The rise of YouTube brought about a phenomenon that not many people were expecting and that nowadays is getting a lot of attention due to several cases of abuse that have transpired. In the early days of the platform, the concept that anyone could make a video and share it with the world was absolute mid boggling, and many took the opportunity to start to share their lives and have become huge international stars, but the question “what about the children” was not asked at the time, monetization did not exist, and by the time the subject came up, we already had Kidfluencers.
While many have come to see mommy bloggers and kid’s content as just an extension of the entertainment industry, the reality is that they are not nearly as regulated as child actors (and even with all the protections we are all familiar with the child actor-drug addict- fall from fame pipeline). This new category of entertainers is different, we are “let into their lives” usually via just one camera and personal interactions, creating a different type of parasocial relationship than we are used to. After all, they call us “friends” walk us though their home and open up about their most vulnerable times in life, all for essentially free for the consumer.
But the dark side of this type of content is quite obvious, and it is the exploitation of minors for our entertainment and the power that the adults that surround them have both in their lives and in our perception of them. There have been many cases documented of abuse, the most recent one might be that of Ruby Franke, but now Netflix has released a documentary series, Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing exposing even more of this belly of the beast.
Kidfluencer fame, the truth behind the edited curtain
While we all like to believe that the stories we see on YouTube are real, after all they are often sold as such, the reality is much darker, and the new Netflix documentary exposes some of that darkness. It follows the story of influencer Piper Rockelle and her “momager” Tiffany Smith, who, along with Hunter Hill, the camera operator and Tiffany’s boyfriend, created an entirely fictional world focused on tuning Piper into a celebrity by “any means necessary”.
For years the content seemed like nothing out of the ordinary, with Piper being filmed while hanging out with friends and going about her day, like any other influencer. The difference being that both Piper and her friends were minors and that the friends were not even real, they were other paid actors selected to fit an image that changed periodically along with the trends that were popular at the time to help Piper stay on top.
Even this could be fine as long as everything was done in a safe way that did not infringe on the rights of the children involved, but not long ago, stories started to surface about some of the children involved with the channel were subject to emotional and sexual abuse behind the scenes and that some of them had not been paid their dues (which is the least of all the problems with this story, but still worth mentioning considering the estimated net worth of Piper Rockelle).
While the scandal should have shocked the world, again we are talking about minors, almost nothing seems to have changed for Piper. While YouTube monetization is no longer active, her popularity has remained largely intact within her online community despite the attention drawn by the controversy. She still maintains a strong presence across social media platforms, where she still engages a massive audience.