The Out-of-Touch Adults' Guide to Kid Culture: YouTube's Animated Kitten Horror

Credit: Bethesda Softworks, QQ Meow, @hawktauh74 - YouTube, TikTok

A weekly deep dive into the current trends, slang, and viral videos of youth culture in terms that even the squarest can understand.

It doesn't mean much to anyone with a job, but summer's coming in quick, and only grade-grubbers are still paying attention in school. The other kids are wasting their time exactly how you'd expect: watching kitten body horror videos, discovering 20-year-old RPGs, and throwing bowling balls into helicopter blades. Here's what's shaping (and warping) young minds this week.

The rise of terrifying AI kittens on YouTube

If you have younger kids, summer can mean more screen time, and I wanted to check out what kids are watching when their guardian hands them that tablet, so I spent some time on YouTube looking at animated videos that seem geared to children. The place is lousy with algorithmically generated kitten torture videos where little cats with big eyes are injured, operated upon, beset by monsters, and otherwise horribly abused in videos like "Cat's Belly Contains Countless Worms!"

and "Kitten Abused by it [sic] own mother Cat"

and my personal favorite, "Kitten Belly has Spiders, Rats, Worms, Alien Parasites" (I'm a fan of Oxford commas.)

Countless YouTube (and Instagram, and TiktTok) channels with names like Kittens Kitten, and QQ Meow churn out these videos by combining frequently searched keywords like "cute cat" or "kitten" with scenarios that are shocking or scary to children, like going to the doctor or being abused by a parent. Videos that get views, like "The betrayal of the cat father and the revenge plan of the kitten" (this has been viewed 72 million times in the last three months) or "The kitten suddenly encountered a mutated big-eyed school bus"(63 million views) are ripped off endlessly, and AI hones and iterates them into a nightmare feedback loop that children stare at for hours.

It's not art made for kids. It's art made at kids.

But on the other hand—whenever things can be boiled down to "won't someone, please, think of the children?" it's time to look a little deeper. Adults tend to view children's world through rose-colored glasses, but that's how we want childhood to be. In reality, children are nearly powerless in a world they can't understand or contextualize, so of course they're going to deal with their fears through art; that's why we have art.

Well-meaning adults have spent decades sanitizing children's media, excising disturbing and horrific elements under the guise of protecting kids, but judging by the 19 million views of "Abusive Cat Father," kids clearly want it and, more importantly, they're getting something from it. Death, betrayal evil, horror, and abuse are time-honored staples of children's literature. Is there any theme more classic than "evil mother (or stepmother) abuses innocent child?"

I only wish it wasn't all so poorly made. Grimm’s fairy tales and their ilk were written by talented people, not the kind of real-life ghouls who use AI to game YouTube's kids' video algorithm. I never had a problem with my own kid watching movies society said were too mature for him, but only if they were good. I draw the line at bad art.

As a greybeard from way back, I love when a new generation of nerds discovers something awesome from the past. On April 22, developer Bethesda surprised the video gaming world by stealth-releasing a 20-year-old role-playing game, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. And the kids are into it; the nerdy ones, anyway. Some quality-of-life issues with the original game have been addressed, but the quirky, buggy, batshit Oblivion fun was left intact. They even left most of the glitches intact. I've been playing it since it was released, and it plays differently than modern games in the genre. There's less handholding and funneling players toward a specific experience. There's less of a feeling that a corporate board approved every decision and more of a feeling of freedom, and kids are into it. They're making memes and posting videos of funny glitches. It's like the old days. As RiceLife659 put it on Reddit, "Finally able to play Oblivion now and I’m in love. More in depth in terms of systems than Skyrim and the jank is hilarious. 20 hours in and every minute I wish I was born earlier." .

I feel like saying, "gather 'round, young 'uns, and let me tell you the story of the cursed Oblivion horse armor..."

What does "deriod" mean?

The slang term "deriod" combines "dick" and "period" and is used to refer to a man's (hypothetical) period. Here's even more Gen Z and Gen Alpha slang, if you're interested.

What are "0.5 GPA Activities?"

"0.5 GPA Activities" (or "0.3 GPA Activities, or (WHATEVER) GPA Activities") refers to videos that show what the kids who aren't gunning for class salutatorian are doing in school. The genesis was a video called "4.0 GPA Activities" in which supposedly smart band-kids balance things precariously. In response, less, um, accomplished students started posting videos of themselves doing things like making sculptures from the cafeteria food:

stacking soda cans in lockers:

intentionally shorting out their school-issued Chromebooks:

and stealing fire extinquishers:

It's the kind of trend that went from funny to a little harmful quickly, so check out these videos now, before TikTok bans the entire genre.

Viral video of the week: Bowling Ball Vs 700kmh Helicopter Blades! Who Wins

How can you not click a video called "Bowling Ball Vs 700kmh Helicopter Blades"? It's the kind of content we all need as summer starts to roll in.

The bowling ball alone would have been enough, but the guys behind YouTube channel How Ridiculous also throw tomatoes, a hardhat, a phone, a baseball bat, a guy (a fake guy, anyway) and more through the spinning blades of a chopper. It's all presented in super slow motion: exactly how you want to watch things get chopped apart by a helicopter propeller.

As for the video's dramatic question, you might assume the answer is obvious: Blades win. But life is full of surprises. That’s why we do science.