking clowns.

My, my point only being that, like, the media we watch influences our sense of tumor and how we interact within that sort of, like, cultural space with our friends. They, with this random shit, so they just say annoying random shit and they think it's funny. They'll just be like, "big dog bacon head," and you're just like, fuck, it, what is happening?

0:20:05 Tom: And and They think it's hilarious what, because

0:20:06 Thomas: Sex. Noise. Oh.

0:20:04 Eli: They make the sex noise. So my, my students, the high school, and even some of my college students...

0:20:09 Thomas: Yeah. You said this

0:20:11 Tom: You know what I'm talking about, Eli, right? The sense of humor has gone way downhill. There's nothing clever. Yeah.

0:20:11 Thomas: Oh,

0:20:11 Eli: Oh, Absolutely, it's It's funny because it's actually a microcosm of what's wrong with the Internet, like, on a meta level. Right. Because when you talk to, or you see someone talk to, those creators, to be like, "hey, your stuff is bad and it contributes nothing to the universe," they're like, "it's ironic." And, like, that has just become this weird carte blanche for all bad behavior in society.

0:20:35 Tom: Yeah.

0:20:36 Thomas: Man, we sound like boomers. I'm not gonna part of the... no, here's what, here's... I'm gonna attempt to defend. Okay, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, Tom, but I'm knocking, I'm going to defend individually any one shitty thing, but I will say, is it possible, because we're boomers, they have to go through our kids, and and that, you know, the next generations, they have to go through the iterating on the stuff. They haven't seen this, all the shit we've had, basically. They haven't, they haven't had that, like, "oh, it's that thing that we, you know, we knew, but then there's a whole take on it that's different and ironic," and so to them that's mind-blowing To us, we're like, "oh yeah, we had our version of that and we liked that better because it was iterating off of stuff we already knew," and now they're iterating five generations of stuff that we didn't watch because we aged out of it, and so we don't really get it. But, like... like, I don't know, because I

0:20:39 Tom: We do we Do, no,

0:20:40 Eli: We do sound like boomers. He's going to defend Mr. Beast. Pleased

0:21:26 Tom: No,

0:21:26 Thomas: Think I can't participate in the, like, the peeped kids these days. I can'T participate in The Kids These Days thing. I don'T know. I just feel like that's us being assholes.

0:21:27 Tom: 100 not, I I wish that was true. Yeah. Well, because your kids aren't old enough they're the thing is like your kids arenít

0:21:36 Thomas: No, I think that's because we're being boomer assholes! I DON'T KNOW!

0:21:39 Tom: No,

0:21:39 Eli: No, I agree with Tom.

0:21:40 Tom: It's not, it's not itís Not because youíve, not, look, the thing is, like, the media up until very, very recently, and Iím not talking, like, stuff when I was a kid, Iím talking about stuff like when I was a fully grown adult, still had a sense of story. The problem is exactly what Eli pointed out, like, there's a dismissal of nonsense as "it's ironic," but the problem isn't, irony doesn't work that way. It's not ironic. Like, these things aren't actually ironic. They don't meet the definition of irony. They're contextual.

0:22:08 Thomas: Alanis didn't sing about it. Wait, no, she DID sing about him. That's why they DON'T meet the definition.

0:22:10 Eli: Yeah.

0:22:12 Tom: They're they're These are totally uncontextualized vignettes repeated, heated, one right after the other, after the other, designed just to suck up attention. That's all that they're designed to do.

0:22:24 Thomas: Remind me, is this on YouTube? Like, YouTube, like creators? Like, and it's like small -time creators? It's not like, is that what,

0:22:27 Tom: This is just all YouTube. No, some

0:22:29 Eli: It's all YouTube. No, They're huge. They're

0:22:31 Tom: Of these are multi, multi, multitens of millionaires.

0:22:33 Thomas: Oh man,

0:22:35 Eli: Huge. You know what would be a fun bonus? Uh, Not to suggest content on air while we are doing our podcast and thus get sucked into our own assholes. When I first started being a podcaster, I was like, okay, I want to be relevant, I don't want to get lost in my own stuff, so I went on Social Blade, which is this thing that, like, tracks, uh, media websites, and I was... I was like, I am always going to be watching the top 20 YouTubers in the world.

