Trying to Legislate Away Stupidity

As usual, something stupid happens and the government thinks they need to fix it. 

The Tide Pod challenge, in case you somehow haven't heard about it, is basically teens filming themselves putting Tide Pods into their mouths and posting the videos on YouTube because they want to be internet famous. 

Like every other challenge on Earth, this too shall pass, if we let it. YouTube has started deleting videos of people doing this, they demonetize videos that even discuss it, Tide has put out PSAs about eating the pods. And now the government is stepping in when they don't need to, as usual. 

Tide Pods - and other detergent and soap pods - have been under fire since they were released. Because the pods are brightly colored, it began with babies and small children eating them thinking they were candy. In response, Tide has made special packaging to make it harder for kids to get into the packages. And after hearing about that for so long, it suddenly became a challenge for teens and college kids. 

Here's the thing. With the small children, that is 100% on the parents. We love to place blame on everyone but ourselves when tragedy strikes, but the bottom line is that if your small child or baby eats a detergent pod, you did that. It is your responsibility to keep those things out of reach of your children. If, for some reason, you can't seem to be able to do that... don't buy the detergent pods! Novel idea, I know. Powdered and liquid detergent has been around for a long time and is still easily accessible. Heck, I've never used a detergent pod, I don't see the need for them. But if you can't keep your kids from getting at them, remove them from your home. 

With teens and college kids, that isn't as easy. It still isn't the responsibility of the government to tell the manufacturers how to make them, what color they should be, or how to package them. Colors and packaging aren't going to deter a teenager. They aren't eating them because the colors are pretty. If that were the case, there would be a lot more instances of Tide Pod eating, and it wouldn't be videoed. They'd just be eating them on their own, without their friends around to cheer them on. 

No, the motivation for teens is the same as it has always been - attention and impressing their peers. Even if the pods were just solid white or solid blue or whatever, they'd still do it to get the slaps on the back from the buddies who dared them, they'd get that girl/boy they've been eyeing to notice them, and they'd get 100,000 views online because we, as a people, encourage this crap for our own entertainment. 

Stop and look at YouTube. What do you see getting the attention there? Is it the videos of deep philosophical discussion, or is it the parents prank torturing their kids? Pranks are huge on YouTube, the more outrageous the better, and while people claim they hate to see people get hurt in them, those videos still get astronomical amounts of views. But you also have car crashes. Fights. Customers abusing retail employees and/or tearing stores up. "Karma" videos. Videos about making fun of groups that have varying popularity (ie: feminist fails, etc.). Challenges of varying degrees of dangerousness (one day it's the Harlem Shake, the next day they're setting themselves on fire). There are entire channels full of nothing but cops pulling over cars for traffic stops. 

The bottom line is that these dangerous challenges gain steam because people watch them, and they watch them in large quantity. People, for some reason, like to see people getting hurt, scared, or screwed. Whatever the latest challenge is, you can expect a million videos of people doing it, because when people find it entertaining, they'll watch as many of them as they can to see how each person did the challenge and their reactions to them. Only when the novelty wears off and the views stop dropping does the challenge stop. 

With this challenge, your video might not just get attention on YouTube, but your clip might be chosen for the nightly news. Score! And they don't care that the world is laughing at them - they care that they were noticed and got on TV or got a million views on YouTube. 

So is forcing the makers of these detergent pods to change them going to stop all of this? No. It won't do a damn thing. It requires the parents to protect small children and stop being stupid. And it takes killing the novelty and the attention whoring to stop the challenges. As I said in the video above, these challenges are getting more and more extreme, and now might be the time to start talking to your kids about them. This requires parenting. It won't end all the issues from dangerous challenges, but ending all those issues isn't going to be legislated away, either. Start parenting your child. Start paying attention to them and engaging them. We don't need more legislation. We need more parents.