Lead Balloon Ep. 70 - How to Go Viral and Not Screw Up Your Kid's Life, with the Original "Hysterical Bubbles" Laughing Baby (All Grown Up)
- Dusty Weis
- 6 hours ago
- 27 min read
The internet's favorite laughing baby got to have a normal childhood. Here's what we can learn from her parents.
The annals of internet history are littered with cautionary tales from young people who became internet famous.
From “Star Wars Kid” (Ghyslain Raza) to “Overly Attached Girlfriend” (Laina Morris), many viral stars of the early internet did not intend to become memes.
And the unintended attention and even bullying that accompany online celebrity can have a profound—even damaging—impact on a kid’s life.
Yet surveys indicate that many young people still aspire to become internet famous.
So is there a way to achieve viral notoriety without screwing up your kid’s life?
We’ll talk to the internet’s favorite laughing baby, whose infectious giggle owned the world wide web in 2011 after her mom posted a video of the family dog popping bubbles.
The video was seen by tens of millions of people, featured on national television, and yielded significant ad and licensing revenue.
15 years later, little Molly is almost all grown up, and living the happy, normal life of an average teenager, thanks to parents who set the virtual boundaries that allowed that to happen.
And Molly (and her parents) have lessons to share from which we all can learn—whether or not we aspire to be the internet’s next viral star.
Transcript:
Dusty Weis
The annals of internet history are littered with cautionary tales…
Laina Morris
I had no idea how profoundly this would affect my life.
Dusty Weis
From young people who became internet famous, only to have that fame ruin their lives.
Ghyslain Raza
Local harassment at school, harassment on the internet.
Dusty Weis
From “Star Wars Kid…”
News Reporter
A young teen swinging around a golf ball retriever pretending it was a lightsaber.
Dusty Weis
To “Overly Attached Girlfriend.”
Laina Morris
I just decided to stare straight into my web cam and make the creepiest face I could make.
Dusty Weis
To “Success Kid…”
Sammy Griner
It’s weird to be famous as a baby.
Dusty Weis
Many viral stars of the early internet did not intend to become memes… nor even consent to it in some cases.
News Reporter
He took the kids who leaked his video to court.
Dusty Weis
Ending up in years-long battles to reclaim their intellectual property, their identities and even their mental health.
News Reporter
He was forced to change schools.
Dusty Weis
And yet, surveys show that a majority of kids today ASPIRE to become internet-famous.
Ted Lowe from All Pro Dad Podcast
Kids are seeing it. It looks fun. They want to be famous. We wanted to be famous. It how it works.
Dusty Weis
So, in a world where social media churn is more lucrative and more brutal than ever before, is there a way to achieve viral infamy and NOT have it screw up your kid’s life?
Molly
Along with learning my ABCs, I learned I have a viral video. I rarely think about it.
Dusty Weis
We’ll talk to the internet’s favorite laughing baby, who owned the world wide web after her mom posted a video of the family dog popping bubbles.
Jess
It was really just to share with friends and family. It wasn’t meant for mass consumption.
Dusty Weis
15 years later, little Molly is almost all grown up, and living the happy, normal life of an average teenager, thanks to parents who set the virtual boundaries that allowed that to happen.
Kevin
We don’t want to ruin the dynamic we have as a family because this family is paramount. It is the absolute most important thing.
Dusty Weis
I’m Dusty Weis. From Podcamp Media, this is Lead Balloon, a podcast about notable tales of PR, marketing and branding, told by the well-meaning folks who lived them.
Thank you for tuning in. Please make sure you're following or subscribing to this podcast on your favorite app and check out Podcamp Media on social.
The subject of today’s episode is a 16-year-old young woman named Molly, who has asked us to use her first name only.
The reason for that is, despite having been one of the most famous babies on the Internet, she is not easily Google-able. And she likes it that way!
Molly
I was nine months old. I have no recollection of it, and so I feel like it's gonna hit me like sometime later in my life. I'm like, Holy crap! I don't know. I don't really have much to feel about it. It's just kind of an icebreaker. Like, I have a viral video and that's kinda like it.
