Laura loved watching the Labrant family’s video blogs on YouTube. Clicking on the channel, which has 12.9 million subscribers, said she especially liked seeing the mother-daughter relationship between Savannah LaBrant and her eldest daughter Everly. But after a few years, her feelings began to change. She began to worry that LaBrant’s children were being overexposed online. And after the family posted a YouTube video featuring a misleading title and thumbnail image, Laura, who had asked for her name to be changed for this article, turned around. About family. She believed they were exploiting children through monetized content, but still wanted to discuss their content. So she went to Reddit. There, 44,000 anonymous posters gathered on a subreddit dedicated to the LaBrant family, mocking their every move. Laura became a regular poster and started checking the community every day. (The LaBrant Channel did not respond to a request for comment.)
Laura is never alone. The tide is tilting against family video bloggers as viewers grapple with complex issues related to the ethical difficulties of featuring minor children in monetized content that tracks their daily lives. It seems so. Advocates question whether children can meaningfully consent to appear in content, and point to a lack of regulation for child influencers (although some countries have laws related to child influencers). There are only three states).
Amid the backlash, snark subreddits, communities on Reddit dedicated to gossiping about specific influencers, are thriving. For former fans, this is a place to continue interacting with their former favorite creators through a new, more critical lens. However, these posters may seem to be mostly devoted to the subject of their anger rather than positive fans. This way, you don’t have to stop watching content just because a family vlogger is no longer popular. For the vloggers themselves, depending on who you ask, the subreddit is either pathetic but harmless, or a dark hole that affects their mental health in ways they can’t be bothered to discuss enough. “Reddit is a really dark place for me, and it’s really messed up,” one family creator told Rolling Stone. “Honestly, I don’t know if it’s okay to talk about it.”
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Another family creator who runs a popular account dedicated to content about her mother, who asked that her name not be included in this article for fear of harassment, said she has heard of the vile subreddits that talk about her and the people on them. He says he found some harsh opinions. She feels insecure at the deepest level. “[It]naturally puts me in a fight-or-flight state,” she says. “People are waiting in the wings for every opportunity to twist you into something that will shame and embarrass you.”
Other creators had harsher words for forum participants. Kevin Franke dismisses the roughly 60,000 subscribers who flock to r/8passengersnark to mock his family as “pathetic.” Franke is the patriarch of the Franke family, whose former YouTube channel 8passengers has established itself as video blogging royalty, with 2.3 million subscribers. The channel was removed from YouTube after allegations surfaced against Franke’s estranged wife, Ruby Franke. Franke later pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree felony child abuse, which carries a maximum sentence of 60 years in prison. Kevin thinks Snarker is pathetic, but Ruby’s arrest reveals the subreddit’s mission to expose the family, and r/8passengerssnark releases the biggest family video to date to confirm their suspicions. It became a blog subreddit.
Ruby Franke during a hearing on December 18, 2023 in St. George, Utah.
Ron Chaffin/St. George News/AP
Although he has little patience for the family vlogging industry, telling Rolling Stone that he’s “declared war on all forms of child exploitation through social media,” he doesn’t like to swear. He says he sympathizes with people who spend their time on subreddits dedicated to . his family. Franke said the snark community is largely a meaningless echo chamber, with commenters spending their time searching for information to cancel influencers they were following. “It’s almost a group therapy session where disgruntled former fans get together,” Franke says. “If it’s of any use to them, that’s great. I think a lot of them have to keep rehashing and rehashing meaningless stories that don’t really matter. I feel sorry for them.”
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But if you spend your time taking screenshots of someone’s content, watching their videos, and posting to their own community, can you really call yourself a former fan?Influencer In a world where views mean money, haters may try to police themselves through services that don’t contribute to views, but giving them views exposes them. Jess Raoshberg, an assistant professor of communication technology at Seton Hall University who studies inequality in the influencer industry, suggests that subreddit users are “anti-fans.”
“Reddit is a really dark place for me and I get really fed up with it,” says one creator whose content has been the subject of hate.
