The Ethics of Not Showing Kids On The Internet

A
I claiming there are no ethical issues here? No, I'm very clearly not. I'm saying there are ethical issues. But what people on the other side of this argument are pretending, which is just false and a lie, is that there are no potential upsides for the kid from this. What I'm doing is I am contrasting the upsides with the downsides that they have.

The environment to, to start their lives with decent sized social media followings within wealthy intellectual circles. The doors that is going to open for them, and this is something that we also haven't talked enough about in society, is social media followings and the ability to translate these into high value relationships. If we live in a future in which society's current vetting systems are bankrupt and don't work anymore, the only way that you can really build trust and have people expect you to deliver on what you promise is if they feel like they know you and can trust you and you're predictable. This trust lies in predictability. And the only way that they can know that is if they have some kind of access to your thought process or they have a parasocial relationship with you.

B
And the only way to do that is if you have a very open and transparent media history and we want. To have kids whose lives matter. If you are afraid of people making fun of you online, your life won't matter because you can't do anything publicly. And it's very hard to change the world if you don't do things publicly. Would you like to know more?

A
Hello, everyone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about the ethics of putting children in media and the considerations that need to go into this, because a lot of people might look at what we are doing. We are a very public family. We are in the news all the time these days, which is funny because our channel is medium sized, but not really correlatory to how publicly famous we are getting just this last weekend, like the big three page, front page piece in the Guardian, and then a bunch of follow up pieces to that and then trending.

And so people are like, wow, your kids are in all of these, like in the vice documentary, right? This little baby right here is in the media because she is in this shot. Yeah. And I watch a lot of snark online. A lot of the snark.

B
There's a big theme in people criticizing parents who include their children in TikTok and Instagram and YouTube post, etcetera. And whenever they include clips that they're criticizing, they blur out the poor babies faces because they've been included in the shot. And even when they're trying to critique the video, they themselves do not want to repeat the crime of putting a child's face online, which to a certain extent, I understand the basics of where they're coming from. For example, on Google photos, which uses facial recognition, it is able to recognize the faces of baby versions of very old people. Like, it is very good at continuous facial recognition.

So it's not. Oh, it's them as a baby, no one will know that this was them. Oh, actually they will. There is no. Not parsing that.

But also, you and I have been talking a lot about this recently. This concept of privacy is such a farce, and often, to a great extent, trying to be more private and trying to hide is only subjective. I'm going to push back on you here. From their perspective. Yeah.

A
You can say that as an adult, privacy is a farce to adults. Okay. Yeah. Which is very hard to actually boast. Be private and have an impact on the world.

In this current world, you can be private, but you are sacrificing your ability to impact society by doing that. Yeah. However, and I think that most, like, sane ethical systems believe some form of social impact is a personal obligation. I can see how there could be, like, hedonist based ethical systems or like, weird ones where, like, your family is literally the only thing that matters, but your family is going to have to deal with downstream consequences of a society you didn't alter. Yeah.

So that's silly to me. So as an adult. Yeah, I believe that privacy is a silly thing to strive for, but you could keep our children from appearing in any media. Like, I could genuinely achieve that in the way that the world is structured today. So why don't I.

Okay, now let's talk about the ethical position that they're arguing from, right? They're saying the child did not consent to being in media, and therefore the child should not be in media. Right. Which is a fairly stupid argument. Children do not consent to the vast majority of parental decisions made around them.

B
They do not consent to broccoli, they do not consent to bedtime, they do not consent to many things. Right. So that's just stupid. Like, the consent argument around kids appearing in media is stupid, but they would. Argue broccoli and bedtime are good for you.

A
Media is bad, but that's their judgment. And this is what we're fundamentally going to argue by the end of this video is that I suspect that the core value source in our society going forward, especially like, accreditation source, with the universities collapsing as trusted sources of accreditation, because I've seen this more and more. Just nobody trusts the universities. Like, they've gone way too far on Dei. They've basically become these extremist cults.

Nobody really sees them as a good source of an individual's value anymore. Where do people. And then it's what about, like, designer brands? No longer, like, this sort of scarcity around fancy clothes no longer has value anymore. It's what is luxury?