0:22:37 Tom: It's horrible.

0:22:47 Thomas: Oh

0:22:58 Tom: You can't do it. I absolutely know you can't doing it.

0:22:58 Thomas: My God. That's impossible. That can't be done.

0:22:58 Eli: Oh, my God. If you're listening to this and you're like, I don't know what Tom and Eli are complaining about. It can't be that bad. Get yourself over to Social Blade. Just start clicking and just watch a single random video from the top. Not only will you not recognize a single person on there, right?

0:23:09 Tom: It's worse.

0:23:17 Thomas: Yeah, that's fine.

0:23:18 Eli: Like, I don'T mean these are not, These people will have nothing to do with anything you've ever heard of, but their content will be unrecognizable as entertainment media to you. If

0:23:24 Thomas: Yeah. What kind of stuff talking are about? I don't, like, are they shows? Are they scripted comedy? Are they, what is it? Like, I mean, are these skits?

0:23:36 Tom: No, they're neither shows nor scripted comedy. That is the problem, Thomas, is that you're still living in a world where no, they are not skits.

0:23:41 Thomas: No, like literally I want to know what they are. Like, are there, is anyone a character?

0:23:45 Tom: I'm trying to explain it to you. They're none of any of that. Like, they're nothing that you could possibly recognize. Like, you can't analogize any of this to regular media that you've consumed before. Markiplier is a wildly popular, he's in the top 10, wildly popular YouTuber. Like, what Markiplyer does is just unironically play Five Nights at Freddy's video games. Like, he just plays this video game and screams at it. And he is one of, he Just Screams at it! Like he's playing and like something happens, like, ah, he just screams at it. There's no, no,

0:24:15 Thomas: Screams at it? Oh, But, okay, but this is a video game streamer, like, I, okay, I can get the concept of video, I've streamed it, Cecil streams video games, like, you know, and then from there it's just whatever the thing you do that apparently is entertaining while you're doing that. And, you know, it's a hop, skip, and a jump to yelling weirdly is apparently entertaining to some kids, but I can understand what that is, what

0:24:41 Eli: I may, Thomas, I've curated a sampling for you. I went over to Social Blade. This is the sixth most popular YouTuber in the world right now. His username, dafuck! Question mark, boom! So we're talking about dafukboom's content. And when I go to his videos, his most recent videos are Skibbity Toilet 57 Part 1, Skibbitty Toilette Season 18 All Episodes, SkhibbityToilette 51, SkimbityToillette Season 15 All Episcodes, it's just all, oh, Multiverse of Beatbox Episode 1, Male 07 vs. Male 09. nine like I don't youngest

0:25:13 Thomas: Is that, oh, Is it beatboxing, Skibby Toilet. Did he use a toilet to... to make a sound? And then made a beatboxing song out of it. Because that sounds great.

0:25:33 Eli: Moon star fac ooh like thomas I to say again I'm just trying to communicate to you that like not only do I not know what this content is I don'T RECOGNIZE WHAT GENRE THIS CONTENT IS BEING PULLED FROM EVERYTHING IS LIKE A MAN'S LIKE AN OLD PLAYSTATION ONE VIDEO GAME STYLE GRAPHICS BUT IT'S THAT MAN'S HEAD ON A TOILET AND IN THIS NEXT ONE HE'S A CAR I

0:25:44 Thomas: The words.

0:25:58 Thomas: Yeah I hate that. But is that beatboxing? I actually am wondering. Because that could just be. I don't know. Interesting. That's all it is.

0:26:06 Eli: Don't think any of it that

0:26:07 Tom: There's nothing even accidentally interesting. Not, not even, not Even accidentally you, you can't, you could not get hit hard enough in the head with a hammer to find this interesting. You really, I promise you that you could Not, but this is a little bit different, but, um, age restrictions and your kids are still pretty young. So like, cause I will say like, I have a problem in my household where my youngest who's nine, um, at his mom's house, he has unrestricted access to whatever he can find online and on television, including they, it's terrible, right? Right? Including like they subscribe to a horror movie. And I want to talk about horror movies specifically. They subscribe to Shudder, right? And so my youngest, Amen, is nine and he has watched every horror movie that he has an interest in watching regardless of rating. And his mom is like, well, you know, it doesn't seem to give him nightmares or bother him. And

0:26:38 Thomas: Yeesh.

