Writes Taylor Lorenz, in "Camps teaching kids to be YouTubers are cropping up across the country/Education programs aimed at helping children gain the skills needed to become online creators are exploding" (WaPo).
Whatever the emotional benefits of creating content and building an audience online,[Creator Camp co-founder Cazden] Morrison noted that the camp provides its charges with highly marketable skills.... “It’s much better, if a kid is spending multiple hours a day on an iPad playing games or watching videos, if that kid actually learns to make videos and be creative themselves.”
Top comments over there: "Well, as a mental health professional my career is secured until my retirement," "What a disheartening trend. Force-fed narcissism," "Thank goodness we have immigrants who actually want to be doctors and engineers...."
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69 comments:
Taylor Lorenz
allrighty then
After all, look what social media has done for talentless hacks like Taylor Lorenz.
The future's so bright I gotta wear shades.
Why do people care about the Eiffel Tower? It's like caring about Mount Rushmore or Big Ben. It's not a major part of life.
Learning to make effective content is a marketable skill. (DeSantis could use some of that in his campaign.) However, deriving wealth from YouTube is something you can't teach. Like all instances of charisma, you either have it or you don't. If the camp balances skills with expectations -- which they won't, because why would parents pay for their little darlings to be taught they're nothing special -- it could be useful.
We are truly in the end times.
This strikes me the same as kids wanting to grow up to be a basketball player or a rock star. It's an unworthy dream that nearly everyone will fail to achieve, but kids have been wanting it for generations and it hasn't harmed society.
"Why do people care about the Eiffel Tower? It's like caring about Mount Rushmore or Big Ben. It's not a major part of life."
She's SEVEN. A real Barbie Dream House is part and parcel.
Oh well. These kids are like "I wanna be Beyonce" kids because just everyone loves to hear them sing.... or so they are told. Most have insufficient talent to reach above the crowd. But dream on kiddies (and mommies). A percent of so may do well.
As for the rest, let 'em eat video.
O dear.
"Why do people care about the Eiffel Tower?...It's not a major part of life."
Well in this case it's not people, it's a 7 year-old girl who also dreams of a Barbie Dream House. I wouldn't overreact to this - next year when she's 8 she will transition and the testosterone therapy will have "him" dreaming of shooting up a school.
Poor old Taylor, out of subject matter at last.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
Why do people care about the Eiffel Tower?
It sounds like a koan.
My granddaughter is 7,almost 8. I do twice weekly tiktok @changeoverwizard
I have a background with floor to ceiling windows looking out on a live shot of the ocean. All cgi except me.
I said "hey Eena, did you see my beach studio?" she looked at it for less than a second and said "that's green screen" where in the world does a 7 year old learn what green screen is?
The next sentence was "grandpa, can you help me do a greenscreen?"
Of course, Eena, of course.
John Henry
She's only seven. I think it's great. Let her learn how to work towards a dream, not just wait for it to come true.
No mention of TikTok?
Btw: I am doing the tiktok to promote my Packaging Machinery Handbook (available at Ann's portal)
I started mid September. October sales were double normal. So are November's though too early to tell for sure.
John Henry
At least she isn't try to convince anyone that her plan to make a bunch of money is motivated by effective altruism.
Has Barbie make a comeback -because of the movie- or did she never actually go away?
I care a whole lot about the red wheelbarrow.
Why do people care about the Eiffel Tower?
=======
was it not proof of concept / demonstration project for steel beams or something!
"writes Taylor Lorenz" = three words that guarantee I won't click.
Not sure how camps teaching kids to be 'online creators' are much different than 'schools' teaching kids to be 'journalists' these days.
Elon...keep working. When you stop, we're finished.
Yeah, and I wanted to be astronaut. To be fair, I did get to work with astronauts on the Space Shuttle program. I was also able to buy an iPhone, computer, and buy a dream home. However, as a consumer of YouTube, I get the sense that success isn’t just a matter of desire. That said, I’ve found some channels compelling that seem to just look at things that most of us don’t have time to do. For instance, Big Jet TV’s Jerry, that spends hours just filming and commenting on planes taking off and landing usually at Heathrow airport. He’s quite successful and what production company would ever think that would be popular enough to be a career? How successful? Jerry has the funds to now travel to other locations across Europe and the US to do his same thing at other major airports.
