The Queen's agent, Peppa Pig, has American kids talking all British again
Children's binge-watching during the pandemic quarantine is a boon to influencer wannabe parents everywhere
Ring the alarms: British mole agent, Peppa Pig, is corrupting our American youth yet again, goddamnit. Despite seeming like a harmless cartoon character designed to entertain children, she has been uncovered as an agent of British cultural hegemony actively working to undermine the sovereignty of nations around the globe. As the Wall Street Journal reports, thanks to a year-and-a-half’s worth of pandemic-induced stay-at-home life, parents are noticing their kids talking nonsense about “lorries,” “petrol stations,” and “biscuits” to their beloved “mummies and daddies.” The culprit? Hours of Peppa Pig binge-watching.
One 6-year-old Rhode Island girl spent last December “[insisting] on the British holiday traditions of wearing a crown and baking mince pies for ‘Father Christmas.’”
“Mummy, are you going to the optician?” a California kindergartener named Dani apparently asked their mom (say it right!) the other day. “We were like, ‘the what?’ That’s like a college-level word… At least, I wasn’t using it,” Dani’s self-deprecating father, Matias Cavallin, told the WSJ. As parents like Cavallin balanced work and raising children, they increasingly relied on kids’ programming to help distract and educate during their Zoom meetings and work-from-home scenarios. Soon, “The Peppa Effect,” as some call it, became a nationwide epidemic.
…And yet, evidence of “some children snorting like pigs and using cheeky Britishisms” was documented long before COVID-19's appearance. After states implemented lockdowns, however, kids “gorged on the cartoon in a silo away from their usual social interactions, amplifying the effect.” Now, kids across the country are insisting on asking to turn on the “telly” for further Anglophilic indoctrination lessons from Her Majesty, Peppa. The company behind Peppa Pig, for its part, believes that kids are basically just imitating the character because they “see her as a friend.”
According to the researchers at Parrot Analytics, Ltd., a consulting firm tracking entertainment analytics via social media discussions and streaming statistics, Peppa Pig leapt from 103rd-most to 50th-most in-demand show in any genre over the past year. More terrifyingly, it’s the world’s second-place most in-demand children’s show over the past 12 months, with only SpongeBob Squarepants ahead of it but you don’t hear a bunch of 6-year-olds running around sounding like SpongeBob, Squidward, or Sandy, innit?
Oh no….
[via BoingBoing]
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