Reddit mentions of Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood

Nice find! I wonder if this is based on the Susan Linn book, Consuming Kids, the Hostile Takeover of Childhood (which is an excellent read that clearly outlines the history, the problems and possible solutions). No time to watch the documentary right now, but I'll save it for later. If it's as excellent as the Susan Linn book then I hope people will take the time to watch it (or why not buy the book while you're at it? :D )

Continued from the comment this is responding too since I got cut off......

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He has acknowledged publicly that he knows his fans are on the younger side (I couldn't find the clip, but he says that he thinks his fans are around 8-16 y/o's; it's in Nerd City's video on this topic which I linked above). Kids this age don't frequently have disposable income of their own, at least not enough to keep up with his ever-growing merch line full of "limited edition" pieces that you're encouraged to "get right now because the Jake Paulers sell everything out," [https://youtu.be/yY51qiMf_QQ?t=754]. At $45 for a hoodie and $25 for a shirt (although, to be fair, there is a "fan appreciation sale" on right now, so if you're dying to be a hip Jake Pauler, cop your merch now), I'm guessing the vast majority of people typing their credit card info into his merch site are parents wondering why in the hell their kid wants to wear such an ugly fucking shirt so they can look like an absolute asshole who torments his friends and family with his brute-force style of "comedy" and "it's just a prank, bro".

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I'm glad that Shane addressed this topic and made it clear to him that even people who like him personally think that he should tone down the incessant shilling of products. But I didn't see any of this register with him at all. Honestly I was waiting the whole series for this moment because I think it should have been the main subject of the documentary. Not, "Is Jake Paul a sociopath?!!?" but "Is what Jake Paul is doing, intentionally or not, illegal or unethical with regards to his young key demographic". This, to me, is the real issue with Jake, not whether he and his ex were really dating or just in it for the views. There is a difference between "tea" issues and real issues, and I feel like the real issues were completely swept under the rug in this case. I love Shane and I'm glad he made this series, but I feel like he should have been much tougher with Jake when bringing up the serious stuff. Sorry for the long post, I honesty don't know why this gets me so irritated, but it does and I didn't know where else to post this. If you've read this far, you deserve a cookie. Also, if you've made it this far you might think about checking out the book Consuming Kids, by Susan Linn [https://www.amazon.com/Consuming-Kids-Hostile-Takeover-Childhood/dp/1565847830]. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and you might too (#notsponsoredbutshouldbe).

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Heads up- yes, this is a long post, but I really think that some of this needs to be said. Also, all of the videos that I link to and cite are videos that I clicked on RANDOMLY when looking at his uploads page on YouTube. The videos I link are the first ones I looked at- I didn't spend time going through his content to find perfect sound bites- this was literally what came up just by randomly selecting things to watch; I honestly had so many clips to reference that I left many of them out because this was already getting too long. So keep that in mind- I could have stumbled upon some rare bad examples of Jake's behavior and I have no evidence that this holds true for everything he does- except for the fact that it came up in every video I clicked on. So take it all with a grain of salt, but please keep in mind that this is a serious issue.

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TL;DR: Shane didn't hit Jake nearly as hard as he should have regarding the issue of advertising to children. There are so many examples of him breaking ethical and legal standards that he can't just dismiss the issue because he doesn't feel like he's doing it maliciously. Someone needs to make him realize that just because he doesn't understand why something is wrong or doesn't agree with idea that it's wrong, that doesn't mean it's not wrong!

Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood is a great book and talks about this very thing.