As for Taylor Lorenz… she’s proof you can be a horrible person and still be successful.
"Why do people care about the Eiffel Tower?"... "She's SEVEN."
That's what makes it all the more amazing.
Why would a 7-year-old care about the Eiffel Tower.
This little child wants to build her whole life around it. What does it mean to her?
When I was 9, I remember wanting to build my entire life around Hawaii, and I wouldn't say that's because I was 9. I would give you a handful of reasons why. Crazy reasons. But reasons.
"Why do people care about the Eiffel Tower?"
Madeline?
Why would a young girl care about the Eiffel Tower?
"In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines,
Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines,
The smallest of these was Madeline."
Reddit teachers say Influencer has replaced NBA star or rapper as career of choice.
But the kids have too much anxiety to do any kind of presentation as practice. LOL
One of the saddest things I ever saw at back to school night when my kids were in elementary school a few years back was the overwhelming number of 1st grade projects that listed “YouTuber” or “famous” as what they wanted to be when they grew up, my kids wanted to be an astronaut or a doctor, how outdated
Con man sold Eiffel Tower-twice
So is Taylor Lorenz visiting professor of Internet Grifting?
When I was a summer clerk at a Wall Street firm, I sublet a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge, sort of the American equivalent of the Eiffel Tower. I found it deeply satisfying.
Why do people care about the Eiffel Tower? It's like caring about Mount Rushmore or Big Ben. It's not a major part of life.
Some people like it.
YouTube at 7.
OnlyFans at 18...
Follow the money.
There are special camps where kids in middle school can go to train the be long snappers in the NFL Best job in the world: median salary over $630,000, NFL glamour, paid travel, medical care, athletic trainers, get February through June or so off; and no one's allowed to hit you so long as you're just snapping.
She’s 7, swimming lessons would be more appropriate, they could be life saving someday. 10 years from now I predict AI influencers will be what she watches.
Carol said...Reddit teachers say Influencer has replaced NBA star or rapper as career of choice. But the kids have too much anxiety to do any kind of presentation as practice. LOL
Which is why they’ll fail.
Messenger Boy: The Thesselonian you're fighting... he's the biggest man i've ever seen. I wouldn't want to fight him.
Achilles: Thats why no-one will remember your name.
On the one hand, this is kindof sad.
On the other hand, I assume this is basically the same pool of people whose children end up child actors and singers. Not great, but not exactly new either.
Related, but not exactly on topic... youtube has replaced both music and movies as the center of youth culture. Far more kids can name "creators" than can name ANY band member. This is different, but aside from the outsize influence of one single corporate overlord, I'm not sure this is worse.
The Eiffel Tower is a stock image meaning people don't pay attention but kids seeing it everywhere think it means people do pay attention.
The is a difference between a child's having a ridiculous ambition (and also, I agree with Jeff Vader about how unfortunate it is that, if what appears to be true is actually true, fame has replaced accomplishment in kids' ambitions) and parents' spending good money to send their child to a camp that purports to give them the tools to make that ambition real.
I wasn't even a big fan of "Space Camp," though at least that wasn't telling kids or their parents that it would train the kids to be astronauts, just that it could feed their interest.
Basically I like un-themed camps or maybe nature-themed camps. Kids need to play. My kids were lucky to grow up in a neighborhood in which summer was basically camp: a creek, some woods, acres of open space, someone to feed the whole mob of them at any of several houses when lunchtime came around.
“Why do people care about the Eiffel Tower? It's like caring about Mount Rushmore or Big Ben. It's not a major part of life.”
They care because it’s iconic. Think of it in terms of the Alamo, down San Antonio way. You don’t want to visit that historic site without walking down the stairs and seeing The Basement with your own eyes.
"..Eiffel Tower..."
See: Paris Syndrome
John henry said...
Btw: I am doing the tiktok to promote my Packaging Machinery Handbook (available at Ann's portal)
I started mid September. October sales were double normal. So are November's though too early to tell for sure.
John Henry
11/8/23, 8:51 AM
Sold!
Not a fan of Taylor Lorenz and can't read the whole article but screw all these critics!
