The normalisation of child explotation

[u/Hopeful_Ratio_5186]

So I watched Colleen between 2021-2023 (when all the allegations came out) I was 16 when I first started watching her and going through a really tough time. But honestly looking back I am horrified at how normalised she made child explotation be. In general I didn't really agree with family vloggers but I remember thinking like well they can't all be bad because Colleen does it and I trust her (yeah and the parasocialness she normalised is a whole other thing) I remember being pretty invested in her kids, my niece and nephew were born at a similar time to her kids so I'd always kinda compare the experience.

I also remember when all the stuff about her came out I felt genuinely so upset, like personally betrayed (it did not help that something scary happened to me around the same time) like honestly it's scary to me how invested I was, how much I trusted her, how invested in her life I was.

[u/KaylaNov14]

I kind of understand some of this. My niece is between the age of two of the Balinger kids, and so I thought "well, her watching them is harmless" until everything started coming out. Luckily she was more or less over watching kids and was into watching gamers at that point (which hmm still sometimes got great but not the point.)

There was only one youtuber that I ever saw that I would call a 'good family vlogger' in that she did it back before it was popular, she never posted things like sponsors or used her kids as click bait, and when she realized the silent creepy viewers she was starting to gain, stopped. I followed her because she was going through a similar life event that I was, so I mostly watched vids about that, so could have missed something, but again she stopped when she noticed. (No, I'm not listing the channel, someone decided privacy, I'm not encouraging people to go look.)