11/19/2022 0 Comments What is happy tree friends![]() ![]() One study equates the impact as larger than that of asbestos exposure to cancer - a health risk that certainly moved our society to act. Indeed, 30 years of extensive research underscores the link between TV violence and increased violent behavior among viewers. Navarro came up with the idea while designing an eight-second spot for an educational company, to illustrate what kids shouldn't be watching. The show itself reportedly began as a potential ad - ironically, against media violence according to Kenn Navarro, its co-creator. There's a running ad before each episode, while banners flash below and beside the cartoons. ![]() The wordless content appeals to a global audience, enhancing an already remarkably efficient delivery system for advertising. In every episode, the cute creatures are introduced, after which something awful happens to them, either by gruesome accident, or at the paws of the psychopathic bear. Its narrative is as primitive as its business plan. "Happy Tree Friends," now in its fifth, most successful, year may well be the most lucrative. The Bush-Kerry feature by some reports was the most popular cartoon ever. The trend has brought some truly interesting material - and also such savage fare as the graphic cartoon "Gonads & Strife" and another inviting you to repeatedly electrocute a gerbil in a light socket. By then, the beaten-down Web ad industry was already starting to ride a dramatic recovery, thanks to burgeoning new content and the increasing prevalence of high-quality, high-speed connections. Bush calling John Kerry a "liberal wiener" and Kerry calling Bush a "right-wing nut job" to the famous Woody Guthrie tune. Internet cartoons had their defining moment with the hilarious "This Land Is Your Land" 2004 election-year parody, featuring George W. It recently snagged a place on cable TV, while spawning DVDs, trademark mints, T-shirts and, inevitably, a planned video game. At last count, the site was drawing 15 million unique viewers a month, reaping $300,000 or more in ads for each new episode. In its web-cartoon class, "Happy Tree Friends" is a humongous moneymaker, as irresistible to big advertisers as it is to 6-year-olds. ![]() And it's certainly suited for the kind of viral contagion that caught up with my 6-year-old, who learned of the site from his 9-year-old brother, who first saw it over the shoulder of a teenage summer camp counselor.īut the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. "Happy Tree Friends" appears tailor-made to sneak under the radar of blocking software (which can't filter images), unless parents are somehow Internet-savvy enough to know about the site and specifically ban it in advance. "Not only do you get exposed and desensitized you're primed, facilitated, almost invited to act that way," maintains Iacoboni, whose expertise in the brain dynamics of imitation makes him an outspoken critic of media mayhem. That makes it particularly harmful to young psyches, UCLA neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni told me, because children are prompted to copy what they see - especially what they see over and over again. And it's easy to watch over and over again, reinforcing its empathy-dulling impact. Its music and animation are tuned to the Teletubbies set - that's its "joke." Its faux warning, "Cartoon Violence: Not for Small Children or Big Babies" is pure come-on - for those who can read. Just when parents thought we knew who our electronic enemies were - the shoot-'em-up video games, the TVs hawking trans fats, the pedophile e-mail stalkers and teenage-boobs Web sites - here comes this new swamp-thing mass entertainment: the Internet "Flash cartoon," pared down to pure shock value. Yet I would readily skip my next yoga class to march with right-wing fundamentalists in a cultural war against "Happy Tree Friends." Which was this: I'm a longtime journalist who reveres the First Amendment, and I live in California's liberal bastion of Marin County. He clearly had a sense that I wasn't happy about his new friends, but he couldn't have known what I was really thinking. Joshua turned to me with a sheepish grin. Blood splashed and continued flowing as the bear gleefully garroted a hedgehog, then finished off a whimpering squirrel already impaled on metal spikes by placing a hand grenade in its paw. But then the music changed, and a previously merry green bear, wearing dog tags and camouflage, suffered an apparent psychotic breakdown.Ĭrrrrrack!! went the neck of a purple badger, as the bear snapped off its head. Purple daisies danced, high-pitched voices sang and animals with heart-shaped noses waved cheerily. The other day I found my 6-year-old son watching an Internet cartoon called "Happy Tree Friends." ![]()
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