0:26:40 Eli: Seems like a terrible idea shutter nope that's not how we judge

0:27:04 Tom: I don't care, right? Because like, but I can't control that, right, because it's not my house and I don't get to make the rules at a house that I don't that I don't live in, so I don't have any control or say or influence or anything over that. It's certainly not something the courts would intervene on, so there's nothing that I can do. So, but he'll come over to my house having watched just aggressive violence, like really aggressive violence. And like, when I look at content, you know, when I, when I think about content, my, my older kids, 16 and 17, they, they asked me this weekend, like Finn came to me and he's like, "Hey, can Donovan and I sit and watch a scary movie?" And I'm like, "Yeah, you guys are 16 and 17, you can watch a movie. But I still want to know what it is."

0:27:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:28 Thomas: Yeesh, yeah.

0:27:48 Tom: Like, I don't want them sitting around watching fucking hostile or the hills have eyes or any of that fucking torture porn ultraviolence bullshit. Right. Because, like, I think that that stuff is just objectively bad. Like that.

0:28:00 Thomas: Yeah I don's like that.

0:28:01 Tom: I think there is no redemption in value to that kind of material, material. And I think that for kids and adults, right.

0:28:02 Thomas: That's a no for me. Yeah.

0:28:08 Tom: So like, I'm never gonna let my kids watch it when they become adults. I don't have any control or say. So I wonder what your thoughts are as far as like how your kids might interact with specifically content around violence.

0:28:20 Thomas: Well can I tie a few loose ends? I think we shouldn't be afraid to tell our kids that we want them to watch something else. You know, like, do you do that, Tom? Like, Eli, you don't have to watch the Alphabet song 470 times. You don't Have to. Like, you could, your kid, there's an initial period where they're pissed at you for changing something or for not, whatever. And then like three seconds goes by and they're distracted by the new thing. And I really think we don't HAVE to give ourselves brain damage by hearing the ABC song 1400 times. My biggest rule is do not ever. Never. If you're a new parent, if you're about to have kids, if you're anywhere near whatever, never, ever let Cocomelon go on in your house. Not even once. Not even once!

0:29:00 Thomas: It's not worth it! It's nothing, it's fucking, it's agony. It's absolute agony. It's so bad. You don't have to do it, though. I've done a thing. Here's what we did. I did a thing recently where the shows got so bad, the things they were watching, that I said no. I was like, and it's hard because, like, I always have to be the fucking policeman in our house. That's another, another topic I want to do.

Like, I feel like I'm the only one who can tell the kids to do stuff sometimes. Sorry, Lydia, but not, not really, but like kind of, I don't know. So I was like, put my foot down. I was, okay, you're only allowed to watch movies. You can watch whatever the fucking movie you want. And they're like, we literally, Phoebe is so funny, cause she'll look me in the eyes. I hate movies.

I never want, like, she'll just decide, you know, like, you like movies, come on, think about this movie. And, um, so then I recently was like, all right, well, well, it's movies or no TV. And then they're like, all right, fine, we'll watch a movie. And then they get into the movie and they like it. You know, you guys also know me, I have a hard time, you know, with not being honest about everything.

And Phoebe, one day, or Arlo, I can't remember actually, one of them asked me like, I said, like, no, I don't want you to watch the fucking Ladybug and Cat Noir for the 1800th time. I was like, nah, let's watch it. And then he goes, do you not like that? And I was like, how do I do this in a way that doesn't ruin your entire childhood?

I was like, uh, I thought for a minute, I contained it for, I was like, no, that's not made for adults, is what I said. I was like, that is just, that, not, there is stuff, some stuff is for kids and adults. Bluey, we can watch Bluey all day, any Bluey you want to watch, fine, we will watch Blue. I get a little tired of it, it gets, you know, it is a little samey after 400 episodes of it, but whatever, it's better, way better.

I tell them now, like, there is something that is like for just kids that we can't watch because adults know everything that is going to happen, like, there's just a formula and every 10 minute episode is that same formula with literally the same lines, like, they don't even write new lines, they just do the same episode every time.