What is wrong with a 7 y/o wanting to be a YouTube or TikTok creator. By the time they are 17, they will have gone through wanting to be about 175 different careers. I know I did (still can't decide at age 75) I know my kids and all my grandkids do.
Why is YouTube creator camp any different from band camp or art camp or any other specialized kind of camp? Those kids are unlikely to grow up to be musicians or artists. But they have fun, they learn to be creative and learn some skills that may be useful and will definitely be fun.
Let the kids dream.
I never went to YouTube camp, had to figure it out by myself when I client asked if I could make a series of videos for them. I made $6-7,000 a year for almost 10 years doing this for their YouTube Channel. It can be a useful skill to learn.
When my oldest granddaughter (Now 20, 2nd year ChEng) was about 6, we were watching cartoons and she wondered how they were made.
I could explain to her but instead we got a half dozen pairs of shoes, a camera on a tripod and did an animation of the shoes doing the Hokey Pokey.
https://youtu.be/zcNxTizEpPc?si=M693RDVtOOcjGGOO
Then I explained how to do it with pictures and showed her some animations I had made.
Doing that led to real life understanding of how cartoons are made. Not just some theoretical grampa explanation.
It might have taken us half an hour all in.
Later, she and her cousin made some animations using Legos I kibitzed and helped a bit but it was mostly them.
https://youtu.be/zPG_ursuxSQ?si=KOoxd30XG35A66ll
I'll make YouTube videos all day long with grandkids if they let me.
John Henry
This strikes me the same as kids wanting to grow up to be a basketball player or a rock star.
The main difference that I see is that most people recognize (eventually) when they don't have the talent/skills needed for those things. You get outplayed.
When it comes to being internet famous as a job, I expect more people to think they have what it takes, and to keep thinking that long past the time it should be obvious that they don't, and to blame the audience for not watching.
My 8 year old granddaughter wants to be a teacher or a dietitian like her mom or maybe an animal doctor. Never one mentioned YouTube or “rich.” Must be Catholic school.
serious question:
If seven year olds are SO STUPID..
that they want to become you tubers..
so they can become "rich"..
so that they can move to paris..
so that they can see the effiel tower: EVERYDAY..
so that they can make you tube videos about the effiel tower: EVERYDAY..
If they are SO STUPID, that that is what they want out of life..
HOW can ANYONE think that a seven year old can decide whether or not to transition???
SERIOUSLY
Ann Althouse said...
Why do people care about the Eiffel Tower?
you Know who cares about the eiffel tower.. People that have NEVER SEEN the eiffel tower.
I guarantee, NO ONE* that has seen it more than 5 times cares about seeing it a sixth
NO ONE* okay, you have a person whose boyfriend proposed on it.. SHE might want to go back again and again.. but because of the life event, NOT the tower
The Eiffel Tower was undergoing some repair when my wife and I visited Paris in '17.
TRIP RUINED!
Actually, it was no biggie. We weren't there to see, or see from, the tower.
There was a pretty good PBS show about Eiffel and the politics and engineering of getting the tower built in time for the world exposition. Fascinating piece of urban history IYLTSOT.
Paris is widely thought of as the world's most romantic city (whether or not you get the same impression from actually being there). And the Eiffel Tower has become the main symbol of that idealized view. It's no wonder little girls love it.
By the same token, we may or may not appreciate the Statue of Liberty for its aesthetic value. But it symbolizes the American dream of freedom and opportunity -- and I imagine (at least some) people around the world value it for that same reason.
Interesting to watch this trend clash with the nascent trend of schools banning cellphones.
Making money on YouTube is about has hard as becoming a novelist that makes money. I imagine the skills the camp teaches, if they do it well, are at least marketable ones, even if almost all their clients aren't going to be successful at making a living on YouTube.
However, you don't need to pay for a camp to acquire these skills.
Is there a segment on unacceptable topics, avoiding demonetization?
Ann Althouse said...
"Why do people care about the Eiffel Tower?"
