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Cocomelon is designed to be addictive
(www.youtube.com)
They're banned in this household.
Children's entertainment has been doing that for a century. But the tactics are getting more elaborate, planned, strategic.
It's been a constant development, and it's getting worse.
Pretty horrifying, that video you linked. 4.5 billion views? 7 Billion?
You always, always limit how much they watch. Never ever let YT autoplay take over.
My twins were hooked on it for a while. Made us parents absolutely insane. The kids learned a lot of simple English words though, so it wasn't completely for nothing.
Agreed. The toddlers I taught loved to watch cocomelon, but not addicted too much. They just followed the characters to act and play. They learned some words and also learned to get along with others nicely.
Yeah fuck cocomelon. This is apparent immediately
This is nightmare fuel. Is this a real thing?
Edit. I thought that was mr beast in the thumbnail and expected the worst. Glad it's that guy Rybread. Good video!
You can tell it's not mr beast because he's not making that stupid false smile.
I think it was the mustache that made me think it was him. You're absolutely right.
A while back there was an interesting article comparing Bluey and Cocomelon: https://www.readtrung.com/p/why-i-love-bluey-and-hate-cocomelon
Once a month, children are brought to [a London studio], one at a time, and shown a handful of episodes to figure out exactly which parts of the shows are engaging and which are tuned out.
For anyone older than 2 years old, the team deploys a whimsically named tool: the Distractatron.
It’s a small TV screen, placed a few feet from the larger one, that plays a continuous loop of banal, real-world scenes — a guy pouring a cup of coffee, someone getting a haircut — each lasting about 20 seconds. Whenever a youngster looks away from the Moonbug show to glimpse the Distractatron, a note is jotted down.
“It’s not super interesting, what’s on the Distractatron,” said Maurice Wheeler, who runs the research group. “But if they aren’t fully focused, they might go, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ and kind of drift over. We can see what they’re looking at and the exact moment when they got distracted.”
What a waste of all lives involved.
comparing Bluey and Cocomelon
ugh, that's not even a comparison.
Fun fact btw: Bluey started off as an Australian public broadcasting production. Bought by Disney now, but I suspect they made a deal that gives them artistic freedom. Still sad that money wins.
Good news for you today, Disney does not own Bluey. They're just paying for the rights to stream it on Disney+ - https://www.themarysue.com/bluey-is-on-disney-but-is-it-a-disney-show/
Disney licenses the distribution/streaming rights to Bluey, and just signed the theater and streaming rights to the upcoming Bluey movie (scheduled for 2027) but doesn't own merchandising rights. They did, however, just recently sign a deal for rights to use the characters in theme parks and cruises.
Thanks for sharing! It was interesting (and horrifying) read!
My son doesn't watch it and we have no intention of starting.
Did people not know that?
Blocked on all streaming services we have. We thought it was harmless but annoying, but we got kinda spooked by how much that show in particular grabbed our kid's attention and didn't let go. For hours.
She'll get tired of other shows and ask to play, etc. But not with Cocomelon and its knockoffs. We just figured that couldn't be right. Then we read about how it was designed to hook baby brains... and that was the tipping point for us to banish it forever.
Of course, it also saved our sanity from those FUCKING SONGS. Plus I'm a big fan of animation in general, and that show BLOWS in that regard, to the point where I get kind of offended. So yeah. Good riddance.
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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