Or, as I call it, Exploitation Theatre

And now, yet another intrusive, chuckles-at-others’-expense round of…

YOU SUCK!!!!

I grant this to the abomination that has plagued television screens for a long time now, and seeing as television screens bear a lot of abominations as it is, this is saying something. This one in particular bears an ironic name. It is called… America’s Funniest Videos.

A couple of years ago, it was on Friday nights on ABC at the same time CBS was running the also-horrible “Kids Say the Darndest Things”. Hence I commonly referred to Friday night prime time TV as “Child Exploitation Theatre”. Well, that’s what it is! They both serve only to dissuade people from the notion that these short, young humanoid things they see sometimes called “children” are actually just as human as everyone else, and therefore entitled to the same respect.

AFV does this by having parents and such send in home videos of their children in very compromising situations, for they may win a prize if their video is found more enjoyable by the crowd of in-the-closet pedophiles they are meant to entertain. Seriously! In many of these videos, the children are naked or almost naked, and even doing things that if they were adults doing this, it would be soft core porn. Or even ones of a kid on the toilet or in the bathtub. I’m sorry, but video taping someone on the toilet or in the tub, let alone sending it out to be aired on national television, is extremely rude!

Also horrible are the ones in which children get hurt. I saw one once when a kid who looked to be about five or six fell off his bike and was crying because he hurt his leg. The stupid fucking audience was laughing at him! The video continued with the boy yelling at whoever was running the camera to stop taping him, he’s hurt! The video just kept rolling though. Assholes.

Now, I concede that, yes, the show includes “funny” videos of adults and pets as well. Still just as bad. Thing is, I’m sure the adults consented to being in videos that were sent to be aired on TV. If not, they might have a lawsuit on their hands. Young children cannot consent to this, not legally anyway, but even then, if the parents respected their kids enough to have asked them if they wanted to be on the show, I’d imagine they’d respect them enough to not want to put humiliating videos of them on national TV in the first place. But maybe not. Parents could just remember it’s very easy to convince a little kid into something by just talking in a certain fake enthusiastic manner. The show’s been around long enough. Wouldn’t it be something if one of the kids who were put on this show a long time ago reached adulthood and sued his parents and the show for using his image this way without his legal consent? Would probably be thrown out, but could also set a nice example for parents who think they can dehumanize their children and get away with it.

And the sound effects are NOT fucking cute!