Barbie Wants to Get to Know Your Child | Hacker News Reader

Barbie Wants to Get to Know Your Child

nytimes.com

39 pointstim_sw23 comments

My girls -- especially my middle one -- spend lots of time talking to their toys, having elaborate imaginary conversations in which they make up both sides of the exchange. As far as I know, children in all cultures have done this with dolls since time immemorial, which indicates to me that the behavior somehow developmentally important. Do we really want to short-circuit that with a gadget?

I think the effort to use technology -- screens, talking toys -- to relieve children of boredom, and by "boredom" I mean "stretches of time in which they're forced to come up with creative ways to entertain themselves and each other", is one of the most regrettable features of modern life.

I wouldn't idealize the past too much. I had stuffed animals that I played with too as a kid, and readily gave them up for video games and consider myself better off for it. I'd put Minecraft up against "playing outside" in terms of social development any day. Wish I'd had it when I was 6.

Interacting with technology as a child means you're exposed to someone else's vision and imagination. It does not destroy your own. In this regard, books should be seen as just as bad, but they're not. I don't think people are quite rational when they discuss this subject.

I think you both have a valid point, and both things are valuable - time with your imagination and time with other's imaginations. We try to moderate our kids' use of iPad and video games, and got them into a routine where they spend roughly equal time playing with their toys and arts and crafts and playing outside.

They seem to self regulate, and we're pretty happy with how things are going. We're not screens-paranoids, but we have noticed technology use tends to become excessive when unregulated. When your kid wants to watch hours of toy videos on YouTube instead of playing with real toys, a correction is in order.

I'm worried and/or saddened by how gendered it all is. I'm guessing it's not the NY Times' fault but probably how the designers of this product think that's shining through. It seems that for all our AI and fancy electronic toys we're still in the '50s as a civilisation. It keeps talking about girls this girls that, while i wonder, can't we just talk about children? Is it really beneficial to foist these binary and dare i say reductionist gender roles on impressionable kids? I guess many people have a vested interest in doing that, but it'd be great if it could be toned down a bit, at least.

My wife and I enjoy buying gendered toys for our children, and our children prefer them. It could be an innate preference or one conditioned by us, but we don't care and don't lose any sleep over it. Our children are happy.

We don't discourage them from playing with each other's toys, and they do, but they exhibit a clear gender bias.

There's still a lot of parents like us.

I'd say that mattel is following the market on this one. Toys is a competitive industry chasing a fickle consumer. Surely every toy is heavily focus grouped.

Children at doll-playing age, imho, lend themselves to binary extremes. They don't do subtlety. Either they like something to death or hate it with a passion. So the toy that sells is that which takes the image to an extreme.

Best part of this submission imo is this creepy image: http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/09/20/magazine/20barbie3...

I'm actually really impressed with the brand reimagining that's already going on with Barbie speaking in an authentic millennial voice on instagram.

https://instagram.com/socalitybarbie/

I wouldn't say it's millennial, rather Generation Z or even beyond.

Advertisement in toys for children must be banned. Seaman's "All hail Sega, buy another Dreamcast" was a joke, but now treat is real.

...threat

You might also enjoy the recent novel Speak, by Louisa Hall. It's a thoughtful treatment of the idea of speaking dolls/conversational agents and the connections we form with them.

http://www.amazon.com/Speak-Novel-Louisa-Hall-ebook/dp/B00N0...

"Hi. My name is Talking Tina... and I'm going to kill you."

"Don't ask me, I'm just a girl. [giggles]"

Simpsons - s05e14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej0iUcgNCpg

"You’re right. I should apologize,’’ Barbie said. ‘‘I’m not mad anymore. I just want to be friends again."

So this barbie "friend" is incapable of walking away, of ending the friendship, and will basically say or do anything to keep the child happy and talking. That's not friendship. That's a perverse version of siri.

I'm sure with the current state of technological advancement, we'll see toys that can alienate small children very soon.

Lol, perfect marketing. Instead of the kid saying "I don't like this doll anymore" she can now say "I need a new doll, this one doesn't like ME anymore."

One thing I've noticed, having 3 small children, is how today's toys compete with each other for attention. If it has batteries, it exhibits the same needy behavior: About a minute after you put it down, it will cry out something like "Play with me!" or "Let's sing another song!".

It's really irritating when you put a baby down to sleep, sneak out of the room, and a couple of the toys cry out their last desperate attempt to be played with. I'd like to [meet] the genius that dreamed up this idea.

It was nature. Puppies do the same thing. All baby mammals seek renewed attention when attention ends. It's an ancient survival instinct.

You're right, of course, the doll can't walk away. But this example was confusing; the doll asked about a problem it had with a fake friend and was responding saying it would apologize to the fake friend. The beginning of the conversation was:

"The doll explained that she and her friend Teresa had argued and weren’t speaking. ‘‘I really miss her, but I don’t know what to say to her now,’’ Barbie said. ‘‘What should I do?’’

‘‘Say ‘I’m sorry,’ ’’ Ariana replied."

"The game show also had an award for cleaning up gross stuff, including bugs, and a Mattel lawyer fretted that it sounded as though Barbie was encouraging kids to cruelly squash insects. Chidoni agreed. ‘‘PETA will come after you,’’ she said."

This paragraph filled me with despair.

Please do not editorialize the titles of submissions to HN. (Submitted title was "Barbie Is Trying to Pass the Turing Test".)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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