Dusty Weis
Now I know there have been a lot of famous babies on the Internet. Molly is the one where her Mom, off-camera, blows some bubbles… and then the dog Benny jumps up and pops the bubbles… and then the magic happens.
I have dropped a link in the episode description is case you need a refresher.
But, like so many viral sensations from that era, Molly’s parents Kevin and Jess tell me that Molly’s fame happened unexpectedly and almost by accident.
Kevin
It was a pretty normal, quiet suburban life. We had a nine-month-old daughter, a dog. I worked full time, Jess was a stay-at-home mom. We were the absolute most average people in existence.
Jess
Super average.
Molly
Yeah, right.
Jess
We definitely thrived on routine in our house. So we were just hanging around playing with toys and I think we actually I had the I had the radio on at the time and fortunately had the foresight to shut it off so that that wasn't playing in the background of the video because then we wouldn't have been able to do anything with it.
Dusty
Ooh, yeah, you don't want that strike. A copyright strike.
Jess
Somebody had given her maybe for Easter had given her the bubbles thing and the dog, you know, just instantly went for it in full protection mode and wasn't gonna let anything harm her, and then obviously, you know, the hilarity ensued.
Dusty Weis
I know there have been a lot of cute dog and baby videos on the internet. At the risk of undermining my journalistic credibility here, I’m gonna go ahead and call it that this is THE CUTEST video on the internet. The dogged commitment as Benny hunts down and pops every last bubble. The pure adoration in Baby Molly’s eyes as she watches him do it. And then of course that laugh! That is the sound of the first day of Spring.
Jess
The absolute joy that that you can hear in her laugh and just the childhood innocence.
You know, I started recording it 'cause I thought, this is so funny and you know, Kevin's at work and he's not gonna get to see it. So let's record it so we could send it to him and then to my parents and his parents and, you know, it wasn't meant to for mass consumption.
Dusty Weis
I wanted to ask actually because this was in 2011 and so the iPhone, the smartphone thing was still… I mean, everybody had them, but it was still sort of transitioning to the point where everybody used them for everything. Was this shot on a smartphone or was this shot on a classic video camera?
Jess
It was actually on the iPod Touch.
Kevin
And I think I've still got it as a matter of fact in a drawer. And by the way, that was a testament to at the time we were trying to save money.
So she had an iPod touch that only worked on WiFi and I had the smartphone. She had like a flip phone. So we were actually being cheap at the time.
Dusty Weis
Molly, do you know what an iPod touch is?
Molly
Yes I know what an iPod touch is.
Dusty Weis
Then you're then you're well ahead of the generational curve there because that is a piece of equipment that already belongs in a museum.
Jess
Really, really. Yeah. It's like you get the iPhone without the phone and without cellular. So as long as you're on WiFi somewhere, it was great.
Kevin
Yeah, it's true.
Dusty Weis
That's so good.
Fun fact: I may actually have the distinction of having been one of the first dozen or so people to see this viral video that was eventually seen by tens of millions of people.
In 2011, I was working as a news reporter at WTDY Radio in Madison, Wisconsin, and Kevin was a co-worker there.
He popped into our news room one afternoon and proudly showed us the video on his phone.
Kevin
She had texted me and said, “This might be the best video I've ever made.” And she sent it to me and I'm like, my gosh, this is so cute. This is so great and you know, thought it was really funny and I knew we had something special.
Dusty Weis
But Jess says, when they uploaded it to YouTube, it wasn’t with the intent of going viral.
Jess
It was really just to share with friends and family because we had other videos on there that were just, I guess, you know, as they would say the kids would say, like nothing burgers. It was just like hanging out around the house, like, look at the kid playing with the toy. It had very like eighties home video kind of feel.
