Page Text: Where Religion, Philosophy and Demographics Meet
Because most philosophies that frown on reproduction don't survive.
Thursday, February 24, 2022
WordGirl: Why is She Showing up in my Recommended Videos?
Greetings Friends, 3AM Splinter reporting!
Many of you probably know about PBS Kids, the children's entertainment offshoot of the Public Broadcasting Service that features shows centered around education, and today's object of my late-night ramblings is no exception.
WordGirl is a superhero show with a villain-of-the-week formula that teaches an expanded vocabulary to kids (words like quarrel or doppelgänger). The heroine of the show is, surprisingly, WordGirl. Originating from Planet Lexicon, WordGirl sports the basic Superman power package: super strength, flight, super speed, and an advanced vocabulary for a 10-year-old girl. WordGirl's mild-mannered alter-ego is Becky Botsford, who lives with her adopted parents and younger brother DJ as well as their pet monkey/WordGirl's sidekick Bob/Captain Huggy Face (also from Planet Lexicon). Throughout the episodes, WordGirl must face off against villains trying to commit crimes in Fair City while keeping her life as Becky Botsford a secret.
Why am I telling you about this show? Well, during the time I spend removed from the company of other human beings because people are best taken in measured quantities, I sometimes find myself turning off my brain and cruising through YouTube. Over the course of this week I have noticed an increasing trend; WordGirl out of context. Performing a quick search shows that the majority of these were made within the last month, most of them not even a week old as of today. Just searching for WordGirl shows more outliers stretching as far back as when the show was actually airing, but the two-month timeframe still stands.
Why this sudden interest in WordGirl content? Looking at the history of WordGirl, it became an independent show in 2007 and was aimed at an audience of 4 to 9 year-olds. The show ran for eight seasons and stopped airing in 2014, continuing to release new episodes on the PBS Kids website for another year, finishing with a runtime of eight years. Looking through the channels that are posting WordGirl content now (there were only seven that I could find) five were started in the 2013-2019 timeframe and four of them were started while the show was still airing. The other two had begun within the last two years, one of which had only started on February 2nd and all the videos were WordGirl, which messes with my already sleep-deprived data. All this to say, the kids who grew up watching WordGirl as the audience it was intended for are now in the 17-23 age zone: prime nostalgia candidates. Taking their sadness that the past is over and putting it into a creative outlet. Splendiferous (As a final side note, I found another channel that is only WordGirl clips that started on Feb 20th, 2022).
My friends, it is now 5:55 here, so I'm going to wait half an hour and have breakfast. Thank you for accompanying me down a rabbit hole.
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