Raising a generation of FredHeads

Jeanne Wieland — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:18:00 GMT

If your children are of a certain age, mid-elementary school seems about right, you probably already know about Fred.

In fact, you may have learned about Fred in much the same way I did. I was walking past the computer where my two children were glued to YouTube, mesmerized by something on the screen. I heard it before I saw it, although it's hard to say which is worse with Fred.

How to describe Fred's voice? It's like someone thought Alvin and the Chipmunks were too pleasant sounding and so bumped up the pitch and speed to levels best heard by dogs. And roughly third- to eighth-graders too.

But to see Fred is truly something else. He's a shaggy-haired teenage boy pretending to be a disturbed 6-year-old named Fred Figglehorn who lives with his grandma while his mom's in rehab and his dad's in jail. He has a crush on Judy and sometimes gets bullied. Despite the somewhat gritty "back story" of this fictional character, it's a mainly innocent collection of videos.

In real life, Fred is Lucas Cruikshank, a 14-year-old from Nebraska with seven brothers and sisters.

Also in real life, he's at the top of the YouTube food chain with such classics as "Fred Loses His Meds" (more than 16 million views), "Fred Goes Swimming" (more than 20 million views) and "Fred Stalks Judy" (more than 9 million views). His channel has hundreds of thousands of subscribers. These are the kinds of numbers other virtual stars -- and even real ones -- can only drool about. He's an online sensation, so you know it didn't take Disney long to come calling. Fred appeared on a recent episode of Disney Channel's tween hit, "iCarly."

A neighbor's kid had shown my kids the Fred channel on YouTube and after one short clip, they were hooked and watched all the rest. It wasn't long before my son was imitating the rapid-fire speech and the eye-rolling delivery -- and soon after that my husband and I were begging him to stop.

What made our ears bleed was nonstop hilarity to our kids and the neighbor kids and our friends' kids and just about any kid who gets within the reach of Fred's voice.

I logged on to watch a few of Fred's videos again in preparation for writing this. I got through about half of a few of them and then had to mute my computer while Fred continued to mug for the camera. I mean, I understand that past generations got themselves worked up when their kids listened to the Beatles, but a few years later I bet many of those parents were listening to the Beatles themselves.

Somehow I don't picture Fred ever catching on with anyone over the age of 13, but I suppose stranger things could happen. For example, a 14-year-old nobody from nowhere with a really annoying shtick could be one of the hottest acts on the Internet.

Mom-O-Vision : YouTube

Raising a generation of FredHeads