TL;DR: I need a life.
Hey Kids! is likely controlled by both human and AI, but nothing too malevolent. Maybe it's all an ARG just now pciking
up speed.
I apologize. None of this likely makes sense, I'm very tired and somewhat distracted.
The animation (not the right word, but the overlay they use for the eyes and mouth,) reminds me of the
Annoying Orange but done poorly, perhaps
in a bootleg software or in a free software. The thumbnails with CGI(?) people look as if they are all done
Morfo (a free app for the IOS that
allows you to animate a face.) Both of these contribute to the eerie feeling, at least to me, since it sends it all straight to the Uncanny Valley.
I find it odd that no one has brought up either of these things, especially Annoying Orange. I have no idea how popular that channel is now, but it
was all the rage a few years ago among kids.
Their most recent video has to do with proving that the Illuminati is real. I haven't watched this, nor do I have plans to (I'm not going to watch a
video I know that will send me down another rabbit hole when I'm this tired.) The thumbnail is of someone dressed up as Jesus. It's fairly short,
only about a minute.
The videos can be put into three categories:
NSFK (Not Safe for Kids. This includes the Illuminati video mentioned above and the Hitler ones. Videos in these categories aren't suited for the
"target" audience that this channel mainly appeals to. Videos with Morfo-esqe thumbnails are here as well, just to help out later on. This does not
include the videos where they call kids name or are directed at kids but give off a weird vibe.)
SFK (Safe for kids. Here is where the finger families videos go. No alternative motives can be found in these videos, what you see is what you
get.)
Other (lame name, yes, but there's not another word that can sum these up. These include the ones where kids get called fat and stupid. This
includes all videos that give off an odd vibe. This obviously is all subjective. I find the ones with the twins and Stephanie, as well as the little
Asian(?) girl, to be here.)
Now that you see how I categorize these videos, hopefully it makes the following make sense.
The videos that are mainly found in NSFK category have odd titles, often not making much sense at all (CreepyPasta He should really not be named, for
example.) It's been theorized that these titles come from any random Reddit titles, but I'm leaning more towards them being plucked from a Creepy
Pasta database or from NoSleep (a subreddit dedicated to scary stories, done similar in style in Creepy Pasta. The only difference is no one can
break character. You can't call someone's story out for being fake. You
must suspend your belief.) I have seen a few that are taken from
other list videos, like the "11 McDonald's foods that you Porbably Haven't Tried." All thumbnails are done in two styles, either a screncap from
another video or Morfos styled. These are normally your basic eerie stuff that you would expect.
The titles always stick out to me. Either someone has comprised a long list of titles plucked from who-knows-where or they set up a bot to choose a
title. There is a fairly popular bot on tumblr,
Doomybot This bot posts pictures
they edited, along with text
that it has picked up (as well as blog names,) and it always gives a title. This bot can also interact with other blogs by means of reblogging a post
and adding a comment. It wouldn't be difficult to make a bot that only picks from actual titles, I assume.
SFK videos are your run of the mill
Father finger, Father finger junk. I was surprised to find that no one remembers this song. My parents
would sing it to me a lot as a child, at least I think they did. Only odd thing is the subject of these videos. Not much to say here. I don't
really have a theory for why some of the "families" are related to things that kids likely have no idea about.
Now, my least favorite, Other. These videos never fail to freak me out. They feel like they are plucked straight from a creepy pasta. I have no
answers for these, only questions. It's obvious the twins have a mini-business(?) where they make clips for money. Has anyone ever found where
Stephanie came from? The little girl? Why did he call children fat, lazy, stupid, etc, etc? I can only assume, for the last one, that it's just for
laughs. But... He(channel owner?) has talked about beating kids, why? Is the girl okay? Will we ever know? Maybe not. I'm sorry that this section
is more me just asking questions that lamely trying to explain.
As for having copyrighted music in a video and it not being taken down. There are multiple ASL channels that use copyrighted songs, no pitching, and
they VERY rarely get videos taken down. I assume it's similar for
Hey Kids! Not the same, but possibly a reason, someone has a video taken
down for mature content YEARS after they uploaded it. It took a while for the video to be taken down. It wasn't gross or anything, just video game
gore.
Now then, onto the whole Nazi AI. This is what probably got me the most spooked. I love to research everything relating to Nazi era things, so it
wasn't that. It was just the idea of an AI so advanced that it could, presumably, take over humans and cause world destruction weirds me out. I
personally couldn't find anything relating to AI being even a little advanced being made by the Nazis. Now, I don't doubt that was hundreds (if not
thousands) of things that has never been released that the Nazi party did/tried to do.
Do I think there's no AI involved with the channel? No. I believe, to an extent, AI is fueling the channel. As mentioned, Doomybot is a pretty
advanced for a bot. Sometimes it's even like you're talking to their creator as opposed to a database! Cleverbot has been brought up a lot and I
used it a lot during it's heyday. I once had a popup asking me to add dialogue (It asked "If someone says [I got to insert this text], I'll say [I
got to insert this text.]" so I can only assume it to operates on a database. I don't doubt that you can sometimes be connected to a human, but I've
received the same text too often for it to only be a human driven thing. This all alone can provide evidence for AI conversation.
There are multiple bots where you can program what they say and program how they respond to things. You can insert as many things as you want for
this. Think of old DOS games. You insert text and sometimes get a response, depending on how much the developer was willing to go off the path.
Some games where more advanced, allowing multiple responses for a single request (example: "Kill Me." You try to kill you but you fail. "Kill Me."
You swing once and miss, you have dodged the attacked. "Kill Me." You cleave you suddenly. You have died!) Some AI is able to pick up other humans
dialogue.
I think I have gone on long enough, so I'll leave you with he fact that
Hey Kids! posted a comment on Night Mind's video talking about how
something was going to happen in 30 days. They posted that a month ago. Nothing happened.