Not so funny

I get yet another link to kids having tantrums and I just want to scream.

The first time last year (on Facebook, predictably) a colleague, knowing I was a mother of children, thought she would show me “hilarious clips of kids losing it over nothing”.

It was children being filmed while being told that their parents have eaten or thrown away all their sweets. In these clips the children are very disturbed, crying and sobbing and obviously in a lot of anguish.

I don’t care how small the reason is (to us) the last thing I want to see are those kinds of emotional reactions. And to top it off they have been provoked by their own parents, called hilarious and then used to make a video that goes viral. I quite frankly find it almost abusive.

A child has little or no private life or privacy, they have relatively few things they can call their own that they are not forced to share, so “small” things mean a lot. Yes, it’s “just” sweets, but it belongs to them and stripping this from them makes them feel totally powerless.

Is watching an already powerless person be stripped of the little rights that they have funny?

How about “parents losing it when being told their house has been robbed” or “funny clips of people being told their loved ones have died in a car crash, then told it’s just a joke”. Hilarious.

This time I didn’t even follow the link, I couldn’t have watched. It annoys me that kids feeling are a) so undervalued and badly judged and b) taken advantage of and betrayed by their parents for the sake of a “funny” video.

Anyone else think it’s a bit weird?