Latest news with #Mash'ems
Straits Times
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
EvanTube turns 19: When a child's life becomes the family business
Evan Lee, better known as EvanTube, in his childhood bedroom in El Dorado Hills, California, on April 19. PHOTO: MAGGIE SHANNON/NYTIMES NEW YORK – Evan Lee was in elementary school when he became the linchpin of his family's business. With his neatly combed hair and dimpled smile, he was a charm bomb, conveying on camera both the cheerful sincerity of a boy scout and the precocious charisma of a whizz-kid . Evan, eventually known to seven million YouTube subscribers as EvanTube, was one of the earliest kid influencers, internet famous for playing with toys. EvanTube blew up by accident in October 2011, when freelance videographer Jared Lee sculpted the entire cast of the Angry Birds video game out of modelling clay for his five-year-old son. Evan and Jared decided to make a home video, like a show and tell. Situated at the family's dining table, Evan earnestly explained each character's special powers , according to the video game . 'Yellow Bird goes super fast,' he said , in a halting voice , glancing occasionally towards his father, who was filming. He picked up a lumpy pale bird. 'This is White Bird. It flies and drops white bombs and looks like a lemon when he dies.' A tiny smile revealed baby teeth. Evan is 19 now and looking back at his life. 'My brain was still developing when I was that young', so he does not remember every detail of how it all happened, he told me when I visited him at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where he is finishing his first year. He cannot recall why he wanted his own YouTube channel, only that he and his father sat at the computer and chose the name EvanTube. They uploaded their video and, within several months, it had 70,000 views. Ultimately, it reached 11 million. At Christmas that year, Jared bought a haul of Angry Birds merch and recorded as Evan showcased them, one by one, in front of the family's dazzling Christmas tree. Since the show-and-tell video, his patter had become polished. 'Thank you for watching my video,' he said in his outro. 'Happy New Year. Please subscribe.' The video has nearly 13 million views. It was obvious how, before the camera, Evan 'came alive' as his mother Alisa put it when I visited the family in a Northern California suburb. Toys began arriving at the Lee family doorstep, boxes and boxes and boxes of them. Mash'ems, Lego and Nerf products. Barbie Dreamhouses, Skylanders games, anything Star Wars. Jared bought lots of toys too. Evan unboxed, reviewed, explained, built and played with toys and games after school while his father recorded him. Soon, Evan's younger sister Jillian, who was almost four, began to appear as his foil and sidekick. As they grew older, they would do 'challenges', drinking gross smoothies and dumping dog food, ketchup and sauerkraut on each other's heads. Jared would stay up late editing, layering in sound and special effects. Making money on YouTube was a new frontier, and in 2012, Jared enlisted a creator network to help him maximise advertising rates and make brand deals. Views converted to income. Some months, EvanTube was grossing US$100,000 from Google advertisements alone, said Jared. In 2014, it reached one million subscribers. Evan was nine. (From left) Evan Lee, better known as EvanTube; his sister Jillian Lee; his father Jared Lee; and Alisa, his mother, at their home in El Dorado Hills, California, on April 19. PHOTO: MAGGIE SHANNON/NYTIMES 'I don't really know what my parents' thought process was, putting me on the channel,' Evan said. 'I didn't think it was a big deal because I was living it.' By the time he was 10, EvanTube had enabled the Lees to establish a family trust, savings and college funds. The family also bought a US$3 million six-bedroom, seven-bathroom modern villa inside a gated community. When it came to parenting, Jared and Alisa trusted their instincts. They never wanted to chase views by shocking or humiliating their children, as other YouTube parents did. And they did not want to vlog every day. Jared was careful not to show his kids burping, picking their noses or in their underwear. The goal , he said, was always to come across as normal and wholesome. 'Be likable. Get people to enjoy your presence and relate to you. That's the thing.' So, when in middle school, other kids began to tease and bully Evan, saying that his channel was 'cringe' and that he was too old to be playing with toys, Evan was taken aback. Around that time , Evan recalled that haters in the comments called him 'spoiled' and people told him his parents were 'taking advantage' of him or 'using you for money'. 