I don't think that they actually care about the Eiffel Tower. I think that it simply represents France to them. In the movie, The Spirit of St. Louis, there's a scene in a diner where Lindbergh is explaining how long a trip to Paris will be using his hand moving on the back wall. When he gets to a knothole in the wooden panel, he says that the knothole represents Paris. Then later, someone puts a small image of the Eiffel Tower over the knothole. The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) is a really good film. But it's long and does move very slowly. Kind of like what Lindbergh himself was probably experiencing as he made that long boring flight across the Atlantic. And most of the movie is a series of flashbacks that he is having while he is flying to Paris.
The Prof just ain't buying into the Eiffel Tower cult.
My oldest, at the age of five, threw the only tantrum of his life late one night, well past bedtime, on the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. He wanted a little souvenir model of the Tower that was for sale there on the deck.
In vain did my husband the finance guy point out that if he'd just wait until the next day, we'd go back to the street market where we'd seen larger versions for sale for the same price.
He ended up carrying our thrashing and sobbing son to the elevator, where the crowd waiting to get down parted like the Red Sea for us. The child took off running when we got to the ground. I, holding our one-year-old and pregnant with our youngest, lumbered after him. My mother-in-law beat at her own son with her purse to try to get him to take over the chase. It was quite a night.
When we returned to the States, my husband's coworkers took up a collection for him, telling him, "Next time, maybe pick your teaching moment better... and here's some money to buy the kid the souvenir."
I have seen enough of the Eiffel Tower.
I can guess what Freud would way about the interest in the Eiffel Tower or even Big Ben (giggidy), but certainly not Mount Rushmore.
Thank you, stl Dr!
"most people recognize (eventually) when they don't have the talent/skills"
A teacher confronted a ninth grader (who was under 5') how he planned to play in the. NBA when he wasn't even playing on a school or club team. Shrug.
Then she asked the parent, who said he was "saving " his kid for the big leagues.
Sayin's as good as doin'!
"most people recognize (eventually) when they don't have the talent/skills"
A teacher confronted a ninth grader (who was under 5') how he planned to play in the. NBA when he wasn't even playing on a school or club team. Shrug.
Then she asked the parent, who said he was "saving " his kid for the big leagues.
Sayin's as good as doin'!
Women think about the Eiffel Tower as often as men think about the Roman Empire.
Lorenz's next article will be about terrible tweets these kids made when they were 5.
Anyway, don't we have enough influenzas?
Ann Althouse said...
"When I was 9, I remember wanting to build my entire life around Hawaii..."
"Why do people care about Hawaii? It's like caring about Mount Rushmore or Big Ben. It's not a major part of life."
- Said Joe Biden
I've been to the top of the Eiffel Tower many times - the one at Kings Island in Mason, OH that is. It's only 1/3 the height of the original, though. And it overlooks an amusement park rather than Paris.
Apparently, Kings Dominion amusement park in Virginia has one, too.
Digital zoo. Don't feed the ai.
I would have said Bemelmans Madeline but a parent that gave her child Madeline to read would nto send her to such a camp. Maybe the grandparents provide the reading material?!
gilbar said...
"If seven year olds are SO STUPID..
that they want to become you tubers..
so they can become "rich"..
so that they can move to paris..
so that they can see the effiel tower: EVERYDAY..
so that they can make you tube videos about the effiel tower: EVERYDAY.."
I just had this image of November 2123 where the entire population of the seventh arrondissement in Paris is populated by haughty seven year olds who make YouTube videos about the Eiffel Tower and sit around cafes all day sipping juice boxes and eating carrot sticks while expressing disdain in a French accent about YouTubers from everywhere else making YouTube videos about, well, everything else.
Team America: World Police (Eiffel Tower scene): https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqrtdq
The West has a huge mental health problem and no one wants to stop it. Every thing is cool, nothing is to extreme.
"Is there a segment on unacceptable topics, avoiding demonetization?"
Avoid topics that upset progressives. That should cover most of it.
I recently started a YouTube channel of game camera videos of our suburban neighborhood's critters. Foxes, raccoons, opossums, skwerls (these are dumber than normal squirrels), even a coyote. The viewership remains in the low double digits, family & friends, except for one that somehow has a count over 2500, which I don't believe. I'm still never signing up for YouTube Premium.
Our granddaughter wanted to be a gymnast. Until the next season rolled around and she didn't.
Put in the work and see what happens. I told my 20 something kids, youth is made for dreams. No responsibility, small risk
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