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Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

There is no substance on earth more addictive than Elmo is to a two year old.

In most television shows and movies what people are looking for is somebody that represents them - call it an "avatar" if you must. When kids watch Sesame Street they relate directly to Elmo.

He's younger, smaller, has an insatiable curiosity, and is in a permanent mode of questioning and discovery. He even has similar mannerisms to children - he laughs a lot, has lots of energy, and is frequently confused as to what's happening around him.

The reason the author doesn't like Elmo is because Elmo acts like a two year old. The reason two year olds love Elmo is because Elmo acts like a two year old.

Sesame Street was created for two-year-olds, not bitter Internet pundits.

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Sesame Street was created for two-year-olds, not bitter Internet pundits.

It may have been created for two-year-olds, but do you know what it was created TO DO for two-year-olds?

The article has it exactly right. The purpose of Sesame Street was never entertainment. Their purpose was to use TV to help preschool aged kids get a head start on academics and emotional development, while pushing a specific set of liberal social values around inclusiveness on them. It is a matter of historical record that this was the goal.

In order to accomplish this goal, Sesame Street deliberately had to have enough entertainment value to keep kids watching. And pulled in enough pop culture people to give babysitters a reason to turn it on. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G95MA6RxJTs for an example of how they combined those two.) But those are means to an end, not the end. And it is very important to always push kids to do a little more than they think they can do.

The current dominance and role of Elmo reflects how Sesame Street has lost sight of their initial vision and confused the means (entertainment) for the end.

>The reason the author doesn't like Elmo is because he acts like a two year old.

I think the author's reasons for not liking Elmo are actually the ones he stated and took an entire essay to carefully explain.

And I find the author's detailed reasons compelling. I think there's something to be said in modeling behavior that you'd want a younger child to aspire to rather than just presenting them a mirror as they are today. I'm with him in feeling that it just isn't as challenging or valuable. I absolutely think the old show did a much better job of that.

I'm not particularly moved by this assessment.

Two year olds are incredibly diverse. Elmo exhibits only certain, particular behaviors of a two-year-old: he is self-centered, demands everyone else's attention, and is mostly oblivious to the fact that he's part of a larger social dynamic.

In the early days of Snuffy and Big Bird, they acted more like two-year-olds also, but they leaned on other qualities that are often evident in people who are learning language and movement: they were thoughtful, unafraid to say things that didn't make sense at first blush, and descriptive about their imaginations.

But that's the thing: Sesame Street wasn't created for two-year-olds. Or rather, not just two-year-olds. It was created for kids as young as two, maybe younger, and as old as six or seven, maybe older. But the increasing focus on Elmo is stripping the show of its capacity to speak to anyone older than maybe three in a useful way. It's come to the point that it's probably detrimental to older children, really to all children, because, as the author points out, it may (inadvertently?) teach things like, "Intrude on personal space! Whine and quiver your lip, kids! Guilt gets things done! Cuteness will get you everywhere!"

> There is no substance on earth more addictive than Elmo is to a two year old.

The way you put this refutes your argument. Sesame Street isn't about feeding addictions. Children are addicted to sugar, too. The genius of the program was always its ability to give them more substantive fare while still enchanting them.

IMO the article makes some key distinctions, while remaining good-humored and self-aware. That's the opposite of being a "bitter internet pundit". There's real psychological insight there, applicable beyond Sesame Street, and (the grad student in me wishes to add) some fine cultural criticism as well.

That's fine but when all they show on Sesame Street is Elmo skits your two year old at age six is still relating to a two year old.

I think Sesame Street is for children from ages up to six or so. Spending as much time on Elmo as they do, in my opinion, drastically shrinks their audience. Children who would watch Sesame Street at age 5 find Elmo dull and switch to something else.

For sure, my evidence is anecdotal: my daughter enjoyed the show from ages two to three, maybe a year and a half total, and now has zero interest. She still finds Elmo cute and cuddly but gets bored by his segments way before they end.

Sesame Street was created for two-year-olds

Nope. Watch some first season episodes (they're on Netflix) and even in the very first shows, where they clearly didn't know what they were doing yet and the characters were poorly defined and less funny, and it's clear that they were aiming for slightly older kids and to engage them intelligently. An obvious clue to this is to look at the age range of the children they had on the show, which was more clustered around the 4-5 year mark.

My two year old has no interest in Elmo. He's more interested (right now) in Pixar characters, and to a lesser extent Masha and the Bear. One could argue Masha is an equivalent to Elmo, though probably worse overall being a much less educational show. But the obsession with Pixar is fascinating to me. Not just Toy Story and Cars, but Wall-E and Up. Very proud of that, and impressed by Pixar frankly.

  Sesame Street was created for two-year-olds, not bitter Internet pundits.

Well, then it's high time we bitter Internet pundits did get programming created for us, isn't it? Max Headroom only lasted a season.

My kids when they were 2 did not attach to Elmo. I do know that my older kid at 6/7ish was bored by Elmo.

So maybe it's just that Elmo is polarizing even with kids?

Big Bird was supposed to be the child viewer's avatar.

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