'That definitely made me feel sad. Like, sad-angry.' He started telling his parents he did not want to review toys anymore and withdrew to his room. Children as 'commodities' Evan is coming of age when all parents, it seems, post videos of their children online, an untold number in the hope of making money. The current titan of the kid influencers , inspired by EvanTube, is a 13-year-old named Ryan Kaji, who started unboxing toys when he was three. His Ryan's World brand has had advertising deals with Lunchables and Legoland, a line of merchandise and a Nickelodeon television show. Conservative estimates put Ryan's family earnings at US$25 million (S$32.5 million) annually. And though posters on Reddit rally around Ryan, saying he is being exploited by his parents and deserves a shot at a normal life, his business associates disagree. In an influencer economy, a breakthrough kid or family brand can be life-changing. In the cases of the most successful child influencers, 'their great-grandkids are set for life', said Mr Chris Williams, chief executive of PocketWatch, which partners Ryan's World and EvanTube to make content and licensing deals. A coalition of law professors, attorneys-general and university students concerned about children's rights is at work drafting language for state bills safeguarding the finances of minors who are also influencers. Laws have been passed in Illinois, California, Minnesota and Utah, largely because of the efforts of an advocacy group called Quit Clicking Kids, which aims to 'combat the monetisation of children on social media', according to its website. But the activists' concerns go beyond legal and financial protections. There is no ethical route for parents to trade on a child's image online for profit, many say. Such transactions violate the child's privacy now and into the future because a digital record is permanent. They stunt a child's psychological development, replacing a sturdy identity with an idea of self 'as a commodity for public consumption', said former American child actor Alyson Stoner in a recent webinar. In Stoner's view, the child influencer economy does damage by blurring the lines between work and home: In an influencer setting, a child's director, scriptwriter and publicist is also the parent. In the best-case scenario, what are the effects of a life lived online? When Evan was in middle school and living in the new house, he started asking his parents about money. Where was it? Wasn't it his? Why couldn't he spend it? The way his parents explained it, the money was for the family's future and they were a team, Evan said. 'If I didn't work on YouTube, we probably wouldn't have been able to afford' private college, he said. Eventually, 'I realised there is no way we would have made that much money unless my parents were involved', he said. 'An eight-year-old, 10-year-old, does not have the mind to keep a successful YouTube channel, generate that profit, work with brands.' He added: 'But if I was removed from the equation, there wouldn't be a star.' 'A pretty shy kid' Even before Evan was born, Jared videotaped everything. For work, he shot weddings, corporate events and infomercials. Clean-cut and well-spoken, Jared has long been a collector of mass-market toys and merchandise. In his basement, he keeps his extensive comic book collection, neatly preserved, labelled and mounted on a long wall. Jared Lee, father of Evan Lee, better known as EvanTube, at his home studio in El Dorado Hills, California, on April 19. PHOTO: MAGGIE SHANNON/NYTIMES When Evan, at five, became infatuated with Super Mario video games, his parents got him a Mario costume and photographed him grinning and holding a Mario plushie, an image that still hangs in the family home. In the Lee household, it was not unusual for Jared, a videographer, to film his son playing with Angry Birds toys. Also, 'Evan was a pretty shy kid' , Jared said. So, from his and Alisa's point of view, EvanTube initially served a pragmatic parenting purpose. The channel was like an extracurricular activity, 'a way for him to just talk', he said. 'He didn't have to talk to strangers. He was just talking to me.' In the earliest days of YouTube, creators earned money in two ways: through a portion of the revenues from ads placed next to the videos and through sponsorships and brand deals. At the peak, the Lees were earning between US$1 million and US$2 million a year, Jared said. The magic was Evan. His audience was mostly kids his own age, who considered him, as one agency executive put it, their cool friend who got all the best toys for Christmas. Evan did not mind being super- famous when he was eight. He hardly noticed it. If kids at school were watching EvanTube, they probably just thought, 'Hey, this is my friend that I watch on my phone', he said in a video he made later. It hurt Evan when, in the comments, a viewer called EvanTube 'poopy pants'. And he did not like it when people at school called him 'EvanTube' instead of his name. What he liked least was when his father wanted to record in public, especially when people he knew were there. In those instances, Evan felt 'just shy and embarrassed', he said. Starting when he was very young, Evan told his parents when he needed them to turn the camera off. 'I've told them, like, I just don't want to record right now,' he said. 'I want to play with my friends on the playground. And they got it.' In fifth grade, Evan moved to the new house and enrolled in a new school. For the first time, he experienced the disequilibrium of fame, which he called 'surreal'. 'Everyone knew who I was, and I knew nobody,' he said. In middle school, he stopped letting his father style his hair. And he did not want to review toys anymore. 'I had to really make a case to my parents,' he said. 'It took them time to understand that I was growing up.' This transitional period lasted about three years, Evan said. Jared saw how both kids were changing, and he did not want to push them. His first priority, always, was fun, he said. At the same time, they were powering a huge and successful business. Evan's impression, in retrospect, is they 'didn't want to hit the switch on something that was working'. I asked Jared: Should young children have to consent for their image to be used for financial gain? He paused. Of course children should not be muscled into things they do not want to do, he said. 'But kids probably don't want to do a lot of things they should do, like go to school and work. I think there has to be some trust in the parenting of the child.' NYTIMES Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