What is value today? Because we have now, I think, cross correlated luxury with signs of this is somebody you should pay attention to, which is the way historically used to be. The guy who walked into the village with all the beads on him and all the gold on him. What he was showing is, I'm someone you should pay attention to. I am someone you should.

B
Well, really, to boil it down, someone who actually has wealth or luxury, has a scarce commodity, and right now, branded luxury goods are not a scarce commodity. A lot of these other things, prestigious university degrees, are becoming less scarce as a commodity. For example, there are a lot of people claiming that they have Harvard degrees because they've gone to a Harvard extension program. They just stretch it a little bit. And other universities have really loosened their admission criteria.

Right? So carry on. So it's scarce commodities. But in this current world order, it seems to be sorting towards the core thing of value and the core sign of competence. And the core thing that opens doors from you is subscriber count.

A
Basically, it's how many people are paying attention to you in online environments. Please subscribe. No, but I mean that very seriously, right? I would say it's that or other means of proving value. Like, I built this thing that created this much in wealth, or I am able to turn this thing into money.

B
So you have to just prove value or prove reach. And I think reach is a sign of proven value, and that's what we're looking at. You can no longer just use someone's vetting or someone's. Someone else's possessions to get there. Yeah, there are.

A
I would say it's, there are other means, but it's mostly proven reach. If you look at what's the richest person in the world doing with his money? Elon Musk. He's buying Twitter slash x, right? He is buying something that gives him control of the flow of information, because that is the key thing about, especially as we move into an economy with more AI, where human labor has a different value than it did in a historic context, where, like, human information labor is less important than human, creative labor, where creativity isn't defined in the narrow sense it was historically, which is to say around narrow, like pictures, which it turns out were just like averages, basically, or art, which it turned out was averages or music, because all of this was very easy for AI to replicate, but nuanced conversation and interpretation of what's going on in a global context and philosophical and cultural, like the type of information that we are providing people with or the type of entertainment we are providing people with.

We loop our children into this at an early age, and they come out with the large followings, basically starting their lives. What people are, from our perspective, arguing against our kids having. Right. Is it's almost in the last generation. It's like, we have prepaid for our kids to go to Harvard, but they also absolutely have to go to Harvard.

And you, what if your kids don't want to go to Harvard? I'm like, that's a possibility. A lot of people in the world might not want to go to Harvard. Yeah. But on the edge, if I told the kid, I didn't know if you'd want to go to Harvard or not, so I didn't prepay and secure your acceptance, the vast majority of people would be, like, fuming, are you insane?

How dare you deny me this opportunity that I had so set in stone for some sort of bizarre. I wasn't sure if you'd want it or not. That is the way that we relate to this concept. So we can look at the counters is, what if your kids don't want this? Right?

So you need to look at the actual, because we're very consequentialists in our ethics. What are the actual consequences, negative consequences, to our kids for being in media and stuff like that? I can walk. I can walk through some of that, and I think this is where the nuance comes in that people aren't willing to discuss. And a lot of this is similar to what we saw with corporal punishment, where there's a lot of people who are like, under no circumstances can this thing ever be done.

B
And then on the other end, you have people who take it too far after hearing that it's okay or thinking that it's okay, and there has to be a happy medium. So the top critiques that I hear when people are criticizing this is one. Parents are bringing up subjects that these kids probably really don't want to have their parents talking about. My daughter just had her first period. Now I'm picking up tampons for her, and we're going to go have the talk on how she's going to use them.

And the teenager, maybe that's not something that she really wants to have heard or he will talk about with eight passengers. Obviously, Ruby Frank was having conversations with her kids when her kids were even quite openly and verbally signaling that they did not want to have those conversations on camera. So there are instances in which there's active lack of consent. There are instances in which embarrassing things are happening. There are instances in which the kid is okay with it at the time, but in the future, you're pretty sure, like 80% to 90% confidence that that person is not going to be happy to have that video content out there because it's just embarrassing.

And then there's the instance or the issue of financial exploitation. And already states, I think, like California, have legislation that requires parents that are making money from content with their kids in them have to set aside a certain amount of income for their kids. But this is far from universal legislation. And I imagine that many parents that should be compensating their children for the income that they're getting using their children are not doing so and just using their children. So I want to push against all of these points because.

