What Do You Mean Its Not For Kids / Web Original

• The vlog-style comedy/puppetry series Dabchick, despite the majority of the videos featuring puppet characters getting into hijinks, dancing, and singing, is definitely aimed for an older demographic, featuring swearing, politics, sexual conversations, lots of alcohol consumption, and thematic elements that would go over children's heads. Despite this, series creator Barnaby Dixon has had to repeatedly clarify the series' intended audience, as COPPA repeatedly attempts to mark the videos as "for kids" for featuring "toys" and "bright colors". This is addressed in the episode "Cop Mauled By Raptor", where the antagonistic Constable Wayne repeatedly and single-mindedly tries to shut the channel down for being a "toy channel", and Dabchick and the Raptor have to fend him off.
• A lot of parents seem to think that because it is a musical, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is perfectly fine for small children. Considering that it's centered around a villain's Start of Darkness and it sports lyrics such as "It's a brand new day, and the sun is high / All the birds are singing that you're gonna die"...yeah. A lot of it probably goes over the kiddies' heads anyway (one would hope), but still... Not to mention the "the hammer is my penis" line. Felicia Day mentions in the commentary (not that one) a fan who wrote to tell her "my nine-year-old daughter loved you in this...until Act 3."
• Doctor Steel's "The Dr. Steel Show" segments were formatted in the manner of a kids TV show, but his line of toys ("Buzzsaw Babies", "Rabies Babies", "Polly Pukes-A-Lot", etc.) are obviously not all that kid-friendly. Unless you have really warped kids.
  • He also had a song on one of his albums, ostensibly the theme song for a cartoon show, called "Smoky the Kid-Loving Trout".
• Someone that stumbles across ZTV might initially think "Oh, it's a cute little newscast with an adorable purple-haired anime girl!" until they watch 30 seconds of it and learn that the "cute girl" is Zone-tan, who is the mascot of a paid hentai site, exceptionally perverted, and foul-mouthed as well. Oh, and she's also a demon that sometimes loses control of her illusionary human form.
• This website, created in 2007 by British artist James R. Ford, was created as a deliberate exercise in this trope. It's meant to look like the official website of a (non-existent) 1990s kids cartoon called "Feecal the Little Chocolate Starfish". There's no violence or profanity, but, but even a cursory look shows that it's full of innuendo and sex jokes. Even the characters' names are innuendos that kids wouldn't get.
• Just because Blackburn features colorful superheroes does NOT mean it's for kids. It's not even before the first chapter ends that Martha bloodily massacres a gang hideout, including a young boy.
• "Teen idol" pop music is popular with ten-year-old girls. Consider how many songs in that genre are about sex.
  • There are ten-year-old girls who are fans of the song "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar". You know, that song that's pretty much about cybersex.
• Many religious websites are family-friendly, which would lead you to think Jesus-Is-Savior.com would be too. It's not. Instead, the site is designed to Scare 'Em Straight, with grotesque imagery, gore (largely abortions), anti-homosexual propaganda, Paranoia Fuel and surprisingly strong language being commonplace in there.
• You'd think that since Channel Awesome reviewers often review children and family films and entertainment that it'd be appropriate for children. You'd be wrong. Even Linkara (the "tamest" of them all) shows comics featuring gore, sexual innuendo, drug use, and fanservice (though to be fair, he is criticizing these scenes).
  • On an August 2011 edition of his Radio Dead Air Internet radio program, TGWTG contributor Nash recounted the story of Pushing Up Roses receiving an angry letter from a parent which admonished her for using "foul language" in her videos because "children watch them". Nash was rather noticeably furious while recounting this, noting that That Guy with the Glasses is not a site for children (and that he hosts a show titled What the Fuck Is Wrong with You?). The reaction from his stream's chat was similarly astounded and angry, especially because the letter was sent to Roses, who rarely uses profanity in her videos.
  • In a vlog, Doug gets pretty upset with the fact that ten-year-olds come up to him at cons and say they love his stuff, as he thinks they really shouldn't be watching him at such a young age.
• Mario Plush Forever, a plush series on Machinima. The name and the introduction of each episode makes it sound like it's a kid-friendly show, but you'll get to the first episode, which involves a curse that makes people have uncontrollable farts ... and turn into mindless demons! The first few episodes aren't too graphic, but once you get to Episode 10, things start getting graphic to the point where the director begins putting a viewer discretion warning before each episode.
• Don't be fooled by the first two minutes of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared. It looks like a Sesame Street clone at first but there's a reason it's called that.