And so we have, if we're gonna be in the room, I told him this, I was like, if, if we let you watch TV by yourself, you can do whatever you want, if, if you're in the same room, you're gonna watch TV, we're in a room, it's got to be a movie or something that's not gonna make me kill myself, and they, like, they get it, like, it works, it's fine, like, you can, I don't think we have to be afraid of the temporary, like, fit they might put up. We could just say, you know, okay, or don't watch anything. Don't.

0:29:00 Eli: Yeah not

0:31:16 Thomas: You think, yeah.

0:31:17 Eli: At all I completely disagree I like apple absolutely the opposite of agree with that and and not because max would have a tantrum because max is actually pretty good about transitioning away from screens that's something that we've worked on really really hard you know there's that old old Louis CK joke about like, just stand behind your kid and turn the TV off suddenly. Like, I was like, I don't want that to be him. And also, like, I have pretty bad screen addiction issues that I've been working on over the years, and like, getting really better about it. But like, I don't want to put my kid in that place because there's a bunch of like really bad people who really, really want to hurt him with screens that I didn't have to deal with at this age.

So, like, for me, like, I joke around about it, I'm like, oh, the ABC song and stuff like that. But like, if it's not doing him harm, I want him to have the freedom. Like, even if I don't like the ABC song 75 minutes in a row, it's more important to me that, like, my son is super happily, like, flap, like, crazy flapping away at the idea that, you know, they're gonna do the ABC quack again. Like,

0:31:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Fair.

0:31:20 Tom: Yeah.

0:32:17 Thomas: Enough.

0:32:18 Eli: For me, it's just not about me, you know.

0:32:18 Thomas: Let me. Throw this at, let me throw this out there, that stuff is better for your kid than Ladybug and Cat Noir is for my kids, like, they're not flapping their arms and happy, they literally zonk out and just stare at at a thing that's the same thing forever. They don't react to it. Like, they literally just sit there and stare at it. It's a different, it's...

0:32:37 Tom: But that's, that's quality parenting, like, as a Gen Xer, I had to raise my hand, like, to reach out to all the Gen, like, we were all parented exclusively by the television, like, I was, I was, I was parented

0:32:48 Thomas: 100%. But we were parented, hold on Tom.

0:32:49 Eli: And it worked out great.

0:32:50 Thomas: We were parent by the three VHS videos we had though. Was that you?

0:32:50 Tom: A thousand percent by TV. Yeah. We didn't have a VHS. Like we just watched TV. So

0:32:57 Thomas: Tom's the only one who can outdo me on this.

0:32:58 Tom: No, we didn't, my dad doesn't like movies. So he didn't know any movies. He doesn't like, he still doesn't know. He still doesn't like movies so like, yeah, but like I was raised by television. I was. My dad was a single parent who worked from home. Of course I came home and I watched TV. I would go to like other people's houses to be babysat And they would plunk us down in front of the television. Like everybody, my age and my generation knows exactly what television shows they watched. As soon as they came home from school in the morning before, while they were eating breakfast, like I knew like what shows I watched like Monday at seven and Tuesday at eight 30. Like I had my whole life planned out around the shows I was watching and what times that they were on, as a young person and well into my teenage years.

So like, I think that there's a lot of, I think, very justifiable nervousness now around screen time because the research is fairly clear that screen time isn't, is not particularly great for kids, especially when they're younger. But I'll also raise my hand and say I've never capped my kids' screen time. I have never, for, not when they were little, not now, I do not cap their screen time. And I absolutely will raise my hand and be the one that admits it.

Like I use the television often and frequently or other screens often and frequently as a way to buy time so that I can do other shit. And sometimes the shit I want to do, I don't want to pretend it's important. It's not like, Oh, I got to do the laundry here.

0:33:06 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:34:26 Tom: Like sometimes it's like, I just need a fucking break, man. Go watch a fucking movie. Like I just needed a break. So like, I think that there's a role for that in modern life that I, that I think all of us, it's okay, to lean on it, it's absolutely okay to lean on it.