Yeah, go ahead. Okay, I'll explain why they're dumb. So first you've got to look at different age ranges and stuff like that. Yeah, absolutely. So suppose industry, the one who's in the shot right now, wants to be a private person when she gets older, within no, like, normative or logically consistent ethical system, could she be concerned that something that she did at this age is going to be used against her as an adult?

A
Like, what is the, what about that. Girl who tweeted those, that the hummus or the girl who tweeted really insensitive and very racially bad things, racist things. And then her father's business was completely shut down. I've forgotten his name. What do you think industry is going to be tweeting?

Anything? Your mind. But what I'm saying though is there. Are, you need to divide by age ranges. Okay.

Anything below, I'd say the age of probably about six just isn't going to affect you as an adult. Maybe even the age of seven. Anything below the age of seven, y'all go seven. Anything below the age of seven, just know they're like a seven year old. That's probably fair.

B
Yeah, and they're probably not.

A
And you could be like, what if the kids walking around screaming racial obscenities or something like that one more reflection. Of the parents than anything. It's more a reflection of the parents. That's going to be a general problem anyway. If they're that sort of person when.

B
They'Re that young again, and whether or. Not they're online, it is not a problem. Their parents made a mistake there. Their parents made a mistake somewhere, if that's happening. Okay.

A
The point is that under the age of seven or so, there's. They're just not going to be held responsible for any of their actions once they decide to become private. And all of this stuff can really be disintermediated from their adult identity. So it is largely irrelevant, especially when there is a potential positive for them. Now we're going to deal with the tricky age.

Okay. And this is the age you were talking about? Yeah. This is like seven to maybe eleven. Oh, maybe seven to.

Yeah. You're saying tween years. Really? I thought it was that sort of. I would say from 13 to adulthood.

No, I actually don't think there's any. So we will take out the tween years and then we'll just jump to the next age range to explain why it's not ethically complicated. Okay. The sort of, I'd say eleven and up. So let's say twelve and over.

These are fully cognitively human things. They can decline consent whenever they want. They can say, I don't want to appear on film. And if they say, I don't want to appear on film, I think it is the parents duty to respect that. And I think, honestly, in most cases, except when you're dealing with, like, actual crazy people, like the eight passenger situation, most parents.

B
Parents respect that. Yeah. If a kid, you say, if a kid ever says no, I would even say, what if a five year old or four year old says no? Then we don't. We would never put them on camera.

A
But I don't. Look, what I would say is a four year old not saying no, even if they might have said no if they were more cognitive, is not relevant to me because then there's no real negative repercussions for their. No one's going to judge them for the thing that they might have said no to. Right. Right.

So irrelevant. And then you could be like, yeah, but what if a twelve or 13 year old is. They. They say yes, but then they do say something stupid, like something racist or something like overly sexually aggressive or. And it's.

And then they have to deal with repercussions for that when they're older. Just. Excuse me. What about me when I was 20, if I did stuff like that. And then I had to deal with repercussions for it when I'm like a totally different person now.

People change over time. All I can do is try to inform my kids as much about the world as possible and hope that they make good decisions. The fact that they might need to, if my twelve year old murders someone, are they not supposed to be long term responsible for that? Be realistic people. So I really just don't see a lot of ethical consequences there.

Like, we are giving our kids the chance as fully mentally developed beings. Not fully, but like, they're on the way to full mental development and they have the ability to decline consent. And the record, the historic record, is going to be judging them with that in mind. So as an example, recently I saw there was somebody trying to cancel turkey top for saying something using racial slurs when he was 15 or 16 on like, Twitter threads. Now, he wasn't public.

He didn't have parents who were making him public. But once you're at this fully mental age and you're in an online space, this is where your argument of privacy is an illusion at that point, right? He wasn't public, but he became famous later. And so though things became relevant later, and most people were just like, bro, he was 15, chill out. And nobody who matters actually cares.

Turkey Tom isn't canceled. Turkey Tom is a popular YouTube channel who most people think positively of who are not insane. Might an insane minority hate. Yeah, but that insane minority doesn't matter. Like, they don't have, like, okay, ignore the insane minority because they don't matter and they'll always find some reason to hate you no matter what, if you fit into the groups that they desire to hate.

So now we've got into the. Do you have any counter thoughts to that? It seems like you might before we get into the tween category, I guess. I some, I most, I mostly agree with that. I do think, though, that what this, this means also is that you have to do this the right way.