New York Times
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
When a Child's Life Becomes the Family Business
Evan Lee was in elementary school when he became the linchpin of his family's business. With his neatly combed hair and dimpled smile, he was a charm bomb, conveying on camera both the cheerful sincerity of a boy scout and the precocious charisma of a whiz kid. Evan, eventually known to seven million YouTube subscribers as EvanTube, was one of the earliest kid influencers, internet famous for playing with toys. EvanTube blew up by accident in October 2011, when a freelance videographer named Jared Lee sculpted the entire cast of the Angry Birds video game out of modeling clay for his 5-year-old son. Delighted by this handiwork, Evan and Jared decided to make a home video, like a show and tell. Situated at the family's dining table with the figurines arrayed before him, Evan earnestly explained each character's special powers, according to the video game. 'Yellow Bird goes super fast,' he said, in a halting voice, glancing occasionally toward his father, who was filming. He picked up a lumpy pale bird. 'This is White Bird. It flies and drops white bombs and looks like a lemon when he dies.' A tiny smile revealed baby teeth. Evan is 19 now and looking back at his life. 'My brain was still developing when I was that young,' so he doesn't remember every detail of how it all happened, he told me when I visited him at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where he is finishing his first year. He can't recall why he wanted his own YouTube channel, only that he and his father sat at the computer and chose the name 'EvanTube.' Evan and Jared uploaded their video and forgot about it. Within several months, it had 70,000 views. Ultimately, it reached 11 million. At Christmas that year, Jared bought a haul of Angry Birds merch at Toys 'R' Us — action figures and magnets, erasers and gummy candy, hoodies and blankets, backpacks and plush toys — and recorded as Evan showcased them, one by one, in front of the family's dazzling Christmas tree. Since the show-and-tell video, his patter had become polished. 'Thank you for watching my video,' he said in his outro. 'Happy New Year. Please subscribe.' The video has nearly 13 million views. It was obvious how, before the camera, Evan 'came alive,' as his mother, Alisa, put it when I visited the family in a Northern California suburb. Toys began arriving at the Lee family doorstep, boxes and boxes and boxes of them. Mash'ems, Lego and Nerf products. Barbie Dreamhouses, Skylanders games, anything 'Star Wars.' It was 'crazy,' Alisa said, like a 'snowball.' Jared bought lots of toys, too. Evan unboxed, reviewed, explained, built and played with toys and games after school while his father recorded him. When the toys were boring or the instructions complex, Jared would 'feed me the line and I'd say it back,' Evan told me. Soon Evan's younger sister, Jillian, who was almost 4, began to appear as Evan's foil and sidekick. As they grew older, they would do 'challenges,' drinking gross smoothies blended with onions, pickles and Oreos and dumping dog food, ketchup and sauerkraut on each other's heads. Jared would stay up late editing, layering in sound and special effects. Making money on YouTube was a new frontier, and in 2012, Jared enlisted a creator network to help him maximize advertising rates and make brand deals. In 2013, through a collaboration with a novelty-gift outfit called Vat19, Jared uploaded a skit of Evan bringing a two-foot gummy worm to school in his lunchbox. At 146 million views, it is still the most popular EvanTube video of all time. Views converted to income. Some months, EvanTube was grossing $100,000 from Google ads alone, according to Jared. In 2014, it reached a million subscribers. Evan was 9. 'I don't really know what my parents' thought process was, putting me on the channel,' Evan told me. 'I didn't think it was a big deal because I was living it.' By the time he was 10, EvanTube had enabled the Lees to establish a family trust, savings, 529 college funds and Coogan accounts. Both children already had Roth I.R.A.s. Accountants said the Lees needed more write-offs and a bigger mortgage, so they purchased a $3 million six-bedroom, seven-bathroom modern villa inside a gated community. They had a swimming pool and, eventually, three Teslas in the driveway. Doors opened: free cruises, trips to Disney theme parks, vacations in London and Hong Kong. They vlogged their adventures as they went. Evan and Jillian appeared on 'The Tonight Show.' 