0:34:41 Thomas: Curveball Tom, curveball. I agree with you and Eli's the crazy one. Because I actually think the screen time is fine, like I honestly don't think it's a big deal, like I, I am, I don't know the state of the research, we're not a sciencey show, I actually mean to, I meant to brush up on that on my other show.

0:34:44 Eli: Interesting. Give Your Baby be an entire bottle of time at all.

0:34:57 Thomas: Uh, Yeah, I I don't actually, I think maybe it's a little overblown because I also think there's a component of it just philosophically for me that's like, well, it's like anything where the, oh, Eli brought it up, the novels were the thing, or was that you, Tom, I can't remember, sorry, it was somebody brought up the novel. Novels were the thing that was distracting everybody, novel mania. And then like, there's all that. The other thing is screens are just going to be a bigger part of the world than they were when we were kids. So we can't really properly gauge like, okay, how much screen time should they be doing based on like our experience, you know, because it's a different world. There's screens every which fucking ever, forever, all the time. Now, I actually don't have a problem.

I do feel like I want them to do something else when they're just, you, you know, in a vegetative state in front of these shit shows forever. So we do try to like, and the other thing is, I feel really bad when I remember like, oh shit, I've let them watch TV too long. And I'm like, hey, let's do something else. And then I hear them like delightfully playing. And I was like, fuck, they could have been, I should have had them doing that.

You know, for some part of me feels bad. Like that's like a better thing, creative thing for them to be doing. But I also think it's actually like, it's perfectly creative to watch stuff and to like learn about, well, okay, not these YouTube things that you're describing, but like

0:35:14 Eli: Novel mania, Yeah, I

0:36:11 Thomas: But like getting to experience art and culture and whatever is a creative thing, you know, so like I don't think it's that bad, I'm actually mostly with Tom, and I think Eli's the crazy one, Tom, we can unite, we can unionize.

0:36:11 Tom: Yeah, no, look,

0:36:11 Eli: Was gonna say, well, As, as the official Tom of this episode, as we call it in the parlance, uh, the here are my screen time rules, I do limit it to around an hour a day, we've gotten soft, he's over three now, and so, uh, American Pediatric Society says he can have up to two hours of TV a day, so sometimes it's an hour and 15, sometimes it's an 30, I don't like to be too hard about like that, I don't like that like

0:36:24 Thomas: Yeah,

0:36:44 Tom: But You're even more conservative than the than the science on this, so you have you have you have an ideology here that's, yeah, right.

0:36:46 Eli: Yes I am significantly more concerned, yeah Uh, there's no violence whatsoever in any way, shape or form, not cartoon violence, not realistic violence, and I do want to get back to Tom, your thoughts on horror movies, because I think they're really like, really, really important, um, and they often get dismissed as sort of prudery, as opposed to like a concern for empathy, which is where I'm coming from there, so like, there's no violence, and then the big rule is no using it as a babysitter, so me or Anna has to be in the room listening to, slash watching, whatever it is he's listening to or watching, including puzzle

0:36:50 Tom: Mm-hmm. Okay.

0:36:52 Thomas: A hundred percent yeah yeah yeah, okay, well, there's a little cartoon violence, yes, yes, yeah,

0:37:24 Eli: Version of Wheels on the Bus, because I know it is a matter of time before that becomes a parasocial relationship, and I want to be there the first time a YouTuber is like, just like, a black guy, am I right, like, I want to ha ha, caught him, a fucking gotcha, right. I want, oh,

0:37:40 Thomas: Yeah, for sure, yep, yep, now,

0:37:41 Tom: Okay, So, real quick, I'm going to interrupt you, and I'm going to say, this is, this is the bolster to your, your comments right there, are exactly the bolster to the argument that I make to my friends that are choosing to have kids. And I tell them, I wouldn't have kids if I were you. But if you do, have just one, and because what you're describing is a much more viable option.

0:38:07 Tom: I said friends, Thomas. I is a bunch more.

0:38:08 Eli: Complete

0:38:04 Thomas: He tells me that was neat, you've been watching too many horror movies, that was needlessly cruel.

0:38:13 Tom: That was that was my like I really do like I've got some very good friends that are that are having kids right now. I'm like, have one, because what you're describing, Eli, with two, three, four kids is an untenable volume of work. It's like I would contend that it realistically can't be done while running any other part of a household, like monitoring that kind of.