• Rather common among Let's Play videos — even if the game itself is family-friendly, that does not mean that the commentary is. Most Let's Plays for games aimed at children will have at least some element of this, because the players are almost always teens or adults who also play more mature games, and therefore expect a more mature audience. Some specific examples:
  • Several videos of Minecraft fall into this territory. Minecraft itself is an all-ages game, but the commentary on it is generally unsuitable for kids for several LP groups such as the Minecraft series made by the Yogscast or Achievement Hunter. The creations and skin system also fall into this to an extent, as you can build anything or have your character appear as pretty much anything.
    • The Yogscast in general get this very badly, with common complaints being profanity (leading to the meme "X swore in the video and now my child is Y", which promptly overshadowed any serious complaints) and Black Comedy. The fact is that short of Zoey Proasheck, who is the only one that actively aims for that demographic, plus InTheLittleWood and the explicitly family-friendly "Conquest" channel, the Yogscast do not aim to be family-friendly in the first place. Even Zoey delves into LGBTQ-related works and mental health issues (though kids can be LGBTQ and suffer from mental health problems too), as well as the odd horror game and a modded version of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Martyn, in turn, plays a fair numbers of games that aren't family friendly.
    • CaptainSparklez is a variation. His Minecraft content, unless he's collaborating with someone else, is mostly family-friendly, with some milder swearwords at worst. However, the other gaming videos on his channel, such as his Garry's Mod videos, are not. It doesn't help he's part of pocket.watch, a network of YouTube channels aimed to children.
    • Dream SMP, anyone? Despite the simple stick-figure avatar of Dream, his server is NOT for kids in the slightest. Even TommyInnit and Tubbo, who were still teenagers during the SMP's run0time, are sources of Cluster F-Bombs and Vulgar Humor galore. The actual plot of the Dream SMP roleplay is very dark as well, featuring plenty of mature topics such as authoritarianism and tyranny, the violent destruction of an entire city-state, abuse, mental health, trauma, suicide, etc.
  • These set of channels portraying Sonic the Hedgehog characters doing Let's Play and Reaction videos. Because those characters are from a kid-friendy video game series, one may expect the channels to be kid-friendly also. The portrayals are way more mature than their canon ones, with swearing more severe than Shadow the Hedgehog would allow, some vulgar commentary, and coverage of kid-unfriendly works, including adults-only ones, especially Shadow the Hedgehog and Infinite the Jackal. The most popular one, Shadow the Hedgehog, establishes that the channel "is not intended to be the original character in anyway.. is completely a parody channel", most likely to sway away those who were expecting Sega's version of Shadow.
    • A video on Blaze the Cat's channel in which Sonic and Rouge attempt "sex" in Minecraft (video may or may not be NSFW, but thumbnail may be NSFW) should a big indicator of this.
• Sam & Mickey produce Stop Motion comedies starring an alcoholic, foul-mouthed, short-tempered, promiscuous Barbie doll, and four illegitimate daughters that she (unsuccessfully) tries to pass off as her "little sisters". The duo often receives comments calling their work too lewd for little girls, prompting them to eventually attach a Parental Advisory warning to the beginning of every video.
• Prom Night is about a young boy who's obsessed with Garfield and tries to impress his prom date with trivia involving the franchise. However, despite being based on a family comic, it's actually a song about Intercourse with You, and contains mild profanity and many sex-related puns in it.
• Welcome to Howler is a web series with a cast and crew largely made up of Disney Channel and Nickelodeon sitcom stars and producers (about half of the cast coming from Kickin' It). But it's about college and features tons of drinking and swearing; there's nothing kid-friendly about it.
• YouTube is home to many unofficial music videos made using plastic toys, from Littlest Pet Shop to model horses. Some of them are kid-friendly, and some are even made by kids. However some, such as this one, aren't, for reasons ranging from bloody violence to questionable song choices.
• Many creepypasta are very gory and bloody, yet their fans are mostly young teens. This includes Jeff the Killer, The Slenderman Mythos, and Sonic.exe. It doesn't help that many are inspired by children's media.
• Other videos which involve Littlest Pet Shop figures often fall under this category.
  • LPS: Popular is a well-known example, which includes more mature themes such as violence, severe bullying, mental illness, and euphemisms of swear words at best.
  • Some series, including OakstarLPS's Copycat, include not only the themes listed above but actual swearing ranging from mild to obscene. Yes, including the F-bomb. Several times.
