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Mark-Rober-and-capitalist-manipulation.gmi (4956B)

Mark Rober is an incredibly successful video producer on YouTube. His channel has nearly 20 million subscribers at the time of writing, and his videos have amassed a total of two billion views.
I recently watched his latest video, which you can see for yourself here:
=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e09xig209cQ Mark Rober: World's Tallest Elephant Toothpaste Volcano (I FINALLY DID IT!!)
This video, along with many others on Mark's channel, makes me pretty uncomfortable. Why?
I should state at the outset that I passionately hate advertising, and I think it ought to be outlawed. Advertising is a form of propaganda, designed to manipulate people into doing something they normally wouldn't — spending money — in the interests of the corporation which created the ad. It would be unethical even on this basis alone, but the effects reach further: the ubiquity of advertising and the smashing success of capitalism as the dominant economic model have created a consumerist world in the wake of which follows widespread waste and destruction. I should probably write a dedicated blog post about advertising at some point, but let's leave it at that for now.
It's awful enough when adults are subjected to corporate propaganda, but it's really disturbing to see it done to children. It's in this respect that I take offense at Mark's content.
Mark's recent video is part of a broader trend of appealing to children which has turned me off of his channel for a while simply on the basis that I'm becoming further removed from the target audience. The "World's Tallest Elephant Toothpaste Volcano" shows off what must have been a dream party — water slides, bubbles, a big stretch limo — for a child. It focuses heavily on images of a bunch of children having a grand time, and relegates to only brief clips the more adult engineering work which was required to make it all happen.
In and of itself, this shift in Mark's target audience is quite fine! Mark has earned my praise for seeking to make wholesome content for children, introducing them to the wonders of science, and steering his channel to whatever ends he sees fit, even at the expense of jaded adults like me. I'm especially appreciative that he goes out of his way to make a difference for a few children in tough straights, who might be in dire need of a good time and a dose of fun.
However, shifting your target audience to children also comes with a shift in priorities. Mark has done a number of monetization strategies in the past. The first one I noticed was his collaboration with Kiwi Co, a business which makes kits for children to build small projects with. This makes me uncomfortable simply on the basis of capitalist programming, but it's hard to criticize it when you consider that it's a fun way to introduce children to science and engineering — which are the foci of the channel. There's a tie-in there, and even I have to admit that it's pretty benign.
The latest video is sponsored by Draft Kings, which is a gambling platform. A hard-to-see footnote on the video states "Eligibility restrictions apply", but nowhere is the nature of the platform disclosed, nor the risks of gambling. Instead of any responsible disclosure, Mark glorifies the activity by talking about how he participates in it with his friends, portraying it as a great time free of consequences and risk. Remember: he is talking to children in this video.
This is the most egregious flaw, and if it weren't for that, I probably would have forgiven the more subtle issues and skipped this blog post. But, since we're here, I can enumerate two other problems I noticed in this video. First, he glorifies wealth and consumerism: the children are coached into excitement over riding in a Tesla car or on a private jet. Another problem comes from [redacted]
I have no complaints about how their collaboration appears to the children in their audience. [redacted]
I would have expected Mark, being a popular YouTube personality himself, to be aware of these issues. Perhaps I'm asking too much, though, or perhaps Mark knows these allegations to be false, or overstated.
All of these things said, the problems I've pointed out are all reasonably forgivable. The outcome of this is that I feel uncomfortable with his videos, but not that I think Mark is a bad person. I'm picking on Mark today, but he is just one gear in a larger machine which seeks to rear children as participants in a consumerist, capitalist system, a machine which Mark himself was probably raised in and views as normal. But, I might hold myself to higher standards if I were in his shoes.
## Update 2022-07-03
A previous version of this article spoke critically of Mark Rober's relationship with another YouTube personality. I have since learned that the allegations against this YouTube personality are not well-substantiated. I have removed related criticisms and the name of this person from this article.