Kevin
What happened was a friend of ours, because we had shared it with a bunch of our friends, and it was a friend of ours named Kyle Brigham. He worked for an internet marketing agency, still does, out of Chicago. And he submitted it to this blog called Stuff I Stole from the Internet. And this was like it was like a Tumblr blog, but it was really popular.
And he submitted it at like at eleven o'clock at night. And we got this email from him that we read first thing in the morning that said, “Hey, just wanna let you guys know, I submitted this to this site and they almost never take submissions right away, but they did.”
And I mean, like by the time we read that at six or seven o'clock in the morning it had already blown up. I mean, it was literally overnight.
And by that afternoon we were getting emails from Inside Edition, all these different TV agencies, like outlets and I mean it again, overnight, it literally just blew up.
Dusty Weis
How were you feeling in that moment? Like take me back to what was going through your head.
Jess
Just like buzzing. It was crazy. We went out for dinner that night to Buffalo Wild Wings, which is always a great place to take your toddler, because they just stare at the TV. You like thirty minutes of quiet time, right? So we were sitting at the table and I'm on my iPod touch on the Wi-Fi and Kevin's on his phone.
And we keep checking the numbers and keep checking email and all of this feedback and we're just like, my gosh, my gosh. And we had to be like, okay, put the phones down. Put the phones down. This is too much.
But the general initial excitement over it was just like a crazy adrenaline rush, I think, 'cause it's like… What does this mean? And where is this going and how long does it last?
Dusty Weis
The fleeting fame came fast and furious. Within days, the video had been featured on the Today Show… Huffington Post… ABC News.
And there was even an offer to fly the entire family out to New York for a live, in-studio television appearance.
Kevin
Fox News on Easter Sunday and they were insisting that… we're like, we'd love to come, but we don't want to bring the dog with us. We don't want to fly the dog to New York 'cause he would not travel well at all.
And they were like, “Well, we want the whole thing 'cause we want to recreate the video and all this kind of stuff and I'm like, “We already did that... That's not gonna work 'cause our dog just was not having it.”
Jess
The one local that we did in the studio, the news anchor, she had bubbles and she's like, “Let's give this a try and the dog just like instantly he went behind our legs and was like, “No, I'm not doing this.”
Kevin
He hid the whole time.
Dusty Weis
Well, Benny was a rescue dog, right? And I've been a rescue dog parent myself too, but sometimes they're not necessarily gonna get excited about bright, loud rooms with tons of people moving around.
Kevin
No, and he didn't like changes of scenery very much either. Like it didn't matter where it was. If it was not the house or somewhere familiar to him, he wasn't comfortable. So, he didn't mind people, but trying to go to a strange place with strange people doing strange things he was not having it.
We made other appearances like a lot of local TV shows and whatnot. We did it all via Skype at the time. So we were able to do that at least comfortably, or ones that we could do locally in the in the studio.
Dusty Weis
Appearing on the news was one thing. But Kevin and Jess say it was the POP CULTURE call-outs on programs like Conan O’Brien that really drove home the impact the video was having.
Kevin
So Conan introduced the video… He’s like, Oh you’ve got to see this video.
Conan O’Brien
This one is too cute not to share. It’s a baby laughing hysterically as a dog jumps around trying to eat bubbles. It’s just fun. Take a look.
Kevin
And right in the middle of it as she started laughing, Will Ferrell cut in…
Will Ferrell
La raza is coming for you, ese.
Kevin
And it was part of this joke they had between them where he was like threatening Conan.
Will Ferrell
I’m going to take that beard and give it a burial at sea. And by burial at sea, I mean flush it down my toilet. Your beard makes me vomit!
Kevin
Oh my God! Our kid is part of an inside joke with Will Ferrell and Conan. I don’t think we can top this!
Dusty Weis
So as this newfound and temporary fame sort of exploded, what conversations were you guys having at home about balancing the opportunity, which was immense, with the need to use caution, particularly as it pertained to Molly growing up and having a normal childhood. What what did those conversations sound like?