  • LPSlover’s videos are often not appropriate for children either, despite many of the characters’ goofy nature. One example, Grave Matters, includes the topics of horror, violence, and even abuse. Her newer videos have become increasingly obscene, with even the use of hard swears in not only the videos themselves but in ALL CAPS of the videos' descriptions to make sure COPPA doesn't try to get their hands on them.
• In some episodes of Kids React, the children will occasionally be shown age-inappropriate videos that are either censored (like the episode about The Room (2003)) or they have a choice to opt out of if they don't feel like watching it. (like the It: Chapter Two trailer, which was a "How Long Can You Watch?" challenge) Aside from this, sometimes the kids on the show either reference age-inappropriate franchises or come in with merchandise related to it. For instance, in both the Teddy Ruxpin and Furby episodes, kids compared the toys to Five Nights at Freddy's, and in the aforementioned The Room episode, a kid wore a T-shirt depicting Rick and Morty.
  • Another video in which an inappropriate thing was shown to young children was Little Babies React To Lil Baby, in which babies watched some censored music videos by rapper Lil Baby. Unlike most videos where this happened, all of the babies weren't interested in watching the videos.
• SuperMarioLogan is well-known for being an infamous example of this. Many children are fans because of the fact that most of the characters are plushies of Super Mario Bros. characters who are placed in the roles of elementary school-aged kids and their parents. However, the show contains a ton of cursing and adult themes and jokes they wouldn't understand. This didn't stop several videos from accidentally being put on the YouTube Kids app simply because they had "Mario" in the title, leading to a child finding them and attempting to copy a suicide scene in one of the episodes. This lead to the channel's videos being demonetized and age-restricted, causing YouTube Kids to remove them from their app and Logan telling his fans that the videos were not meant for children in the first place. Months after this, a good amount of kids were still watching SuperMarioLogan, leading to national news show Good Morning America doing a segment warning parents of the videos and at least one elementary school sending a letter to parents on the subject.
• YouTube itself has had various issues over the years because of this:
  • Sometimes, the YouTube Kids app includes videos meant for main YouTube and not for kids to watch, which happened a lot in the early days of the app, most likely due to the app trying to grab as many videos for watching as it could. However, the app is updated daily via feedback from its users on the content found in the app.
  • This exact problem also plagued YouTube's recommendations during its early years. Because the site was mainly used by adults back then, it was common to see a video of a children's TV show or cartoon dubbed over with kid-unfriendly audio usually from an adult show, had obscenity-laden gag subs, or a video for adult audiences with a similar theme to the kids' video that you were watching showing up in the "recommended" section, like an Avenue Q video showing up in the related videos section of a clip from Sesame Street.
  • When YouTube activated its "for kids" rules on January 7, 2020, the system labeled some videos that were never meant for children as being "for kids", including adult animation^note Even though the FTC considered animation to be too general to be "for kids" (such as Happy Tree Friends) and the first three installments of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared.
  • The infamous Disguised Horror Story song "MopeMope" by LeaF and Optie, which starts off with a cheerful jingle and animations of cute smiling flowers and bouncing ball creatures before degrading into a mess of otherworldly horrors and a hellish arrangement of itself, got flagged as a kids' video, in spite of Optie putting a content warning in the video description. After Optie appealed to YouTube, its kids' designation was removed.
  • This also happened with the ads on YouTube prior to the implementation of COPPA. It was pretty common to see an ad for a horror movie or an adult-oriented product prior to the start of a video for kids. It still happens today, but not as commonly as it used to, like how ads for Hamilton frequently showed up before videos about Pretty Cure.
• Pooh's Adventures: These "crossovers" consist of clips from various movies spliced together, so it's no surprise that this sometimes happens.
  • It can be jarring to see the likes of Winnie the Pooh in an adult work that is supposedly toned down for kids. Especially in Hiatt Grey's works as the fact that the ponies own firearms (including the Cutie Mark Crusaders and other foals) and characters can get killed left and right.
  • Some scenes for the upcoming Pooh's Adventures of Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School includes scenes like Meg flashing her breasts, and implied wanking despite sanitizing other more adult elements.
  • Pooh's Adventures of Rock and Rule censors the swearing and some of the blood. But all the drugs and nearly all, if not all of the sexual content are left in.
• The Ultimate Ed Chronicles: Sure, this crossover series has Ed, Edd and Eddy going into adventures taking place aimed at everyone, although the series will likely bring up crossovers of movies aiming for older fans like The Fast and the Furious Franchise.

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