0:38:13 Thomas: Yeah, once they get to the age where they're separated,

0:38:37 Tom: So I'm not saying that any of your choices are bad. I'm just saying that, like, those choices are very much small family choices that don't scale well. Well, sure.

0:38:38 Thomas: Yeah, that's

0:38:46 Eli: I've said it before and I'll say again, like, the, the fact that there are single parents, it's actually not true, I don't know if you know this, but those people are all lying. They don't have kids.

0:38:53 Thomas: My bit, yeah, that doesn't exist, there's

0:38:55 Eli: Yeah, that's the- Thomas has brought this up before, it's absolutely not real, so yeah, I, I by no means think, yeah, your kids are holograms.

0:38:58 Thomas: No way, holograms, they're actually, hawk steel doesn't burn, that, whatever, yeah, know, your

0:39:03 Eli: Exactly. But yeah, no, I by know minds think that these are like good. I also have like a kid who may be neurodivergent. And so that changes our metrics and stuff like that. So like, yeah. I by now means think anything I'm saying right now is good for anybody but my family.

0:39:16 Tom: Yeah. It's not prescriptive. Right. Yeah, yeah, it's not prescripted.

0:39:18 Eli: Yeah, exactly. Your kids can all fucking talk. So, you know, maybe screen time fucking rocks. Who knows?

0:39:23 Thomas: Kid can talk. Man, I think you're overplaying every video I see that you share. I'm like, oh, based on your description, that's not what I would have anticipated. I don't, I feel like he's talking. Yeah.

0:39:32 Tom: Well, we're not gonna go on that road. But I would just say like, buddy, amen didn't talk at all. Until well after two and a half. He just grunted and pointed at everything. And he he now he just will not shut up. And He's got an immense vocabulary. So Jesus

0:39:44 Eli: And now he just wants you to tell him how Sonic wins the fight.

0:39:47 Tom: Christ, I had a whole, I had all week with him this week. So but yeah, the violence thing, like, like my, my feeling is around violence. And I compare this to, like, we have this like intense prudery around sex and sexuality and nudity in our like media content that we allow people to consume. And any amount of like nudity or sex, I think we think is, is pretty socially, not you mean you guys, but like socially in America, we're just like, hey, that's a fucking rated R if there's a titty out, you know what I mean?

0:39:47 Thomas: It's Ridiculous.

0:40:16 Tom: But like there is at least the possibility of consensual sex and there is no possibility for consensional violence. All violence is nonconsensual. And so I am much more of a naysayer on violence, like, like violence is just like, I think it's really fucking problematic to see and be exposed to violence. And the level of violence, the ramping up of violence that is produced in a lot of media right now is, I mean, it's fucking beyond, beyond like it's, it's fucking next level with the, with like the intense focus on like the actual torment of other people. And I think like getting off on that for enjoyment or pleasure is not something I want my kids, like, I don't want to set them down that road. Don't want to be like, hey, you know, it's a good time watching other people hurt, that's a fun time, like, I just ideologically am opposed to that.

0:40:16 Thomas: Exactly. Yeah.

0:40:17 Eli: And Think we're not realistic, um, ourselves, especially horror movie fans. And I want to say, like, I'm a huge horror movie fan, I fucking love horror movies, right, and I, I understand the late 90s, early 2000s ultraviolence movement and like Saw and the twist ending, you know, campaign and all that stuff, like I can talk about that as an adult. But I think often horror movie fans or people pushing back against prudery aren't super honest with ourselves about, like, like at what age we are able to healthily process that stuff, right, and like what effect it has on us, like watching that stuff when we're too young or what it normalizes, you know. It's funny, Thomas, when you were talking about like, uh, Cat Lady and the ladybug or whatever the fuck they're called, right? Of the things that's really interesting when you watch children's cartoons is the normalization of shooting, right? Now they don't shoot each other with guns, right, it's not, not like it makes a bang and then the guy's like, my fucking arm, I'm Hawk Man or whatever the fuck.

