5 Insane YouTube Videos Discovered by a 4-Year-Old
For people who don't spend a lot of time browsing it, YouTube seems like a fairly benign place full of video bloggers, cooking videos, and copyright infringement. With its strict anti-pornography rule, it's easy to think that the worst it has to offer is some douche giving a profanity-laced rant against the president, but that would be underestimating the utter strangeness of society's outliers. Given enough time, anyone will accidentally kick over a rock and uncover something that defies all explanation, like the incredibly large subculture of people who like to watch people play ukelele renditions of pop songs.
Therefore, you might think it was unwise of me to allow my 4-year-old son to explore the deepest recesses of YouTube with only a moderate amount of supervision. I, however, think it is a good idea, not only for showing him what the world has to offer for somebody who will inevitably grow up to be weird (look at his parents!), but because his glee in indiscriminately clicking on "recommended" links can unveil things I would never have found on my own. The following five are the ones that have sparked the most confusion in my adult brain, even though my young son seems to think they are totally normal and awesome. And just to be clear, all but one of them is totally harmless and not something that hints at Cthulhu's influence. As for that last one, though, you might want to get a good, firm grip on your innocence before you look at it.
#1. ARM Powered Android LEGO MultiCuber 777
This isn't so much strange as it is unbelievably cool. Some lunatic decided to build a machine out of Legos and a tablet computer that can independently solve a Rubik's Cube. But what pushes this over the top is that it's not just your standard 3x3x3 cube, but a truly ludicrous 7x7x7 cube. It took me a week without cigarettes (before I finally succeeded in quitting several years ago) to solve the 3x3x3, but there's no way in Hell I have the intellectual capacity, patience, and madness to solve the 7x7x7. Somebody, though, realized that the best way to solve it wasn't with brute force and brainpower (nor was it rearranging the stickers by hand), but with a robot built out of Legos. Take a minute and thank the Lord that this mad genius isn't interested in using his creativity for evil, because he could probably build a nuclear bomb out of a smart phone and an erector set.
#2. Fluffy Jet Productions (Egg Videos)
Fluffy Jet Productions has 273 uploaded videos and nearly 55,000 subscribers. What makes this remarkable is that all 273 videos are devoted to one thing and one thing only: an unnaturally enthusiastic gentleman with an Aussie accent opening toy eggs to see what's inside. That's it. Really. The videos are claimed to be "reviews," though I can't discern any actual reviewing going on. He just says, "Alright now, let's see what's inside this one," rips off the packaging, pulls out an egg that opens to reveal a Toy Story toy or something, says, "Oh look, it's Slinky the Dog from Toy Story 3! He's a plucky little critter who is part dog, part slinky!" For Tommy (my son), I think these videos are kind of like toddler porn: he's looking at toys he can't have and just enjoying thinking about how great it would be if they were his. However, from the point of view of the guy making these videos, I can think of no rational reason why he's doing it.
#3. Big Marble Machine
Speaking of toddler porn, Tommy's biggest obsession of late has been videos of marble runs. There are literally thousands of these things, most of which have been created by kids proud of their own creations. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, a marble run is simply any toy that involves a marble running down a track. Most are premade kits you can find at any big toy store (I had one growing up), but there are also homemade wooden models, "space-age" marble "roller coasters" (my brother had one of these, but he got it as an adult), and Rube Goldberg-like contraptions that just happen to involve marbles. There are several truly impressive (and insane) videos of this type that I could show you, including the marble run that goes all the way around the top of some kid's room or the one that goes down the stairs (actually, there are several of these), but the above "Big Marble Machine" is probably my favorite, just because it is so over-the-top that it has an audience.
#4. Kracie Popin Cookin Gummy Candy Kit
This is the first video Tommy found that rendered me perplexed and speechless. It's in Japanese, which just adds to the atmosphere of what-the-crappery surrounding this thing, and it involves what looks like a crazy chemistry set. It's actually a product demonstration for a candy-making kit that produces gummy candy through completely inexplicable science. As with the marble runs, there is an unusually large number of videos just like this one, and they are all ridiculously bizarre. Watching this one, though, I only have one question: are people actually supposed to eat this?
#5. 7-Hour Balloon Work
(The embedding is disabled for the above video, so just click on it to see it on YouTube.) Okay, so here's where we get into the truly seedy part of the human psyche, with something that seems totally and completely innocuous: the balloon. Tommy loves this video for reasons that are entirely innocent; he's a kid, so he likes balloons. However, I suspect the vast majority of fans of this video (and the tens of thousands just like it) have much less innocent thoughts while watching it. Why, do you think, are there so many videos of people (usually hot women, sometimes in their underwear) inflating balloons and then popping them? Is there something dark and Freudian about the childlike wonder one gets from balloons? Look at it this way: here's a video of a fiery redhead putting her lips to as many balloons as she can get her hands on and blowing them up until they are ready to explode. Then she delays the inevitable climax for a while--in this case, a truly remarkable 7 hours--before quickly popping them all in a dramatic finish. So yeah, there are men who masturbate to this. Enjoy the rest of your day!
-e. magill 4/30/2013
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