“Just like fans, anti-fans still consume this media, but not because it brings them joy,” Rauchberg says. “Rather, they are interested in media figures because they hate them. In her research, she found that while members of the hate community embraced the “art of hate,” they thought they were doing something deeper. They see snark as an opportunity to meaningfully criticize influencers who have social capital and sometimes affect real change. In an essay co-authored with Jess Maddox, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama, the authors scoff at the deplatforming of Liv Schmidt, a popular influencer they thought was sharing pro-anorexia content on TikTok. He claims to have achieved this. “Snark should thus not be reduced to idle gossip; it reveals the ongoing negotiation of authenticity between influencers and their audiences,” Rauchberg and Maddox write.
“[Snarking]feels like a way to be an advocate for kids,” says one Reddit poster.
This sense of purpose is particularly prevalent in the sarcastic subreddits dedicated to family vloggers. There’s a sense that the participants aren’t shit-talking assholes, but people who are dedicated to spreading what they think is the truth about family influencers. One 40-year-old asshole, who asked to remain anonymous because of his participation in the forum, said he was a fan until he realized how staged his favorite family influencer’s content was. “I started wondering how many takes it took to get the perfect photo. And in all the pictures of her kids smiling, you can see her hands tickling them. , I noticed things I hadn’t noticed before,” she says. “I don’t know how I forgot about it for so long. (laughing) I feel like I’m an advocate for my kids. I check on them almost every day,” said another 20-year-old, who also requested anonymity. The sarcastic woman said it’s not drama or hate that motivates her, but a desire for change in the family-friendly video blogging industry. “What they are doing to their children is extremely upsetting and should not be legal. They are promoting and monetizing their children’s memories and childhoods,” she said. I did. “No amount of money, discomfort or exploitation would have been worth it in exchange for my normal childhood.”
Cynics say they are fighting for the privacy of influencers’ children, but they can fall into the same bad patterns they criticize. Most of these subreddits have rules, such as banning discussion of children’s appearance and, in some cases, posting faces, in an effort to address what could be seen as exploitation of the children involved. But much of its content also revolves around children, about who is treated like a third parent, who gets special treatment, and who doesn’t receive proper medical care. Sneaky people generally believe that children in vlogger families are overexposed, but they can’t seem to stop contributing to the problem.
One Snark Subwoofer host told Rolling Stone that he sometimes feels guilty about the information published on the platform. The information included a spoiler about the once-highly anticipated baby’s name. “I think the bottom line is that none of us feel like we should be making a living off the backs of our children,” the MOD said. By publishing the baby’s name, the MOD team believed they were depriving the family of a monetization (and exploitation) opportunity. And the content they’re mocking already exists in monetized form. She doesn’t think they’re taking the exploitation further, but she does think about what the children themselves will think. “I think what we’re doing is something that someday kids might have feelings for,” she said. “That’s tough, isn’t it?” This mod has a subreddit that includes hosting an “Ask Me Anything” session with an online crime investigator who answers questions about the potential dangers of posting children on social media. She pointed out what she considered to be the meaningful work that had been done.
Sometimes there is a triggering event in the process of going from fan to snark, as in the case of many participants in r/8passengersnark, who joined when Ruby Franke was arrested for child abuse. “I joined because of the drama surrounding her,” one 23-year-old poster explained. She similarly requested anonymity because she participates in a sleazy subreddit. Now, she checks the subreddit every day. For other haters, there was never a shocking moment, but there was a slow slide. Like the anonymous 19-year-old poster who loved the way video-blogging families shared their lives, but eventually started to feel uncomfortable about being filmed pulling pranks on their children. “I joined to keep up with submarine activity,” she said, clarifying, “but not in a supportive sense.” Another hater says: “I’m a hateful person and I don’t like child exploitation.”
One target of the sarcastic subreddit, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid being flooded with new posts, takes a different view. “I think they were all fans at some point,” says the author. “Then all of a sudden family vlogs aren’t the cool thing anymore, and family members still want to follow the vlogs. They still want to be fans and they still want to know what they’re doing. But now I have a rebellious approach.”