B
You have to educate your kids about the ramifications of anything that they do online or frankly, around any smart device or anyone who's holding a phone, because that phone could be recording. But perhaps the fact that we would have our kids on camera, anyone who does have their kids on camera and does educate them about safety around these things, it acts as a good forcing function. It gives them, essentially media training at a young age, for example, had the girl I'm thinking of who tweeted all these racist things been trained early and also been exposed to media a lot earlier, maybe she would have been a whole lot more savvy and wouldn't have tweeted all those things that ultimately then destroyed probably much of her career and also really either destroyed or really compromised her father's business, which employed quite a few extended family members as well. Yeah. So there.

A
I think it's more just good parenting, and it's just that you're more on the hotel seat for good parenting. And in a way, this could be positive for the kids, because, again, you only look at the negatives. If we are doing a bad job as parents, it is going to be more loudly and immediately obvious at these age ranges, if our kids have a public window. Right? No, I need to look at the.

B
Ethics of our life philosophy in general, and that we are willing to be subject to criticism, and we believe that's the right way, is that if you're wrong, you want to know that you're wrong. And so the idea that so many people are trying to hide anything that might be criticized about their lifestyles, their beliefs, how they raise their kids or their kids lives, that they're trying to hide that from any potential criticism means that if they are doing something wrong, they're probably not going to correct it, which is a pretty big deal. And so I like that we get. To know a lot sooner, and the public gets to know a lot sooner. Are we bad parents?

A
You don't have to wait until our kids are adults to know that. You'll find out pretty soon, I think. Because we do plan to keep our kids in the media spotlight, and I do plan to with this podcast. As our kids develop more cognizant, bring them into the podcast when they want to participate. Yeah, I imagine 510 years from now, instead of me talking to Simone every day, some days it'll be me talking to one of the kids or Simone talking to one of the kids, or two of the kids talking to each other.

I want this to be a family thing that's based around their understanding of reality and their engagement with reality, because I think people would find that very interesting, and I think they'd find that very interesting as a historic record of their development of ideas and stuff like that. We'd keep it focused. It wouldn't be like a normal parenting podcast. I'm not interested in you guys seeing, like, how awesome of a dad I am by, like, following me around and making sure I'm punishing them correctly and making sure I'm doing, like, a lot of the parental bloggers. No, I see a secondary YouTube channel that's just Octavian and Torsten.

B
They already have very interesting conversations. Yeah, I'm much more interested in the philosophical development of my kids and their development in terms of self narrative and how they think about reality in the world. I think that's more interesting, and I think that our audience would find it pretty interesting. And I don't think. I just don't see a lot of negative externalities coming from that for my kids in the future, even if they decide to be private.

A
There's a lot of child stars who are now like, oh, yeah, I'm private now, because I decided to become private. It's not like some huge scarring thing for them, unless they, like, got into drugs or something while they were a child star. And that's even people who I think, I don't know, catch a lot of heat for things. Typically, it only goes wrong when they streisand it, when they're like, oh, no, no one needs to know this. We have to stop this right now.

B
They flail a lot, and then people pay even more attention. So again, a lot of this comes down to media training, which I think is a key theme here, is that parents have to be savvy about teaching their kids how to deal with a public life, but also only doing this with consent. So now we need to talk about the ethically dubious age. So this is the seven to eleven age range, when kids are cognitive enough to do things that can cause long term repercussions for them. And they are also in hierarchical social environments where things that they do privately they may not want shared, but they may not have the ability to be able to tell their parents, I don't consent to you sharing this information, whether it's first puberty or something like that.

A
Like, we would always just have a rule, if you're going through something and you just don't want us to share it, just say, I don't consent to you sharing this. At that age range, I can understand where some concerns come in, but again, not really. So I'll explain why they're not really enough. It's where you get this, a little blurring of the slider of, but they didn't know at that age range that why would have those consequences. And I think that we are entering a generation where because of the consequences of doing something like going online and yelling a bunch of racial slurs, or like, sexually aggressively approaching someone can be as severe to a person's long term, like, employability as them, as an eleven year old taking a knife and stabbing their little sister.