'Once you're on the wave, you need to know how to ride it,' Jared said. When it came to parenting, he and Alisa trusted their instincts. They never wanted to chase views by shocking or humiliating their children, as other YouTube parents did, berating them or, as in the case of DaddyOFive, smashing their Xbox with a hammer. And they didn't want to vlog every day, like some of the other YouTube families they knew. Jared was careful not to show his kids burping, going to the bathroom, picking their noses or in their underwear. The goal, he said, was always to come across as normal and wholesome: 'Be likable. Get people to enjoy your presence and relate to you. That's the thing.' So when in middle school other kids began to tease and bully Evan, saying that his channel was 'cringe' and that he was too old to be playing with toys, Evan was taken aback. Around that time, 'there was another thing I had to deal with,' Evan told me. We were sitting in a study room in the library at Loyola Marymount. Long, wide windows overlooked a colonnade of palm trees. Evan has the same deep dimples and unwavering eye contact as his younger self, but he wears his hair long and shaggy and his clothes slouchy and oversize, like a character in a skater comic. He recalled that in middle school, haters in the comments called him 'spoiled,' and people told him things he had never considered before. His parents were 'taking advantage' of him, they said, or 'using you for money,' Evan told me. 'That definitely made me feel sad. Like, sad-angry.' He started telling his parents he didn't want to review toys anymore and withdrew to his room. Children as 'Commodities' Evan Lee is coming of age when all parents, it seems, post videos of their children online, an untold number in the hopes of making money. The current titan of the kid influencers, inspired by EvanTube, is a 13-year-old named Ryan Kaji who started unboxing toys when he was 3. His Ryan's World brand has had advertising deals with Lunchables and Legoland, a line of merch — pajamas and backpacks emblazoned with Ryan's image — and a Nickelodeon television show. Conservative estimates put Ryan's family earnings at $25 million annually. And though posters on Reddit rally around Ryan, saying he's being exploited by his parents and deserves a shot at a normal life, his business associates disagree. In an influencer economy — which McKinsey values at more than $21 billion worldwide — a breakthrough kid or family brand can be life-changing. In the cases of the most successful child influencers, 'their great-grandkids are set for life,' said Chris Williams, the chief executive of PocketWatch, which partners with both Ryan's World and EvanTube to make content and licensing deals. Ryan is an outlier, of course. Wannabe child influencers far outnumber successes; even the most charismatic children and enterprising parents have no idea how hard it is to make money online, talent agents say. On my own social media feeds, children I've never met dance and sing and drop wisdom like mini-philosophers. Their parents manage their pages, which also sell hair bows and plug Donkey Kong video games. I am mesmerized by them, but also recoil at the implicit exchange of cuteness for cash, possibly because the basis of the transaction feels muddled: Are these children being authentically themselves? Or are they acting out an uncanny version of authenticity? New documentaries highlight horrific abuses: parents who starved and bound their children, forced children to kiss onscreen, adopted a child and then gave him away. The prevalence of child predators who track kids online is well documented, as is the collusion of parents who sell pornographic images of their children, and even their used leotards, online. Train wrecks draw attention, so parents post videos of their young children throwing tantrums, potty training and being disciplined or punished. A coalition of law professors, attorneys general and university students concerned about children's rights is at work drafting language for state bills safeguarding the finances of minors who are also influencers. Laws have already been passed in Illinois, California, Minnesota and Utah, largely because of the efforts of an advocacy group called Quit Clicking Kids, which aims to 'combat the monetization of children on social media,' according to its website. But the activists' concerns extend far beyond legal and financial protections. There is no ethical route for parents to trade on a child's image online for profit, many say. Such transactions violate the child's privacy — now and into the future, because a digital record is permanent. They stunt a child's psychological development, replacing a sturdy identity with an idea of self 'as a commodity for public consumption,' as the former child actor Alyson Stoner said in a webinar recently. In Stoner's view, the child influencer economy does damage by blurring the lines between work and home: In an influencer setting, a child's director, scriptwriter and publicist is also the parent. At the heart of the debate lies the question of consent. Whose idea was the TikTok, the reel, the dance, the prank, the skit? To put it online for everyone to see? And what, precisely, does the consent of a 3- or 6-year-old mean in the context of a family business? When children are breadwinners, 'it's impossible to really talk about consent,' said Devorah Heitner, author of 'Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World.' She added: 'It's really a very powerful position to be the parent and say, 'Oh, we need this.' Or 'This is going to help the family.' Or 'This is going to pay for you to go to college or for your sibling's medical care.'' In the best-case scenario, what are the effects of a life lived online? When Evan was in middle school and living in the new house, he started asking his parents about money. Where was it? Wasn't it his? Why couldn't he spend it? The way his parents explained it, the money was for the family's future and they were a team, Evan said. 