0:42:10 Eli: But like they do have laser guns And blaster guns and stuff that like knock each other out all the time. And like one of the things that's really interesting to sort of think about is, like, that's still normalizing the act of shooting someone, right? Lot. And then you look at violence, you know, you look especially gun violence in the United States, and it's like, yeah, maybe there's a little bit of connection here, right? Maybe the fact that like fucking Ben 10 is about a guy who turns into several versions of Kick Your Ass.

Like, maybe that's not awesome for a five-year-old or a six-year-old or a seven-year-old. Maybe we need to have, like, very, very specific conversations. It's funny, like the people who talk about the problems with porn, so often the points they're making are also really, really true of violence, right? Which is, like, putting it into context and understanding fantasy and all that stuff.

And while we do have some of that, like, really good, and I'm not talking about like Mormon propaganda that Tom falls for, I'm talking about, like, actual really good people who are trying to like make healthy choices when it comes to porn. We have none of that when it come to violence in this country, right? Like anyone

0:42:08 Tom: That Would Be awesome Though

0:43:16 Thomas: Yeah,

0:43:17 Eli: Talking about violence in movies is just like I, instant when I said that, I became an old lady with a pearl necklace and I began to clutch it. It's physically impossible for me not to turn into an old pearl clutching lady when I talk about that. All

0:43:29 Thomas: I want to repeat myself, but I've done the same thing because I absolutely agree. I hope my kids someday, and honestly, it'll probably be fucking sooner than I imagine, will experience consensual sexual activity or even just like nudity, like forbid they change in a locker room and see like some nudity of either whatever gender. But like, I hope they never witness a goddamn murder or shooting and that we're fine with it. Where a hundred percent a movie could be PG with like a full-on fucking murder and it's totally cool, but the minute there's a Nipple

0:43:51 Tom: Yeah.

0:44:00 Eli: Of Them The G ones

0:44:00 Tom: Murders get played for laughs right? Like, murder, murder gets played for laughs all the time, like, you know, like, so, I Married an Axe Murderer right, like I know it's an old one but like but I'm just saying but you know what I'm saying right I'm, I'm just, I'm just throwing something out that hits right there in the name is all.

0:44:01 Eli: Yeah

0:44:01 Thomas: What Was it funny Murder Oh That That's Come On That Movie's Great, yeah Yeah Oh

0:44:09 Eli: That's It, no, no No That's A good Topical Reference Tom

0:44:17 Tom: You know, like, murder gets played, murder and violence gets played all the time for laughs

0:44:22 Eli: Related, um, of my favorite movies when I was a kid was The Great Mouse Detective, but I would sob hysterically when Ratty the villain died and so I demanded as bedtime stories, as a child, stories about how Ratty the rat villain of the fucking Great Mouse Detective had survived and changed his ways and gone on to better and brighter things. So like that's the level of violence sensitivity I had as a kid, all

0:44:26 Thomas: Yeah, oh Oh

0:44:50 Tom: I don't think that the, the right call is to say, well, you know, my kid doesn't seem to be affected negatively by having viewed violence, right? That's a, like, I like, people are going to put that out there, I know they are, you know, like, well, my kids seen this and they seem fine, like, but like the problem is that, like, when we absorb this, this kind of messaging, we are absorbing this messaging implicitly. It doesn't always have a one-to-one immediate effect, right?

One of the things that like anybody who studies media and has taken any media studies classes recognizes is that this is part of a broader pattern of socialization. And those broader patterns of socialization don't have like a one to one immediate. It happened and I saw the effect the next day, or I saw a nightmare that hour, I saw, you know, behavioral changes that next week. It's part of a broader trend of how we socialize people to contextualize and think about things like violence and sex.

And I think it's really fucking troubling when we are blasé about exposing kids to like violence, like especially this like extreme violence stuff. And I think that there's a desire to share, as parents, as our kids start to get older and we start to get excited about who they are and seeing their personalities, we want to show them who we are and show them the things that we like and connect with them over those things.

That is an understandable impulse that we need to rein the fuck in when it comes to exposing our kids to the things we like that will socialize and contextualize for them really troubling shit like violence.

0:46:35 Eli: Right, gentlemen, before we go, my wife says I'm addicted to deli meats. I know, I can't believe she's making me quit cold turkey. I

0:46:52 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.