Kevin
Well, the first things that we started to do is we started to ask around to some of our attorney friends because, you know, all of a sudden we were getting presented with licensing deals and contracts and stuff like that that we didn't know what they meant or what was standard or whether we were being taken advantage of.
So we started like calling around asking for attorneys to help review these things.
At the time there was another viral video that was that went shortly before that was the guy ripping paper and the baby was laughing at it.
Jess
Ripping paper baby.
Dusty Weis
Laughing baby there, yup.
Kevin
Yeah, we actually reached out to that guy and were like, what do we do? Because again, we had never been here before.
Jess
And we had been contacted by an agent who said that he worked with that family as well. So we were our initial line of questioning was like, Okay, how do we do this? And also, do you trust this guy? As a fellow parent, is this somebody who to be can be trusted?
Kevin
Yeah. And it was a guy that was literally building, he was based out of London. He was building an agency specifically for viral videos. That was his specialty. So he saw this need of people like us and was like, I'll handle all this for you. I'll handle all the requests and do the negotiation for you.
So we talked to him, we let him take it over, and that helped us relax quite a bit because that took a lot of the pressure and a lot of the mystery out of it.
I mean, we still had the chance to review everything because he was receiving all the requests or anything we did, we just forwarded it to him.
And as time progressed too, we didn't have stalkers showing up at our house or anything like that. We're like, okay, this is gonna be okay. This is gonna be fine.
Jess
And as as far as like keeping things normal, at home for childhood for her, you know, I still made some videos of her. A couple of them got put onto the YouTube channel, but for the most part it was kind of like, you know, you recognize when you got the lightning in a bottle and anything else that you do just isn't gonna amount to that.
So it was kind of like I'm not wanting to continue to upload things.
Just didn't have a desire to continue to live in any kind of limelight.
Kevin
Yeah, and as far as Molly goes, the celebritiness went straight to her head. All she wanted was the best apple juice.
Jess
The best mac and cheese.
Kevin
You want to talk about prima donna. No, I'm totally kidding.
Dusty Weis
Molly, obviously you don't remember taping the video and probably the initial hubbub and all of that, but what is your first memory of it? Like, I joke with my kids that I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't know that Luke Skywalker was Darth Vader's son. Like it's just something that I've always known. Is this just something that you've always known?
Molly
I mean, I don't even know my first memory of it. just grew up being like, yeah, that viral video that I have. Along with learning my ABCs, I learned that I have a viral video, you know. Like I don't really remember anything. It's just been there ever since.
Kevin
But you do manage to share with your friends quite a bit.
Molly
All the time. And I always forget to as well. It's so funny. Like literally yesterday, there's this girl I've been friends with for a year now. And I was telling her, I like, I'm doing this podcast thing tomorrow for like my viral video.
And she was like, “You have a viral video?”
And I was like, Oh I didn't tell you. I pull up the video, I show it to her, and I'm like, it has eleven million views and then all the re uploads and I've been all over TV and everything.
But like, I don't know, all the time I'm always just like, Yeah, I have a viral video.
Dusty Weis
It's just a viral video. So like you forget to tell people about it. Like, is there an amount of time that you wait to tell someone about it or is it just not a thing that you think about?
Molly
I rarely think about it. I think about it like once a week. I'll be talking about something and then I'll be like, Wait, you're a new friend. You don't you don't know this, but I have a viral video.
I always just kind of casually drop it and then my friends are always like, my god, why didn't you tell me this? And I was like, I don't know.
Dusty Weis
What's like the craziest way that it's ever come up? Has anybody ever like found it out about you without your telling them? Like a teacher at school or somebody like that?
Molly
No, no. Because again, like it doesn't look anything like me. It doesn't have my name plastered all over it. It isn't tied to any of my social media. I just have had friends like comment on the YouTube video being like, I go to school with her! That will happen.
Dusty Weis
Do you feel really good about being able to like turn your relationship with this viral video on and off? Like you can you can be that kid who was YouTube famous when you wanna be, but then also just be a normal kid?
Molly
Yeah, it's nice to be, you know, still normal, like being like I'm just a normal teenage girl.