We need to teach them that those consequences are that severe at a very young age and make sure that they internalize that. And it's more of a, I think people who want to keep this pure privacy at this age are more people who are just not about parental responsibility in terms of the them teaching kids like proper social boundaries. Because even without us, if they're on a discord or something like that and they do something insane like this is, there's still consequences for it. And people can be like, they chose to be on those social media channels, they chose to be on that discord or that Twitter or that YouTube channel. It's not really, all of these things have addiction based algorithms or those tiktoks, right?

That have sucked them into them. Did they really choose them? No, it's a combination of their parents and their environment and they're so again, I'm just not really concerned. And this is where you get to the downside. Am I claiming there are no ethical issues here?

No, I'm very clearly not. I'm saying there are ethical issues. But what people on the other side of this argument are complaining or pretending, which is just false and a lie, is that there are no potential upsides for the kid from this I'm doing is I am contrasting the upsides with the downsides and they're the probabilistic relation our kids will have to those upsides and downsides. Okay, so when I look at my kids coming out of this, that they have the environment to start their lives with decent sized social media followings within wealthy intellectual circles, the doors that is going to open for them. It's just so obvious to me.

You go look at who's. Even though the podcast is okay, like we do like 1300 hours a day or something at this point, we've got about 55 people watching us at any given time at this point, day or night. If you just look at what's the average probability somebody's watching our channel and this is just on YouTube and we distribute through other channels. But. So this isn't a huge number, but what's the demographics of this number?

Because we know, because we interact with a lot of them. It's venture capitalists, it's campaign operatives, it is academics, it is. This channel just does not appeal to like your average person that much. And it is the type of people who one my kids can source good career opportunities from that will get them a huge leg up in life. But two, and I think that this is really important that they can serve as partners through.

And this is something that we also haven't talked enough about in society, is social media followings and the ability to translate these into high value relationships, which I think is going to be when our kids are like, yeah, I really appreciate that you were able to hook me up with a spouse through this network that you spent the time to build. But yeah, and I want to create something that is a plan based network or channel or something like that, so that my kids right now, we're trying to build it so that we get a tv show made on our family and we're in talks with a lot of people that I can't talk about. But as we do that, I want it to be like a clan based media empire. Right? Like where they are working with each other to build up their own properties, but they're also investing in any properties that we built out.

B
So what you're saying is a lot of your interest personally inheriting any properties we built out and having a lot of people be aware of your behavior and philosophy and activity is it makes more people willing to or interested in working with you. And the same would happen with our kids. Yeah, if there is. If we live in a future in which society's current vetting systems are bankrupt and don't work anymore. The only way that you can really build trust and have people expect you to deliver on what you promise is if they feel like they know you and can trust you and you're predictable, because trust lies in predictability.

And the only way that they can know that is if they have some kind of access to your thought process or they have a parasocial relationship with you. And the only way to do that is if you have a very open and transparent media history. And if you can't show those receipts and you reach out to someone and you say, I want to work with you, or, I think we should start a business together, or please hire me, they have nothing to go on. So it's not just that as the economy changes, like, if our kids want to start a company, how do they get their customers? Like, it's hard to get customers, right.

A
But if they have online followings, it's much easier. Yeah. How do they get, how do they get anything they want? Like, everything gets easier for them, the larger a following they have. And we have some people in our circles that are like, I want to be as private as possible, and it's because they view, I think, negative comments about them online as, like, a genuinely negative thing when, like, random haters don't matter.

Like, they do not matter. Yeah. Yeah. There was one critique video I watched where they showed a clip of someone filming their kid's reaction to someone. Like, an online commenter is snarking about their name or something.

B
And the kid looked hurt and was like, why would someone say that? And they just looked genuinely like their feelings were hurt. I think that is the combination of bad media training in general. But they're totally missing the point that if a kid learns early on that a bunch of idiots online are going to say dumb things about them, they're going to develop a much thicker skin. They're going to become anti fragile.

And shielding a kid from mean commentary online or from criticism that is coming really from no strong foundation is not something to worry about. We have an episode of, like, it's humanity becoming the Bergens from the Trolls series, which I reference way too much on this show for a child's cartoon. But, yeah, the Bergens are gonna Bergen. They just hate everything. They're weird mutants who sit online all day yelling at people.