'If I didn't work on YouTube, we probably wouldn't have been able to afford' private college, he told me. Eventually, 'I realized there is no way we would have made that much money unless my parents were involved,' he said. 'An 8-year-old, 10-year-old, does not have the mind to keep a successful YouTube channel, generate that profit, work with brands.' He continued: 'But if I was removed from the equation, there wouldn't be a star.' 'A Pretty Shy Kid' Even before Evan was born, Jared videotaped everything. For work, he shot weddings, corporate events, infomercials. He recorded Evan's birth. 'I edited it, blurred stuff out and whatever,' Jared said. He set the video to music, burned it onto a DVD and designed a case. We were sitting on the sectional couch in the Lees' living room, recognizable as the site of EvanTube Christmas mornings, while Chloe — the goldendoodle the kids got for Christmas in 2015 (another EvanTube episode) — sniffed around the snacks Alisa had placed on the coffee table. Jillian, 16, was sitting there, too. Hearing of her brother's birth video, Jillian laughed in horror. 'Oh my gosh,' she said. 'Did you ever upload it?' Alisa asked Jared. 'To YouTube?' Jillian asked. Jared said he hadn't. He just likes having a video record of his life. 'I'm a nostalgic person. I like to look back at things.' His children feel the same. Jillian said she likes to rewatch the old YouTube videos because they 'are kind of my memories.' Clean-cut and well-spoken, Jared, an amateur bodybuilder, has the physique of an action figure, the narrowness of his waist accentuated by mighty shoulders and arms. He has long been a collector of mass-market toys and merchandise. In his basement he keeps his extensive comic book collection, neatly preserved, labeled and mounted on a long wall. He collects humongous three-dimensional statues of Marvel and other comic book characters with rippling muscles and detachable heads, as well as vinyl Funko Pop collectible figurines, still in their boxes. When Evan, at 5, became infatuated with Super Mario video games, his parents got him a Mario costume — red hat, blue overalls — and photographed him grinning and holding a Mario plushy, an image that still hangs in the family home. In the Lee household, it was not unusual for the father to film his son playing with Angry Birds toys. Also, 'Evan was a pretty shy kid,' an ''I'm-here-but-don't-pass-me-the-ball' kind of kid,' Jared told me. So, from his and Alisa's point of view, EvanTube initially served a pragmatic parenting purpose. The channel was like an extracurricular activity, 'a way for him to just talk,' he said. 'He didn't have to talk to strangers. He was just talking to me.' Alisa and Jared, avid theater nerds, met during rehearsals for a community theater production of 'The King and I.' Jared was the king. Alisa was a servant. 'I wasn't even one of the wives,' she joked, ruefully. After Evan was born, Alisa quit her job as a kindergarten teacher. On EvanTube — where she is known as MommyTube and Jared as DaddyTube — she had a supporting role, helping the kids with sharp knives or opening the hot oven. Offscreen, she cleaned up messes and searched for places that would accept huge donations of toys, she told me. Jared never had to quit his job. He just moved his focus away from weddings and toward the growing family business. In the earliest days of YouTube, creators earned money in two ways: through a portion of the revenues from ads placed next to the videos and through sponsorships and brand deals. Maker Studios, the network that was representing the Lees at the time, helped Jared boost views by brainstorming ideas and sharing analytics, said Williams of PocketWatch, who formerly worked at Maker. In addition, Maker offered EvanTube up as a brand partner, generating multiple revenue streams at once. For example, Universal Studios would hire Evan to make videos promoting 'The Lego Movie,' and then, in the 48 hours before the release of the movie, only 'The Lego Movie' ads would run on EvanTube, Williams explained. At the peak, the Lees were earning between $1 million and $2 million a year, Jared said. The magic was Evan. His audience was mostly kids his own age, who considered him, as one agency executive put it to me, their cool friend who got all the best toys for Christmas. Young viewers felt as if they were at Evan's house, hanging out with him and his fun family, eating candy and experiencing the ecstasy of an avalanche of toys. Evan didn't mind being super-famous when he was 8. He hardly noticed it. If kids at school were watching EvanTube, they probably just thought, 'Hey, this is my friend that I watch on my phone,' he said in a video he made later. It hurt Evan when in the comments a viewer called EvanTube 'poopy pants,' and he didn't like it when people at school called him 'EvanTube' instead of his name. What he liked least was when his father wanted to record in public, dragging equipment to the schoolyard or a big-box store, especially when people he knew were there. In those instances, Evan felt 'just shy and embarrassed,' he said. Starting when he was very young, Evan told his parents when he needed them to turn the camera off. 