Deep psychological and social analysis of expensive ice cream

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

There is a

[url=https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wMgNz9ZeY_Y]

really cute video [/url] going viral, showing an 8 year old British girl (with a heavy accent) acting excitedly indignant over the cost of ice cream.

She complains to her mother that the ice cream man was charging 9 pounds for what should only cost 2 pounds, and declares that “he’ll never get anywhere with that”. Then, as she runs off to play with her sister, the girl offers a final sneer at the (unseen) vendor “I’ll bet he can hear me!”

It’s a cute video. It definitely seems genuine, and unscripted.
It appears that the girl’s mother realized that her daughter was upset about something, as she begins the video by asking “tell me what just happened?”

So now for my question, as in the thread title:
How did she film this, and, more importantly, Why ?

As a video production, the clip is perfectly framed. The girl is centered in the picture as she waves her arms and then runs away at the end. The camera moves slightly as necessary, in a natural way, just as your eyes would move if you were watching your daughter tell you something important. For the entire video (30 seconds), the girl is focusing her attention on the camera.

So–here’s what I don’t get:
We have a concerned mother with an emotionally upset child–yet her first reaction is to grab her phone, hold it between her face and her daughter, and start filming–before finding out what the problem is. Then, while the girl rants, the mother keeps the camera centered on the girl, presumably paying more attention to the screen than to her daughter

Is this what modern parenting is like these days?

And do modern children think it is natural and normal to look at a camera-- and not at their mother-- when they get angry and want some comfort?

2

Which indicates to the cynical me it’s very carefully scripted. Real people only achieve that sort of thing in hindsight, where you think “I should have said XYZ, that would have Pwn’d them!”

If I wanted to go the other route, it’s very common for people to have their phones out especially if they’re killing time while waiting for food, waiting for kids to do something, or taking pictures of whatever. Even if it’s just a few moments idle.

Heck, I’m on the younger side of the board, but still old enough to have grown up and been an adult without a smartphone, but I’ll get mine out and check news if I’m waiting at a deli counter, not a long wait.

3

yeah, I was cynical, too. But the acting seems just too good to be scripted. She’s only 8 years old.

Yes, I also will often have my phone out when I’m waiting for somebody… But that’s because I’m reading a website or checking emails–not running the camera in video mode.
And if the person suddenly runs up to me, I’m going to look them in the eye, not hold the camera in one hand while I hit the video button with the other to start filming.

But I’m an old geezer, I guess. :slight_smile:

4

I am always skeptical but I suspect that given the kid’s personality she often has things to say that would be amusing to get on video. This was just one they happened to get the camera on in time.

5

Well, I’ve noticed a phenomenon with my grand babies. They will look at the screen and talk to you as if in a mirror.
I often grab their chin and say look at me. They automatically look back at the screen.

If you were raised with dozens of screens to look at and dozens of phones trained on your actions, from day one. Tell me what would you see as reality?

6

It wasn’t their mom who filmed and posted the video, it was their aunt.

Some quotes from the aunt from this Metro article:

Marnie was really mad and wanted to express it on Tik Tok and now it’s gone viral.

They are a bit like Ant and Dec. Marnie speaks her mind whereas Mylah can sometimes be a little bit quieter but she is the one who always come out with the best one liners.

It’s a funny and adorable video. Is it any less so because that was the intention?

7

Recording childhood memories on a camcorder: wholesome and all that’s good I’m the world. Recording childhood memories on a phone: sign of moral deviancy and civilizational collapse.

8

Based on what I see in restaurants, yes.

Related Onion article:

9

Kids often mimic their parents’ mannerisms and attitude, or that of some character they saw on TV, and will sometimes ham it up and exaggerate when they know they’ll get a reaction. My kids knew what would make me laugh and whipped that out at every opportunity. I bet the girl saw her mom pull out her phone as she was returning from the ice cream truck and just cranks-up the attitude and exaggeration to 10. And the mom eggs her on, too.

10

I don’t know. It doesn’t look at all perfectly framed to me – it starts out with a tilt, her head is cropped off on the right for a good part of it, Her feet are chopped off awkwardly (a step back or even forward would have helped), the camera work isn’t great, and it looks natural, not exaggerated (like a “real-but-fake video” often appears.) Just looks like someone who saw her kid get into a bit of fight with the ice cream man and pulled out her camera in time to capture it. Doesn’t look particularly scripted to me, though I suppose it could be.

I don’t think what the mom is doing is egregious. Hell, I’m 49 and I wouldn’t count myself out of doing something like that if I had a spunky kid and I knew they’d say something funny. This is not like an injured child or anything. This is just someone who got into a verbal dustup and doesn’t look particularly traumatized by it. Doesn’t look to me like she’s looking for comfort. I mean, not every slightly negative interaction requires me to drop everything and console my child, especially if they do not look distraught to me. She’s just a bit bemused at the prices the ice cream man charges, and it looks like she was plenty capable of handling it herself.

11

Here i thought the thread works be about expensive ice cream, not about videoing kids.

Anyway, there are several ways this video could have been created.

The child comes to the Aunt, saying, "that ice cream costs too much, and the aunt immediately holds the phone between her and the child and clicks, “video”.

The child complains to the Aunt about the ice cream, and Aunt listens a bit and then asks, would you like to make a video about that? The child agrees, and the aunt prompts the child to start again at the beginning. The child starts over, but otherwise expressed her fresh, unedited emotions.

The child complains to the Aunt. When the child is done, the Aunt says, " that would make an interesting video. Would you like to do that again, for the camera?" They start over, with a few takes and cuts and suggestions from the Aunt

The child and the aunt were taking about the ice cream, which might be fictional, and the aunt and child agree to make a film. It’s basically scripted from the start.

I’m sure there are other possibilities. Only the first strikes me as emotionally weird.

12

Maybe the kids do the rant pretty much as we saw it, and the aunt figures, heh, if I say even one sentence at them, I bet they’ll say pretty much the same thing at the drop of a hat. And so she readies the phone and then says what little is required…

13

I’m inclined to the cynical view (I would be anyway).

I note that the BBC ran a semi-improvised sitcom about a family with alarmingly precocious children, including a daughter (coincidentally named Karen). Far be it from me to suggest that influenced this ,but …

14

But of all the possibilities you mention, it is actually the first one*
which seems to be the way it really happened. And , like you, it strikes me as emotionally weird. (Which is why I started the thread.)

Even if , say, the aunt had witnessed the whole story from a distance, so that she had time to prepare herself to click ‘video’
and hear a potentially charming story…I think it is weird. The way she holds her phone between herself and her kid shows that she isn’t looking at the child…she’s looking at her screen.

Now it’s obviously not child abuse, but it’s just a sad sign that the world is changing too much for me. :slight_smile:

'Cause to me…it’s okay to tell a kid to get off your lawn…but you ought to actually look at the kid as you talk to him , ya know.

–
*(the one where "the child comes to the Aunt, saying, "that ice cream costs too much, and the aunt immediately holds the phone between her and the child and clicks, “video”)