And the earlier you get used to their commentary not mattering, the better. Because we even know people now who, after seeing the tiniest semblance of that, act as though someone has showed up their front porch with a gun pointed at them. And this is not a productive way to live. And if that's what takes you out in a day, if that's what you have a freak out, your life is. Never going to matter.

A
Yeah, and we want to have kids whose lives matter. If you are afraid of people making fun of you online, your life won't matter because you can't do anything publicly. And it's very hard to change the world in any sort of productive way if you don't do things publicly. So that's the other thing where I'm just like, I don't care. Like, it's about training my kids to be good people, not about protecting them from dealing with the consequences of their actions.

No, I need to help head off those actions to begin with. And we live in this fragile world, right? And I think that you make a great point there. I'm really sad because some of the people we know who are like, oh, my God, like, you guys are getting so famous and now it's hurting me, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because you're in the media and some idiots don't like you, and it's, how are you ever going to do anything you don't disagree with my views. I know you don't disagree with my views.

You don't disagree with how we're trying to change the world. You're just afraid of pushback. So you can't do anything even if you're competent, even if you're rich, you can't do anything until you are willing to allow the world to hate you. Or the idiots, the Bergens, to hate you. Because the truth is, and you've seen this with the whole, like, corporal punishment controversy, where at first Simone was like, oh, my God, everybody hates us online.

I gotta chill out, Simone. There were things I was embarrassed about with that article. I was embarrassed that I had framed. Kevin Dalton is further right than he really is. He's actually probably to the left of me.

He just has a public reputation as being to the right of me. And I shouldn't have done that. And I was really guilty about that because I had caused somebody else negative repercussions that they didn't need to deal with. But the slap itself, I was like, no, this is going to turn out in our favor. Don't worry about it.

Like, the research agrees with it. And you've seen that now since then, like, everyone we know who is like a smart, competent person has been like, yeah, they were right to do that. What do you. Or at least they acknowledge that this is a nuanced situation. I think that's.

I haven't heard that. I know. I literally haven't heard anything other than enthusiastic support. What do we have? We got, like, Richard Hanania enthusiastic support.

We recently had Sarah hater and Megan Dunn. Yeah, but no, but they said it's nuanced. They said it's nuanced. Sarah hater didn't even say that. I don't think she practices corporal punishment with her own kids.

B
She just had made one comment that. Like, sorry, I watched the whole video. She said, if it's not done in anger, okay, and it's not done to cause pain. Yeah, but I count that as nuanced. No one's coming up being like, we're not saying that either.

A
Yeah, she said it is. Enthusiastic support was in the realm of what actually happened. Yeah. And this is what you saw with other people who reached out to us, whether it's a God. We had her on early.

We should have her on more often. I have an episode of hers that I haven't done yet. Yeah. Diana Fleischman. It's on how we can stand being such lazy parents.

That's the episode that hasn't gone live. Yet. Oh, we should do that. She's so cool. I've got such a backload of interviews because I'm always.

I process the interview so much slower than the other episodes because it causes me, like, emotional pain to process them because I have to think through somebody else judging me. And I often just don't really fully process the interviews. I think going forwards, that's what I should plan on doing, is just. Interviews are cut as they are. Why not?

Because I can't deal. I do not like social environments. And it's like reliving a social scene whenever we do one. That's why I'm so slow is. I'm like the ser.

Hater one. Anyway. I absolutely love my wife. You are amazing. I appreciate that.

You are so sane. In this world of stupid, weird, deontological stuff. The consent doesn't matter when you're talking about a fucking four year old, okay? Because they. No, it doesn't.

They don't understand. I think it's important to model what. And I. No, I actually do think that an infant can show. An entitler can show consent and lack of consent.

B
You tell. You can tell when our children are not happy with the situation and when they're happy with situations. I don't. I don't disagree with that. But the problem is that when you value the person perspectives of somebody who's not fully mentally developed, you get stupid things.

A
Does my child consent to being punished when they do bad things? Do they consent to timeout? Do they consent? No, they don't consent to that. Of course they don't.

They're a child. I'm just saying that there's nuance and. Then there isn't nuance. There isn't nuance. I am saying there isn't nuance.

