♪ (industrial music) ♪
- (Finebros) In this episode, you will not be watching a video.
- Whaaat?
- (Finebros) Instead we're gonna have you react to this.
- (chuckles) No.
This is the scourge.
- Okay. It's a selfie stick.
- Oh. A selfie stick.
- Oh, the selfie stick.
- I lost mine. (laughs) Maybe I'll take this one.
- Oh, for the love of mercy god and all of them.
Whoever came up with this is an irritating genius.
♪ (industrial music) ♪
- (Finebros) How do you know what a selfie stick is?
- Oh god. When did I first see these?
- I know two people that have one.
- Lots of people on the internet like to use it.
- When I was traveling, everybody was holding one.
- I actually watch professional wrestling.
Tyler Breeze, and he has a selfie stick that's like this,
except it's all feathered out.
- (Finebros) So if someone doesn't know for some reason
what this is, what is it? - This is so that you can
hook your phone or whatever type of camera you have up.
- To get a good camera distance shot.
- Once you've got it all set up,
you walk around with one of these like an idiot.
- Go like...
Just helps you to be more animated
and (cracks up) take a picture.
- (Finebros) We have to do this.
We're going to make you take a selfie with the selfie stick.
- Okay.
- (nervously) Oh god. All right.
- Okay, let me see. How do you put this here?
- See, I'm not good at this.
Oh, okay. It has a thing like that. Okay.
- (whispering) Should be smarter than the technology, Adiaha.
Smarter than the technology.
- Oh great.
Am I being graded on this?
- I don't know how to. Oh, here you go.
Sits like that?
Shoot, I'm scared to-- - (Finebros) No. No, no.
- I'm gonna need help. Should I call my daughter or something?
- Like that. Okay, I got that on there.
- All right. How long do we want to get this?
- Okay, wait.
(amused) And then how do I push the button?
- Does this have a timer on it?
- How do you hit that button?
Don't you gotta hit that button to take it?
(camera clicks)
- (Finebros) There's also a button on the bottom.
Oh, okay. We do that again.
- Hey.
(camera clicks)
- I did it! Yeah, it works! (laughs)
(camera clicks)
- Ha-ha! I did it!
- Let's get the aerial. - (Finebros) Yes!
- There we go. Ready?
(giggles)
(camera clicks)
- (Finebros) You're a parent.
How big of a thing are selfies for your children?
- They're huge.
- My little one who's 10-- she thinks it's coolest thing.
- My daughter is 11.
She takes them already.
- My son is a selfie fanatic.
He cannot think of any moment that won't justify a selfie.
- I saw 100 pictures on my phone from my daughter.
And I'm like, "What is this?"
And she says, "Mom, that's a selfie."
And then I started taking it.
And now it's becoming a thing for me.
- Actually, I noticed adults have gotten sucked into it
as much as kids have.
- (cracking up) I'm guilty of it myself.
- (Finebros) When you take selfies,
how do your kids feel about that?
- This is the look I get.
- I don't think she minds.
- I think it embarrasses them.
- She really don't like it.
- They get embarrassed.
But a lot of the things that I do embarrass them so.
- (Finebros) So do you keep up
with what your kids do on social media?
- Oh, it's not possible.
I should really be involved more in what they post.
- I try and keep up with it.
But it's also complicated.
- Yeah, you have to.
- I sometimes have to monitor her phone.
She knows actually, so it is what it is.
- I don't comment a lot on what they put up there.
I do like to know who they're talking to.
- We're friends on Facebook. I follow him on Instagram.
He wants to get in trouble? More power to ya.
But you gotta have to sneak around,
because I've got eagle eyes and I know all.
- I try to, but sometimes they hide it so much
that I can't even get to it.
Especially with Instagram and Snapchat,
which I have never used before.
- (Finebros) Do you follow her on Snapchat?
- (cracking up) Can you follow somebody on Snapchat?
I'm gonna get an account today.
- It's definitely a protective instinct.
You want to protect your kid from the outside world.
But yet you don't want to be so protective
that they don't get the experiences.
- (Finebros) You didn't grow up with selfies and social media.
So how do you keep up as a parent
when you yourself don't have direct experience with it?
- I think you gotta have an open mind to it.
- You kinda have to at least introduce yourself to those things
and use them to a certain degree.
- I'm lucky because I work at a place
where a lot of younger generations are with me.
So that's when the younger-generation coworker
would, "Hey, what is that?"
- As a parent, if you don't understand social media,
you need to jump on that, like, ASAP.
It opens up dialog that you didn't even know needed to be open.
- A lot of the literature that we have as teachers or as parents,
it's old. It's outdated within two to three years.
I think it's really important to be connected to what's going on.
- Back when I was a kid, we would make phone calls
or we would write letters
or read comic books that we weren't supposed to read.
So it's kind of all the same.
It's just different forms of technology.
Without being too overly aggressive,
just kind of grind it in their head that you gotta be careful,
you gotta be careful.
- (Finebros) So back to the selfie stick,
some people don't like them.
And they've started being banned from certain places.
Like, you can't bring a selfie stick to Disneyland.
- Oh, I didn't know that.
- I don't think that it should be banned.
- Just put rules on it like you put rules on everything else.
- Thank god.
- If you see a bunch of people walking around with selfie sticks
and you're the type of person that enjoys the view,
and you have all these sticks in front of you,
you're gonna be annoyed.
- Shrinking it down about right here,
you know, this is not too bad.
But when you get it all out in here in the stratosphere,
it's like, man, you're getting in somebody's comfort zone.
- (Finebros) So what do you think?
Do you hate selfie sticks, or do you think they're fine?
- Well, I actually want to get one still.
- It just depends on the situation.
- They're not bad. If I'm out with a group of friends
and we all can't get in the picture,
that is actually kind of frustrating.
- You don't need these.
There's people all around.
You just say, "Hey, can you take my picture?"
- Ban 'em. Get rid of 'em.
I still think it says a lot about our society,
that people are so obsessed with things like that.
You know, this would be great for golfing, you know?
This would be great for fishing.
But I can't.
I can't handle that they keep making things like that.
- Thanks so much for watching this episode of Parents React.
- And in your comments,
let us know what you want us to react to next.
- Bye-bye!
- Everyone say cheese!
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