Gadget Inspector: Confessions of a YouTube Addict
My son's entire first year is online.
by Sam Apple
September 27, 2007
We chose "Pets and Animals." It's hard to be sure if we successfully eluded the pedophiles, but if there really are pedophiles looking for babies online, they have plenty of others to choose from. In trying to figure out what do with my Isaac videos, I discovered the obvious: babies are taking over Web video. To cite one wildly unscientific bit of evidence, a video search for baby on Google brings up close to 600,000 hits; sex, a measly 250,000.
On YouTube, you can find a video of a baby doing just about anything. There are babies breakdancing and babies eating tacos. There are babies playing golf (surprisingly well) and babies playing Frisbee (predictably poorly). There are dozens of videos of babies sucking lemons, and, if you don't have time to watch them all, there is also a video montage of babies sucking lemons. If you prefer your infant suffering drawn out a bit more, you can search "tantrums" and choose from a long list of screaming fits.
I could have guessed that YouTube would be overrun with baby videos, but watching the videos was another thing. Almost as soon I started watching, one salient fact jumped out at me: a lot of the baby videos were just like my baby videos. The babies, doughy and drenched in drool, were doing more or less the same things: pawing at the air, laughing hysterically at decidedly unfunny things, clapping in celebration of nothing in particular.
After looking around for a few minutes, I found nearly identical replicas of many of my videos: babies banging I also came to see something humanizing in watching other people's baby videos on YouTube.Isaac's very same Light and Sound drum with Isaac's very same uncoordinated abandon; babies bouncing in Isaac's very same Fisher-Price Deluxe Jumperoo with the very same look of borderline psychotic glee.
And it's not just the babies that seem the same. The parents in many of the videos are replicas of Jennifer and me. They "yeaaaahh" and clap and peek-a-boo and "Where's Mommy's nose?" exactly like we do.
Even more unnerving, the similarities are just as evident when you're watching videos of babies in other countries. The Korean and Mexican parents make the same bulging eyes, air-filled cheek faces at their babies as their American counterparts, and their babies laugh and pop their cheeks just as reliably.
At first, I didn't like watching my life played out in a Korean living room. The illusion of individuality is comforting. Sesame Street taught me that we are all special in our own way, and I would like to think that it's true. I would like to think that I am the only father who bangs his head against a Fisher Price Deluxe Jumperoo to get a laugh. But, thanks to YouTube, I know that this is not the case. Probably I am not even the only father who entertains his baby with improvised salsa moves to his own rendition of The Miami Sound Machine's "Conga" (although I think I probably am the only one who inexplicably substitutes the word "tuchus" for "body" as in "Come on shake your tuchus baby/ Do the Conga").
Still, if it was humbling to recognize my ordinariness, as I thought about it more, I also came to see something humanizing in watching other people's baby videos on YouTube. It's always easier to empathize when you can imagine yourself as the Other. And, now that YouTube allows us to watch everyone's once private home videos, you no longer need much of an imagination. At least when it comes to the parents of babies, one thing is now certain: the Other is just as in love and just as dorky as you.
©2007 Sam Apple and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Sam Apple's work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, and Slate.com, among many other publications. His first
book, Schlepping Through the Alps, was named a finalist for the PEN America award for a first work of nonfiction. In 2005 he received the
annual Faux Faulkner award. Apple's next book, American Parent, will be published in 2008. |
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