'I've told them, like, I just don't want to record right now,' he said. 'I want to play with my friends on the playground. And they got it.' As the channel grew, effusive adults would frequently approach the Lees in a restaurant or amusement park with star-struck children in tow. In those instances, Jared did the talking while Evan withdrew. 'I'd say, 'Don't hide behind us,'' Jared recalls. Alisa would remind him to be gracious, smile, say thank you and pose for a photo if asked. 'Use your manners,' she'd say. In fifth grade, Evan moved to the big new house and enrolled in a new school. For the first time, he experienced the disequilibrium of fame, which he called 'surreal.' 'Everyone knew who I was, and I knew nobody,' he said. His peers, who were strangers, knew what his parents looked like, where he went on vacation, the name of his dog, the furniture in his house. 'I was just by the play structure chilling,' he remembered in a vlog, when the yelling began. 'Everyone was like: 'EvanTube! EvanTube! YouTuber! YouTuber!'' he said. 'Keep in mind, when there's a lot of people crowding around me, a lot of people giving me attention all at once, in person, it kind of stresses me out.' The horde followed Evan as he ran to the top of the play structure and tried to escape down the slide. Describing this in the video, recorded from inside his bedroom at 17, Evan maintains magnetic eye contact, but his delivery is energized, the final cut spliced with jokey memes. In middle school, Evan stopped letting his father style his hair. And he didn't want to review toys anymore. At 13, taller, thinner and with faint facial hair, he was still playing with slime. 'DANG,' wrote a commenter at that time, 'puberty hit him HARD.' He started telling his father he was too tired to record. Or he would start recording and then retreat into video games. The evolution away from toys was not instant. 'I had to really make a case to my parents,' he told me. 'It took them time to understand that I was growing up.' This transitional period lasted about three years, Evan said. Jared saw how both kids were changing, and he didn't want to push them. His first priority, always, was fun, he said. At the same time, they were powering a huge and successful business. Evan's impression, in retrospect, is that they 'didn't want to hit the switch on something that was working.' As Jared put it, 'We still had a loyal following, and the people who did stick around wanted to know what we were up to.' None of the Lees like to talk openly about family tensions. In middle school, when Evan had the impulse to post on Twitter that he was 'really sad,' his parents discouraged him. 'You don't need to let the internet know all of your emotions,' he remembered them saying. I asked Jared: Should young children have to consent for their image to be used for financial gain? He paused. Of course children shouldn't be muscled into things they don't want to do, he said. But 'kids probably don't want to do a lot of things they should do, like go to school and work. I think there has to be some trust in the parenting of the child.' Evan was determined to stop reviewing toys. 'I didn't really take into consideration that it would probably result in less views,' Evan said — or, as I pointed out, less family income. 'Yeah,' he agreed. 'I did not care.' A classmate had calf-slapped Evan at school. A teacher had quietly asked Evan for a favor: Could a fan she knew join his gaming channel? Evan was in high school during the pandemic, and he spent most of his time in his room, avoiding his father's lens, playing Minecraft and Fortnite. 'I didn't have a lot of friends,' Evan said. 'It was just a matter of me wanting to be private even in my own house. I was just like, 'Let me not be on camera.'' Creepy Comments I sat in the Lees' living room and played with their dog on a ferociously rainy day. The context for this conversation, I explained, was the wider debate: the concern about the exploitation and commodification of children by their parents. Evan, who signed off EvanTube at the end of high school, told me that 'I don't feel exploited at all.' Jared and Alisa are trying to teach their college student to responsibly live on a budget. Some activists argue that kids' images should never be used on social media for profit, I said. Jared considered this. 'I think there might be a little over-concern with showing your kid's face,' he said. 'If we walk out on the street, people are going to see their face. As long as people don't have a way to access your children directly, that's the big thing.' Evan is using his last name now on his social media, but at EvanTube's peak, Jared always made sure not to reveal the family's last name or location. Evan told me he had sometimes been followed at gamer conventions. Jillian said people occasionally leave creepy comments on her TikToks. Was there ever a time when Jared or Alisa became concerned about stalkers or predators because of their children's broad visibility? They both looked surprised. 'No, nothing like that,' Alisa said. 'Not that I'm aware of.' Jared interjected. There was that one kid, the one with his shirt off, who uploaded his own YouTube videos where he ranted, swore, bullied and threatened Evan, he said. 'It was bad,' Alisa agreed. 'That would be the creepiest thing that ever happened.' Jared spoke to his management, who spoke to YouTube, and they took the videos down. They didn't tell Evan until years later. 