This Is Your Eight-Year-Old on Drugs
VIDEO: Parents are putting videos of stoned children online. Is it funny?
Funny or bad parenting?
With more than 7 million viewings, "David after dentist" has become a classic of a fast-growing web video genre. It consists of filming your messed-up, terrified or dizzy child and uploading it to the Internet for everyone to see. It also raises questions about parenting in the Internet age.
As his father explains on the YouTube posting, he decided to videotape David after dental surgery because "he was so nervous before and I wanted him to see the before and after."
Woozy from the medication, his head swinging from side to side, David says things like "Is this going to be forever?" and "Is this real life?" At one point, with wide eyes, David says, "I can't see anything!" Then he lifts himself off of his seat, lets out a massive yelp, and collapses back into his seat.
Response from viewers has been mostly positive -- mostly, "this is the funniest thing I have seen in a long time" -- but others say it's exploitative to post a video of a confused, frightened and stoned minor to the Internet.
His father defended the video in the Wall Street Journal Monday, arguing his son was safe the entire time. He explained that he only posted it on YouTube in January, months after the operation, to make it easier to show family and friends. But even he admitted recording the incident might not have been the best move.
"I was trying to teach him that the anticipation is probably much worse than the actual event," he said. "This might not have been the right case to give an example."
No doubt there is something inherently fascinating about watching a child lose his innocence. But on YouTube, this somehow takes on a more sinister side.
It's not hard to find more, disturbing videos of "kids on drugs." And there are others, like this one, which shows a child being spun around -- repeatedly -- at the playground, and then banging into a pole. Or this one, which shows a little boy overcome with terror at the sight of a puppet. This last one is definitely funny, sure, but why not console your child rather than document his fear?
No matter what you think of these videos, one thing is for certain: when you unleash something like "David after dentist" into the Internet world, it takes on a life of its own.
As a result, you get stuff like this mash-up that combines the idiotic ranting of Christian Bale with little David. Hilarious, but not something that I'd want to see my kid in.
Bob Saget never had to deal with that.
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deeby
3 years ago
Pathetic...
...instead of guarding his child's right to privacy, he documents an embarrassing moment for the entire world to see. This is a betrayal...
If he wants to record his child to show him later, fine, but putting this video up forces his child into public view in a manner that he has no control over whatsoever.
Ask him again in two years how he feels about it. This kid may become the subject of scorn, derision and bullying, all because dear old Dad couldn't brainstorm a less public means of showing the video to relatives.
Clearly posted by an 8-year-old's Dad on drugs
Maurice Cardinal
3 years ago
Not funny
Bad parenting.
jwstewart
3 years ago
Bad reporting...
... to perpetuate and thereby exploit the exploitation of children.
BC Mary
3 years ago
What David needs is a big hug, and his Dad needs a k.i.a.
I have often fretted over the covert hostility often shown (ever so coyly) toward children. How often people say, with a clucking of the tongue, "That child ought to be made to [fill in the blank}". How boldly they talk the righteous talk about "discipline" for a child who is doing nothing wrong ... and
... worst of all ... God, how I hate the grim, tight lipped silence when something complimentary is said about a gifted child.
What I think is happening in these videos of a defenseless, confused, vulnerable David ... it's a display of inherent hostility.
Jeez. What a mixed-up bunch we humans are.
Fii
3 years ago
Aw, by the end I just wanted
Aw, by the end I just wanted to hug him- and his dad is just sitting there chuckling... wonder what the mother thought of this?
And what the hell do they give these kids? I never so much as had a filling as a child, so I have no experience of dental "medicine". Crazy. Definitely not very cool.
KWD
3 years ago
"Is it funny?"
It's scary.
Is "America's Funniest Home Video" funny?
Folks that take pleasure in someone else's pain need help.
wacqueline
3 years ago
Just awful.
I can't even watch. No wonder why he was so nervous to go to the dentist. Even the idea of having a dad as arrogant and idiotic as that is terrifying.
PatrickMcEvoyHalston
3 years ago
Hi wacqueline. Glad you
Hi wacqueline. Glad you didn't watch.
dj mk
3 years ago
I LOVED IT!!!
why is everybody so sensitive?
David is "tripping out" on normal dental medicine and his dad is documenting it. i'm sure david and his dad had a good laugh about it. its clear that david trusts his dad and his dad loves his son. hopefully, this video will be played at david's wedding!
too funny!!!
Mort
3 years ago
Angry at dad in 10 years
I'd never publicly post a video like this of myself.... so I'd be damn angry if my dad did. Clearly his father is a fool.
When are people going to realize that by posting their personal life online, they're exposing themselves to untold identity manipulation.
David is going to be "that stoned kid" for a long long time to come.
I just hope the youtuber don't get too nasty with this video...
poor kid
shmendrick
3 years ago
Lighten up folks...
No one here has had embarrassing photos from when they were kids marched around at a family gathering or 'discovered' when the new girlfriend was over for dinner?
Sure this is all over the internet, but if the kid gets raised with a sense of humour, he'll be fine. He is not in pain, nor is he in any kind of danger.
He is going to face far far far worse from his 'peers' in school anyway, unless he ends up the one dishing it out.
I remember when I was 8 years old, taking swimming lessons... I was absolutely terrified of the deep water, and screamed very loudly and often that the instructor was trying to kill me. I'd pay good money to see that on video now.
Same goes for the time I ran screaming out of the clown show at 4.
The message I left on the answering machine after some dental work when I was a kid certainly made the rounds.
Stump
3 years ago
It's not right
because it's an invasion of the child's privacy and just demonstrates his father is treating him (the child) as property to be used for his amusement.
Time to change the way we treat children as belongings instead of people with rights and the right to be treated with respect.
ME2
3 years ago
Stump
Sure, Stump, I agree - treat children as "people with rights and the right to be treated with respect." No problem.
But that's a far cry from treating them as intllectual equals capable of exercisng those "rights" wisely.
For that's when many parents step in, arguing that whether or not they act wisely, it is still their misbehaving child's "right" to act as an equal. And that is one reason why we have so many arrogant, scofflaw youths on the streets today, since as children they were never taught that with rights also come obligations.
Stump
3 years ago
"But that's a far cry from
"But that's a far cry from treating them as intllectual equals capable of exercisng those "rights" wisely."
What does that have to do with videotaping your child in a post-operative fog and posting it on Youtube?
ME2
2 years ago
Stump
You ask :
"What does that have to do with videotaping your child in a post-operative fog and posting it on Youtube?"
Absolutely nothing, but it had a lot to do with this :
"Time to change the way we treat children as belongings instead of people with rights and the right to be treated with respect."
Perhaps I unfairly interpreted your meaning differently than you intended, but your words dovetailed, IMO, with those expressed by previous commenters.
driftwolf
2 years ago
There's another PERSON involved here.
Has anyone ever thought to ask the kid what HE thought of it? Everyone is speaking ABOUT him and how he must feel, but this event was a while back, and nobody, nowhere, in any of the so-called "outraged" articles or comments I have seen, has even ONCE mentioned anything about wondering what the kid thought.
Nobody has asked him. Nobody seems to think that he has an opinion. What if he thinks it's the funniest thing ever? Would that change peoples' self-righteous anger towards the dad? What if he's horribly embarrassed? Would that change anyone's attitude?
The key point, however, is that EVERYONE is treating the kid as simply an OBJECT, and not as person who might actually have an opinion. That to me is the real crime.