Okay? If our child comes to us and they go, I think I'm a woman today, can you medically transition me or put me on a drug that change the course of my life? I'm gonna be like, no, fuck off. That's a dumb idea. I understand that you're hearing about this online, but you're four.

Like, you don't even like. Our four year old cannot consistently state his gender. But, Malcolm, if our. If our two year old or something saw us filming him with a camera and said no and ran away and started crying, we would think it wasn't cool to film him with a camera. I suppose, but that doesn't happen.

B
I know it doesn't happen, but if it did, we would take it seriously. Yeah, we take it seriously. But I'm just saying it doesn't happen, so it's not within the realm. I guess there might be some kids that are afraid of the public seeing them, but our kids love it. Yeah, that's, you know, our fortunate reality.

A
But again, it's because they're genetically related to us. So I think that this is another thing that people don't understand, is we're making these decisions for people who will think similarly to us and. Yeah, and then you keep that in mind for all these influencer fame whores as well, who are fame whores like us, that these people have children who are probably at least a little bit like them. And. But the problem with a lot of the fame whores, and I say that they're in a more ethically questionable scenario than us, is they use their children to augment the way the public sees them.

So their children are props to demonstrate their parenting and stuff like that to the public, whereas our children, like, the point of all of this is our children. The point of developing the school is our children, the point of everything is giving our children the best shot possible. Yeah. We are developing, like, an intellectual conversation brand, which is very different from the brand that a lot of people are developing is like, the only negative to our brand is that it's weird. And the kids can even leverage that in their early social media days if they want to go against it.

I hate what my parents did. It's horrible. What a great way to get sympathy and build up a lot of followers in your early days. Right. Like, even if they disagree with us, that very disagreement can be capitalized on, but only because of how extremely weird and extremist we are.

Extremists. And they just look ungrateful. Right. You got to create an environment where even if they hate you, it's positive. Yeah.

B
And you can't skew things there. There are famous examples, too, of youtubers who, I don't know, their dog is dying or something, and then they are filming in the car and the parents coaching their child on how to look more devastated. So I think a lot of it also comes down to being genuine. I love it. All right, have a good one, Simone.

Bye, Malcolm. We're going to be talking about. We're having a call for the natalism conference, too. For anyone who missed the first one, be sure to check it out on the website, number six and 7th. See you there.

A
Bye. Oh, we have to go. It's a video call, so stay here. Not stay here, but get on the video call. Wait, let me check.

B
Hold on, let me check.

Yep, it's a Google Meet call. Join it. It's in your calendar. Sarah. Deleting angry Facebook comments?

What? No, Facebook just seems to bring out like the lowest of the low in terms of haters. No, Twitter is pretty bad. Twitter is pretty. I appreciate that you engage with Twitter to protect me.

Thanks. Oh, yeah, there you are. You have my social media comments? Yeah, yeah, right here. Well, that's nice.

C
Oh, great. This is all the Twitter comments? Yeah. Oh, Kyle. You thought me having someone edit my social media would make me look stupid?

People are actually really stoked on me now. It's a pretty brutal job, sifting through all that darkness. Instagram's just funny because now the theme is every time I post something, oh, gesundheit. People just say it's always, oh, God, his face is red. Was he just slapped or.

B
Oh, do you slap him for being adventurous or not adventurous enough? They'll just find some. Gotta be like a little bit of both. Yeah, well, yeah, I would love to. Post the Venezuela meme there.

D
This is outrageous. You shout like that, they put you in jail right away. No trial, no nothing. You're playing music too loud, right to jail. Right away.

You're driving too fast. Jail, slow. Jail, you undercook fish, believe it or not, jail, you overcook chicken. Also jail, undercook, overcook. Such a good parks.

B
Iraq is so underrated. It's actually not underrated. This is show. It got the attention it deserved, I think. Hey, Octavian, what's the name of the island?

A
Yeah, you called it hanger Bob.

What are you working on, Thorsten?

Oh, do you have dirty fingers, Octavian? What do we do when somebody gets dirty fingers?

Titan, why don't you come on over here?

Hey, what you doing, Octavian? You helping push the boat? What about you guys? What are you up to?

The Ethics of Not Showing Kids On The Internet

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction to the Ethics of Children in Media

2: Benefits of Media Exposure

3: Risks and Ethical Concerns

4: Concluding Thoughts

Actionable Advice

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