'It would have scared the crap out of me,' Evan told me. 'I guess he was, like, threatening to kill me.' Later that afternoon, Jillian came home from school and joined us on the couch. She performs with her parents in community musical theater productions. At the time, they were in rehearsals for '42nd Street.' I asked them about TikToks I'd seen where she instructs her brother not to film her feet. A social media convention among young and famous people is not to show bare feet to avoid attention from foot fetishists. Jared was unfamiliar with this protocol. 'I thought it was because you didn't like your feet!' he said to her. 'No,' Jillian responded. He pressed on. Feet are natural, he said. Why would you want to hide them? That's not how he grew up. 'I think it's social media. Because there's things about foot fe-' 'Well, yeah,' Jared said. 'But my thought on it is people have fetishes about everything. So are you going to hide yourself?' 'I don't know,' Jillian answered. She looked helpless to translate her generational reality. The next day, when I met Evan, I relayed this conversation. He sided firmly with his sister. 'If we were doing a family vlog inside the house, I would not want my feet in the video. At all.' He would wear socks. He is very online. He sees the conversations. 'There are weird people out there,' he said.
Boston Globe
07-03-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Walgreens agrees to be acquired by private equity firm for almost $10 billion
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up TECH Advertisement Trump open to again extending TikTok deadline if necessary President Trump said he would 'probably' extend the deadline for the sale for social video app TikTok if a deal is not reached by April 5. Trump said Thursday there was 'a lot of interest' in TikTok and that 'right now we have at least another month, so we don't need an extension' in response to questions at the White House about the app's status. At the same time, Trump said he is willing to extend the deadline if necessary. 'If I needed an extension, I'd probably get it extended,' Trump said. 'We have a lot of interest in TikTok. And China is going to play a role, so hopefully China will approve of the deal, but they are going to play a role,' he added, without specifying the interested buyers. A bipartisan law previously set a Jan. 19 deadline for Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd. to sell the app and the service's US operations temporarily went dark. But Trump upon taking office signed an executive order offering a reprieve for 75 additional days. Since then, Trump has said that he wants to help broker a sale — and that he believes the US government should be granted a 50 percent stake in the company as a condition. It's not clear if Trump could legally offer a significant additional extension under the law, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, without an agreement. — BLOOMBERG NEWS Advertisement HEALTH Rise in vaping is offsetting the US decline in smoking rates Disposable flavored electronic cigarette devices displayed for sale at a store in Pinecrest, Fla. Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press The latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that vaping is climbing more quickly than smokers quit cigarettes. The number of US adults who exclusively smoke cigarettes decreased by 6.8 million between 2017 and 2023, according to the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. However, approximately 7.2 million adults started exclusively using e-cigarettes, according to the study. Tobacco companies, including Altria Group Inc. and Philip Morris International Inc., have increasingly shifted their focus toward alternative products such as e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, and nicotine pouches. They market these products as less harmful than traditional cigarettes, helping to retain existing customers who want to switch. — BLOOMBERG NEWS TRADE Toys are expected to cost more by fall due to new US tariffs on Chinese imports Mash'ems, from Basic Fun!, displayed at the Toy Fair, in New York's Javits Center. Richard Drew/Associated Press As toy inventors, toy manufacturers, and buyers for stores that sell toys met for a four-day annual trade show in New York last weekend, a topic besides which items were destined for holiday wish lists permeated the displays. President Trump had announced days before that he planned to increase the extra tariff he put on Chinese imports in February to 20 percent. Would he? By Tuesday, the last day of the Toy Fair, attendees had their answer, and the talk about how it would affect the prices of playthings grew more urgent. Nearly 80 percent of the toys sold in the United States are sourced from China, according to The Toy Association, a national industry group that sponsors the show formerly known as the North American International Toy Fair. Many toy makers are now renegotiating prices with retailers and taking a hard look at their products to see if they can cut costs. Greg Ahearn, president and CEO of The Toy Association, said price increases of 15 percent to 20 percent are expected on games, dolls, cars, and other toys by the back-to-school shopping season. The price range that US consumers are willing to pay is anywhere from $4.99 to $19.99, leaving little wiggle room to raise prices, he said. 