So many of you will no doubt have noticed it's that special time of year again when Santa drops off some presents. This year a few of you will be wrapping up model trains having just purchased your little ones their first trainset or an addition to previous years. All very lovely and welcome to a wonderful hobby for your kid to enjoy and learn things from.
Now everything has it's bad sides as well and we all like to raise well adjusted kids but this mission may encounter a problem if they go onto Youtube to engage in railway modelling related content. The very first content producer they will likely emcounter is someone highly manipulative, highly strange, and overly not very good as a guide stone towards your child becoming a well adjusted adult that can take the rough and tumble of the world. This content producer without formaly naming him we shall know as S. He has been pulled up in the past by members of the model train community with better concious over things varying from videos produced that involve making a mix of water and electricity seem funny, creating characters he uses on his channel that exploit racial stereotypes for a laugh, creating characters on his channel that play up disabilities for a laugh. All very unsavoury even for a channel aimed at adults... only this is aimed squarly at your children as their viewership and easily created parasocial relationship pays for his lifestyle.
The tactics that allow this to happen are quite interesting, we are presented with a grown man playing on the floor as your child would, in a room of his parents house, as your child would. He aims to impress your child by showing off his vast collection of model trains to show he is knowledgeable because how can you not know something if you own this many of something? Deer in headlights stuff to catch your childs attention.
The thumbnail of the video will have a picture edited to provoke, a title calculated to interest children. The colour pallet selected for the presenters own clothing will be colour coded to colours associated with trust and authority.
The reviews of products themselves will be arranged to hit certain trigger points that will bring the younger viewer back as they make this man seem to be the hero fighting for them against the evils of price rise(model railways are expensive these days), bad manufacturing techniques, bad quality.
The problem is most of what he says simply isn't true or highlights one aspect of an issue such as cost or value for money simply to elicit emotional response not in order to leave your child a better informed young member of society. Your child should learn through play, model railways are play, however the learning potential the play represents is absolutely wasted when your child will most likely sit down and view these videos that offer next to no value in providing fact, teaching problem solving or understanding the big wide world.
One parent to another if your child is interested in model railways, if your child has access to youtube, do them a favour and either ensure they cannot access the content of this producer or ensure you have a good chat with them about how much they should honestly trust this man or interact with him.
Thanks for reading,
Looking forward to buying my babies a trainset in a few years, hope your family gets lots from yours if you get one this christmas. 🎅