But, every once in a while, but like specifically when I bring up a video, I'm always like, “Yeah, and I was super viral and…” you know.
Jess
You get to pick and choose when you get to brag about it.
Dusty Weis
Unfortunately, as many other internet celebrities have discovered over the years, you don’t get to pick and choose what the internet does with your name, image and likeness once you’ve become a fullblown meme.
And Molly’s getting to have a normal childhood was far from a sure thing in 2011.
So coming up after the break, Jess and Kevin find out just how much work goes into managing viral intellectual property on the internet.
Jess
You need to be cautious about anything you sign. Read the fine print.
Dusty Weis
And tell us the secrets to raising a well-adjusted child celebrity.
Kevin
We always eat dinner together, and phones are not allowed at the table.
Dusty Weis
That’s all coming up in a minute… here on Lead Balloon.
Dusty Weis
This is Lead Balloon, and I’m Dusty Weis.
As spring turned to summer in 2011, the initial adrenaline rush of their daughter Molly’s viral internet fame had faded away.
And, for parents Jess and Kevin, the stark realities of running a booming intellectual property business interest were starting to set in.
Jess
Through all of the licensing that we've been able to do from that and the Google ad revenue, we were able to put together a nice savings account for her to use toward education after high school. So in that sense it has been a bit life changing.
Dusty Weis
To their great credit, Jess and Kevin quickly arrived at the conclusion that the money was not theirs. They resisted the temptation to exploit Molly’s success and instead devoted themselves to stewarding her earnings and the use of her public image.
Which was not a small job, as dozens, even hundreds of other YouTubers tried to pirate and re-upload Molly’s video to cash in themselves.
Jess
I spent hours… so many hours, just like searching through YouTube trying to find people that had uploaded it because back then people were just like taking your video, re-uploading it, naming it the same thing and getting away with it. And then they were able to get monetization off of it themselves.
And that's what really irritated me because I was like, that's taking something that is supposed to be my daughter's for yourself when it's not yours. And that's just beyond the child privacy issues of somebody else uploading a video of my child without my permission.
But I got so quick at filing YouTube copyright claims. Like for a while I had like the string of letters at the end of like the identifier for the YouTube video memorized because you had to type it in every time, you know, say like this is the link for my video. This is the link where its imposter… and you have to sign an affidavit every time saying that, you know, this is my video. I swear I'm not being incorrect and everything like that.
So that was that was a lot, a lot.
Kevin
And then of course there were the compilation videos that kept coming up where they were splicing together compilations.
So there became a time, within like six months or a year, where it was in so many places and it was just impossible to stop. And we had gotten to a point where the traffic was already kind of slowing anyway. So you know, once in a while I'd get a message from somebody saying, is this your video? And it's like, Yep, thanks.
Jess
Yeah. I always felt bad when someone would send it to us on Facebook being like, my gosh, look what popped up. How cool. And I'm like, Thank you, copyright claim. It's not cool. It's cool for you, but not for me.
Dusty Weis
I think it's really interesting the way that you frame that, especially now in this era of like short form viral video in which we live. You guys really got a taste of what people must deal with all the time now.
TikTok, Instagram reels, I feel like 75% of what comes across my feed is pirated content. I would argue it's probably even more out of control now than it was back then in that Wild West era of the internet.
Kevin
Well and it's interesting you mention that because again, when this happened, viral videos were a new concept. They were novel. Like, everybody's talking about this cat video and so we were in as part of that initial wave and now there's a viral video every day.
Dusty Weis
Well, and viral video in different echo chambers. Like the feed that you're served is different from the feed that I'm served, where back then we were all sort of feeding from the same stream of viral content.
Jess
And I think YouTube wasn't even really serving up a lot of suggested content at the time. It was like people had to come across it and then send it to people to get things to take off.
Kevin
Right. And of course, with the traditional media still being as big as it was at the time, you know, the fact that it was broadcast, it was featured in all these news stories.