'It's untenable,' Ahearn said, noting that small businesses make up roughly 96 percent of the American toy industry. — ASSOCIATED PRESS Advertisement ECONOMY The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits falls as labor market remains sturdy Attendees at a health care career fair at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, N.C. Allison Joyce/Bloomberg Applications for US jobless benefits fell last week as the labor market remains sturdy ahead of an expected purge of federal government employees. The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits fell by 21,000 to 221,000 for the week ending March 1, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's significantly fewer than the 236,000 new applications analysts expected. Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs, which have remained mostly in a range between 200,000 and 250,000 for years. The four-week average, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility, inched up by 250 to 224,250. Some analysts expect layoffs ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency to show up in the report in the coming weeks or months. — ASSOCIATED PRESS MEDIA Nearing split with NBC News, MSNBC starts building a news operation MSNBC television anchor Rachel Maddow, host of the Rachel Maddow Show. Steven Senne/Associated Press Throughout much of its 28-year history, MSNBC has leaned on NBC News to help provide the hard-news reporting that appears on its air, supplementing the work of its own anchors and opinion hosts. But that will all change when, most likely this year, MSNBC is spun off from the network as part of a new corporate entity that is being called SpinCo, along with several other cable channels owned by Comcast. Ahead of that split, MSNBC is in the process of building out an independent newsgathering and reporting operation that will include a bureau in Washington and a newsroom in New York, away from its longtime base at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. That news operation will be led by veteran executive Scott Matthews, who will serve as MSNBC's senior vice president of newsgathering, network president Rebecca Kutler announced to employees in a memo Thursday morning that was provided to The Washington Post. Matthews, who begins at MSNBC on March 17, will be hiring more than 100 journalists as part of the network's news operation. The network has already announced the addition of Politico journalist Eugene Daniels as a senior Washington correspondent and Post journalist Jackie Alemany as a Washington correspondent. Daniels and Alemany will also serve as co-hosts of a weekend morning show, along with Post opinion columnist Jonathan Capehart. In further preparations to gather its own news, MSNBC will be hiring a head of talent, a head of content strategy and a Washington bureau chief, in addition to domestic and international correspondents, producers and photographers. — WASHINGTON POST Advertisement GROCERY Kroger gives upbeat outlook while questions swirl around CEO Kroger CEO William Rodney McMullen has resigned. Mariam Zuhaib/Associated Press Kroger Co. forecast higher-than-expected sales guidance, seeking to pacify concerns as questions linger about its chief executive's abrupt exit. The Cincinnati-based grocer said comparable sales excluding fuel will grow between 2 percent and 3 percent, the higher end of what Wall Street analysts surveyed by Bloomberg were expecting. But its adjusted earnings forecast for the fiscal year was lower than expectations, partly as lower pharmacy margins and other investments weigh on profit. Shares rose 3 percent at 11 a.m. in New York trading on Thursday. The grocer's stock is up around 24 percent over the last 12 months, ahead of the S&P 500 Index. Kroger, the nation's biggest grocer by sales, is seeking a new path forward after the company said Monday its long-tenured CEO, Rodney McMullen, resigned following the board's investigation into his personal conduct. With his departure, Kroger has a relatively new bench of senior executives, including interim CEO Ron Sargent and incoming chief financial officer David Kennerley, who joins the company next week. — BLOOMBERG NEWS Advertisement RETAIL Macy's signals rocky year ahead as trade war begins A Macy's department store is in Bay Shore, Long Island, N.Y. Ted Shaffrey/Associated Press Macy's, the largest department store in the United States, saw slightly improved sales during the holiday season, but it and other retailers have warned of a rocky year ahead as tariffs push up prices and sow uncertainty for shoppers. Macy's said Thursday that comparable sales across all of its stores, which include Bloomingdale's and Bluemercury, rose 0.2 percent last quarter, its best result in nearly three years. Although a modest improvement, the result was welcomed as the retailer faces many challenges, including consumers squeezed by inflation, shrinking margins, and a bizarre accounting error. Macy's is in the midst of a turnaround plan that includes closing underperforming locations: It has closed more than 60 of 150 planned stores so far. Like other retailers, Macy's gave a cautious outlook for this year. It expects to bring in less revenue, in part because of the store closures, and for comparable sales to fall as much as 2 percent. The company's shares fell .68 percent in trading on Thursday.
