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Why Are Kids Watching Horror Videos Like Sonic.exe and Huggy Wuggy?
YouTube Kiddy Horror Characters: Nostalgia and Childhood Gone Wrong?
5 min read
Let’s get something straight: there’s a fine line between horror and whatever these indie characters are doing online. All the kids in our extended family circle try to sneak them on the telly through YouTube while we aren't watching; we're under instruction to switch it over to baby shark! Personally, it's not just because they’re brain rot or possibly copyright theft, but because they fail to land the one thing horror should do—frighten people properly!
1. Sonic The Hedgehog: Not a Horror Icon, Stop It For The Love Of God!
Look, really, Sonic is the blue speedster we grew up with in the 90s, but yeah, I get it—re-inventing him as a corrupted nightmare was tempting. But here’s the thing: Sonic was never meant to be some bloodshot-eyed cartoon monster. His charm came from his speedy playability on a megadrive or a master system, not whatever this is! It's not really too much different to some laptop wizard remodelling the video game character Rayman into a noncy cannibalistic news reporter. Would this evil iteration of Sonic beat Batman in a fight? Just don't fall into this desperate barrel scraping bottom feeding! These thing's are just a tad silly, held together by the gloopy hands of YouTube pedagogical manipulation.
2. Huggy Wuggy: Cute? Yes. Terrifying? Well. . . No, It's Cute??
You can’t just slap creepy eyes on a lanky soft toy and call it horror. Listen to this in your head as you read it: 'Huggy Wuggy from Poppy Playtime'. Yep, Huggy Wuggy from Poppy Playtime was supposed to be a scary ass toy, a bit like Chucky (who did it properly) —but it falls into the same trap as Sonic doesn't it? Can this guy take out Jack the Ripper? Oh please, who was Jack anyway? You shouldn't take these characters out of contex, should we? Surely? Either way, what's more concerning is the adult fan of this stuff. Individuals who'll invest time and effort to edit or even create dark versions of the original poppy playtime; it ends up on YouTube for kids to watch.
We can see the clear kid-like simplicity with Hughy Wuggy, which doesn’t seem to belong in horror, which should an adult thing. If I was a kid and wanted real horror, I would have searched for Resident Evil online instead, or secretly played my old man's Alan Wake 2. Don't be fooled, because, some of these YouTubers are making disturbing content you wouldn't want in your kids head! Years ago, we watched erotic porn cartoons as kids called Felix the Cat, much like this stuff, it went under our parent's radar as we watched it crying with laughter.
If one of our group as kids proposed, 'Shall we watch some horror about plush stuffed toys with sharp teeth?' We would have dropped it. Why? We snuck in real horror films like Freddy vs Jason, not that animatronic bear... actually forget that! However, if I realised this stuff was more sinister than it really looked, it might have tempted me as a kid.
3. Siren Head and Slenderman!
Sirenhead and Slenderman were supposed to be creepy internet urban legends. I can get the slender man. Sirenhead looks very unusual for starters, and makes no sense, unlike Vladek Spiegelman from Maus who is an actual mouse with significant context well worth reading! However, at the end of the day, Slenderman and the Sirendude both feel like they belong in an indie horror meme. Absolutely, the Slenderman had some kind of depth, a bit creepy and there's lore going on, admittedly, he has raised my eyebrow in the past, but in comparison to proper horrors like Get Out, Hereditary or The Conjuring, they are a tad juvenile. Maybe someone can put Slenderman on Naked Attraction? It's another crossover idea, that weird collision of childish horror and questionable adult pretensions might workout one day, don't you agree? I had to turn off Sirenhead as he was maniacally squelching soldiers into mincemeat underfoot. We searched for child controls as well as some kind of YouTube filter, but no joy. Nope.
Why These Indie OCs Miss the Point!
Horror is supposed to evoke fear in the mind of adults, we shouldn't bring sinister ideas to kids. We should be their prime source of fear. Discipline. Either way, these kiddy YouTube horror videos make you cringe: adult-interloper horrors are switched off in our house for a reason.
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| Season 13 'From' |
What do you think?
Are such kiddy horrors really brain rot? Am I just being a dinosaur about this new wave of 'horror' emerging from the bowels of social media? Share your thoughts in the comments. Are these compelling characters or are they hijacked?
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