Jessica Harper Uncanceled

“YouTube families make a bunch of cash!” enthused my 14-year-old son Jackson. “Millions!”

I didn’t approve of his idea that we become a “YouTube family”, not least because it was clearly affecting his grammar (a bunch of money? What kind of collective was that?).

“All you have to do is film everything you do,” he continued, “lose any sense of dignity or privacy and devlop a thick skin against haters, trolls and the judgement of other parents who aren’t on YouTube or aren’t as successful as you are. Then watch the money roll in.”

I rolled my eyes in my husband Brandon’s direction, expecting solidarity, but instead he was punching the air.

“Yeah!” he whooped. “Great idea, Jackson! Way to go!”

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “There is no way we are putting every private moment of our lives on the internet.”

“People don’t have private lives any more, mom,” said Jackson. “This isn’t the eighties.”

I hate it when he and his teen pals speak “ironically” about the eighties. All they “know” about the eighties comes from Stranger Things, which wasn’t even made in the eighties.

“Your mother has a point,” said Brandon. There’s still such a thing in this world as dignity and privacy.” Then, whispered to Jackson: “Did you say millions?”

I sighed. “And what do these so-called YouTube families do in these so-called videos?” I asked, hoping that the use of “so-called” would demonstrate my disdain for the whole idea.

“Anything that happens can be used as content, mom: a trip to the dentist, the cat stuck on the roof, us making a meal badly.”

Hmm, well, all of those things are regular occurrences in our household, I would grant him that.

“Why would anyone want to watch those?” I said.

But they weren’t listening to me. Brandon and Jackson had started brainstorming ideas. “And-and-and I could say wow, this toothache is killing me, I need to get to the dentist fast,” said Brandon. “And you could say but who will drive you, mom is away for the weekend? And then it cuts to you driving me really slowly to the-.”

“No!” I said. “We are not doing anything dangerous.”

They ignored me and continued developing their plot. I began mindlessly scrolling through videos made by “YouTube families” and discovered their stock-in-trade was videos about them putting colored balls into things, eg crates, cars, living rooms.

And seeing how long they (the family, not the balls) could stay in a swimming pool, last one remaining being the winner. And eating only IKEA food for 24 hours (big deal, how about putting their flatpacks together for 24 hours, now that I’d watch) and the Try Not To Laugh Challenge (that can’t be dificult either, given the state of the world). 

Endless, pointless challenges. Did they ever do any useful challenges: Clean Up That Elderly Neighbor’s Yard Challenge? Do That Disabled Lady’s Shopping For A Month Challenge? Mend Your Parents Broken Marriage? Solve The Middle East? What is the point of trying to see how many colored balls you can shove into a car? (okay enough about the colored balls, Jess, calm down).

Then the thumbnail (fancy modern word) would show the whole family sitting on a sofa with their hands over their mouths, allegedly shocked at, er, how many balls they could – or could not – get into a given receptacle.

I understood how ten-year-olds might find it entertaining but my own son, Jackson? Mozart was five when he composed his first piece of music. If Jackson couldn’t come up with an aria, couldn’t he at least – I don’t know – perform an Ed Sheeran cover?

And when the hell did they find the time to film all this stuff? The kids in these videos were all of school age. I suppose that with the money they’re making they have teams of helpers; I just hoped the parents drafted the kids in to film the fun stuff when it’s all ready to go, and then whisk it away and edit it afterwards and leave the kids to lead a semblance of normal life. There are going to be a lot more of these “I was in a toxic YouTube family” stories breaking over the years.

I looked up from my phone to discover that Bran and Jackson were planning an episode based around Wilbur, our cat.

“Cat videos are huge!” enthused Jackson. Even I knew that.

Wilbur sat there watching us, one eye open, as they storyboarded some tale about him not liking the new cat basket we’d bought him (which was true, he didn’t). Of course, when it came time to start filming, Wilbur had long gone.

In fact, it turned out that he had gone for a couple of days. He had a prior, as they say. A business meeting, a lunch date, a romantic date. Or maybe he was just pissed at not being asked permission to be in the YouTube family. To be fair, he has never shown an interest in the online world, apart from staring at Joe Wicks’ workouts during lockdown.

“That’s a valuable lesson,” I said. “Consent.”

“He’s a cat, mom. Plus he never does anything to earn his keep.”
“What do you do to earn your keep?” I said. “Your keep being immeasurably more expensive than Wilbur’s Aldi cat food.”

“If we can talk him into joining in, mom, he could have, I don’t know, cat food from Lidl.”

“We just need to persuade him gently,” said Brandon, who wasn’t even joking. He had gone mad at that mention of “millions” and had not recovered.

“Brandon, you cannot persuade a cat,” I said. “How about a literature channel, where we review books?”

All this “YouTube family” business was mindless rubbish and I longed for a nice tome. Could our family not write some French literature and sell that? I can see that it would make less money, and we can’t speak French, but wasn’t it worth exploring?
“Book channels are big, too,” said Jackson. “Not as big as Youtube families doing challenges but still pretty big if you do it right.”

“How about we see how many copies of Les Miserables we can fit into the car?” said Brandon. More high-fiving.
“Yes!” yelled Brandon. “And in the thumbnail we’re all looking shocked. But you have to watch the video to find out how many it was.”
They began dancing round the room.

I retired to bed with a large glass of Chardonnay and a volume of poetry by Arthur Rimbaud. I didn’t understand it but I felt human again.

As I was drifting off, a line from a Radiohead song started going round and round in my head: I wish it was the Sixties, I wish I could be happy, I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen. Where do we go from here?

And then I thought: did Jackson say millions?