The importance of a 'kid friendly' persona

[DokiDokiTsuna]

...Or lack thereof. ^^

So a few of the professional artists in my feed have been talking about an issue they've been facing, where people tend to criticize them for behaving...well, like adults, despite the fact that they work as animators and storyboarders on kids' cartoons.

It's actually kind of a complex problem...like, they're not big celebrities or anything, so they need to have their career information in their social media profiles and stuff, so they can get hired.
But that makes it available to everyone, including to children (who are becoming increasingly present on social media and have their own parasocial issues with media professionals...) and those who enjoy 'white knighting' for them (especially if it'll help them deflect from an actual problem ad hominem-style).

Like, on the one hand, it's an unfair standard placed on them and often leveraged against them to imply that they shouldn't express anger about any of the other issues they're facing, unless it's in a 'sanitized' way.
On the other hand, there really are children underfoot, and it's hard to know what to do with them for several different reasons...how do you set boundaries in a situation like this?

[elyss]

My first thought is that platforms like Twitter and Facebook are 17+ to use. It's on the parent to look after their child in public as well as online, and I will not change my rhetoric because they don't want to do their job correctly.

[vothnthorvaldson]

It's probably not a clever career move to be the face/the public image of both a kid project and a super adult project at the same time; otherwise I don't see what could be an issue.
Reality exists even for kids and there will be many, many worse problems for them if they are let alone on the internet too young.

[Darth_Biomech]

We're tip-toeing around the children too much in ways that are either produce nothing useful or are downright harmful. Like, their mind won't shatter if they'll see an angry rant from the creator of their favorite cartoon online, just like a glimpse of a boob won't instantly turn them into perverts.

and, as @elyss already mentioned, kids DO NOT BELONG on social media. It's an adult space, teenager at best.

[GumshoeComix]

Children shouldnt be on social media in the first place. so if they're on an adults profile they should expect adult things instead of parents expecting them to not act like themselves.
besides, the phrase "never meet your heroes" exists for a reason
when I was a kid online I saw much worse things than an animators angry ranting.
"Back in my day!" shakes fist

[Pony_wearing_a_hat]

I think it's also important that people recognize that not every aspect of a person's life is something they necessarily want to endorse towards children. For example, someone struggling with an addiction to cigarettes shouldn't be shunned for pushing smoking on kids because someone found a picture of them smoking floating around. Not everyone would wish every aspect of the life the lead on every child who consumes their creative work.

[rajillustration]

It's been a problem lately on social media where animation, and in particular animators, are being treated like some sort of heroes, when the truth is they're just artists. Animation is really stressful, too, so they really don't need that extra stress where they get off their day job and then some stranger's children are blowing up their twitter account.

They do have to be careful of their company's brand, you can't just go off the cuff and post whatever, and that's true of any job. But making an alternate account and not attaching it to your account is pretty common for artists that have to brand for working with kids. A couple animators I follow are straight up leaving twitter lately after all that NFT and other nonsense and it makes sense. When you have a studio job, you don't need a twitter, so why add the extra stress of being the internet's babysitter?

[Freemints30]

Ahem, take you damn kids off of social media. They don't need it. I don't care how "mature" You claim they are a14 year should not have their profile everywhere for every rando. You are a awful parent period if you allow that and still blaming everyone else. These social media companies should do their job and get these underage age minors out.

Its not on other unrelated people to be all family friend, its on parents to parent and for these companies to enforce policy to keep minors out. Period.

The internet was never and should never be a baby sitter. Strangers on the road should not act all squickly clean neither stranger online.

Really as a kid you got worse things to worry about than some animator being an adult.

Like their parents clear neglectfulness

[DiegoPalacios]

This issue, is the on-line equivalent of seeing a kid in an adult pub.....the kid should not be there, the ideal would be to get them back to their guardian, and is unrealistic to expect people between all the noise to notice and behave....

Kids should not be in social media, they are not mentally or emotionally ready for it. Parents should be more attentive and restrict that. Now, if the adult don't notice the kid in twitter or other website(which is harder in social media), is unrealistic to expect them to have a third eye and notice kids are there....

That being said, if a creator is posting in media directed to kids, is expected for them to behave accordingly on said posts. But on sites for older people, the rules change.....

[Kaydreamer]

I tend to keep my public-facing social medias reasonably professional, and I know some of my actual-real-life students have found my art Instagram... So I'm very careful on Instagram. I will remain so for as long as I'm a teacher.

BUT.

I make no effort to keep my Twitter kid-friendly. It mostly is, because again, professional - but I don't go out of my way to make it so. I also have a side-account on Twitter which is explicitly NSFW, and has big NO MINORS signs on it. My Patreon will also have NSFW sketches and such from time to time, so that will be age-restricted, too. (Not that minors tend to have the money for Patreon in the first place.)

Little kids should not be unsupervised on social sites, and teens should be told in no uncertain terms that if they are sharing space with adults, those adults are not required to cater for them. If they don't like it, they can get off those adult spaces. (Or learn how keyword and tag blocking works. It's not hard.)

I hate the idea that, just because a creator may be making a project which is all-ages friendly, that means their whole online presence needs to be sanitised. They're human, and should be able to create whatever art they like! If I want to make steamy art of the over-18 characters from my eventual YA-friendly comic for my side-Twitter or Patreon, I will be pretty pissed off if someone tries telling me that somehow perverts the comic - especially when those images are only being posted in 18+ spaces. I've done the responsible thing by curating that content in an adults-only space. It's the parent's responsibility to keep their kids off that space. Not mine.

[Kelheor]

This great picture from the artist TotesFleisch8 reads
"What are you doing, cursed creature, the children are watching!"
"So why did you bring the children to my bathroom?"

Of course, TotesFleisch8 is an NSWF artist, but the point stands the same, any tender minded person under a particular age is not safe from anything they can find on the net and "kid friendly" illustrators do not create their accounts specifically for children too.