Why Do They Click?
Not to be judgmental, but I’ve always wondered why people watch family channels. While some ‘mommy vloggers’ portray this filtered life that one may romanticize as their own future, it is difficult after one or two videos to ignore the ways they use their children. Their names in the title. Click-baiting their child’s distress. Coaching them to play into a parasocial relationship.
It’s gross.
Look at the LaBrant Family, a channel boasting over 13 million subscribers, whose recent uploads include a ‘documentary’ that gets people to click by making them believe their daughter has cancer.
There are many ways people on social media attempt to generate clicks and views. Clickbait can be outrageous. It can be an over-exaggeration. It can suggest a video that is scary, dramatic, or will have high emotions. It usually sounds like the uploader themselves are in disbelief over the footage they have.
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People know clickbait when they see it. CAPITALIZED TITLES. Suggesting the outcome of the video… or maybe: Shocking event *CRAZY*. Yet, that doesn’t stop people from clicking. Going back to the LaBrant Family, arguably two of their more normal videos, one where they surprise their eldest with tickets to a concert and another of their daughters birthday party, have the least amount of views (aside from their most recent uploads).
So… why?
In Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Thaler tells a story of a dinner party he threw where he set out a bowl of nuts before the main course was served. Guests were eating so many of the nuts, that he realized they would be full before dinner, so he put the bowl in the kitchen.
I mean, how many times has this happened to you? When I lived with my Mother, I begged her to stop buying candy for our candy dish because I would frequently take one when I walked past. I couldn’t help myself. Now that I live on my own, I do not eat nearly as many sweets because I made the deliberate choice to not have them around.
When it is there, there is temptation.
Before this content existed, I don’t think anyone was searching for this kind of thing. No one was thinking “I wish I could watch a video of a little girl cry because her parents pulled a prank that her dog is being given away”.
Yes, that’s another thing this family did.
Or, take a look at the ACE Family, another family channel that has a slew of controversies. So many people disapprove of them and their videos, wanting them to be removed from the platform. Yet, people can’t stop clicking on their videos or videos about them.
I can speak from experience. Nearly everyone I’ve covered in these blogs, I hate (aside from Ryan’s World because he is a child and isn’t the one in the wrong). Yet, if I see a video trashing on the ACE Family, yes, I will click it. Have I ever deliberately searched their name to seek these videos out? No.