Again, that's not happening in an era of where literally millions of videos are getting uploaded every day and they're all going viral.
Dusty Weis
But while the pace and the volume of video virality have changed significantly over the last 15 years, Kevin and Jess say that there are several key takeaways from their experience… that still hold true today.
Jess
You need to be cautious about anything that you sign. Read the fine print.
For example, if you even submit your video to America's Funniest Home Videos, it is now theirs. You do not own the video any more. You cannot license the video any more, you surrender every right that you have.
Kevin
Yeah, we had we had a lot of people ask us about that. Like, you should submit it to them. We're like, No, 'cause you give up ownership of the video.
Jess
You give up ownership for a chance to maybe win ten thousand dollars. Which I mean, obviously ten thousand dollars is fantastic, but you no longer own your video.
Kevin
And that's when you upload it. It's not when it's on the show. It's as soon as you upload it, it's theirs.
Dusty Weis
And who reads the fine print anymore, right?
Jess
Right. Thankfully we did. Cause I was like, you know, because we were working with a lawyer at the time who was reviewing another contract. And, you know, we're like, what is in perpetuity and intellectual property? And you know, like what do these things mean?
So then when we were looking at America's Funniest Videos, I was like, oh no!, No, no. This needs to remain our video. It is not anybody else's.
Dusty Weis
You had mentioned that you were able to capture a lot of licensing from this and sort of set aside a nest egg for Molly.
And I don't want specific figures here, but have they told you how much is sitting in an account for you there someday? Have they given you any idea?
Molly
No, me and my friends tried to do the math once and we're like, ehhh, I don't know if that's it.
Jess
I mean how could you ever?
Molly
We're like, okay, million views to money ratio YouTube. Like, you know, like we just did that in middle school. Like we were trying to figure it out 'cause we were curious, but I still have no idea. They're always just like, “Until you get to college is when we start figuring that stuff out.” So I'll figure it out in a few years.
Jess
Yep.
Dusty
I seem to remember, Kevin, passing you in the hallway and we were chit chatting about it and you said something to the effect of “Well I'm just really glad that my daughter's never gonna have to worry about paying for college.” Is that kind of how it turned out?
And what's your plan for sort of giving the keys to those accounts to Molly someday?
Kevin
I hope so anyway. Who knows?
I mean, in a couple more years, once she decides what she wants to do after high school and where she wants to go with her life.
Everything that we did earn from it has been set aside for her. We didn't touch any of that, so it is solely for her benefit.
The interesting thing is, with Molly calculating the YouTube revenue. Even at that time that the video went viral, the algorithms and the monetization was changing even while we were there, because at the time they were still paying pretty well, but that started changing pretty quickly.
And so we started seeing less and less and less and less from the YouTube revenue. And we were making it up more on licensing deals.
Like the biggest licensing deal we got was to have the video featured in a Brazilian cell phone commercial. And there was a couple of videos in Japan where it was licensed. I mean Molly was huge in Japan. Huge in Japan!
I think I've still got the printout from when it was on the front page of Yahoo Japan. And there's Molly right there on the front page of Yahoo Japan.
Jess
Yeah. She was on the front of the MSN website too. My dad printed that out and framed it.
Kevin
He was so proud of that. So proud of that.
But yeah, I mean all of that stuff, again, we set it aside. That's for her to benefit once she's ready.
Dusty Weis
Molly, when you hear your parents talk about this moment in time, when they were your parents, but they were also essentially your talent managers too. And they put a lot of time and effort and thought into making sure that you were gonna be provided for, but also protected and that you were still gonna get to have a normal childhood.
How's that make you feel about your folks?
Molly
I'm very deeply grateful for it and I'm so glad I don't have to worry about that kind of stuff at all. I'm very, very, very, very, very, very, very thankful and fortunate for them.
Kevin
We totally coached her to say that.
Molly
There's a script right behind the camera.
Jess
You'll get your Apple Cash after the call.
Molly
Yay!
Dusty Weis
You guys seem like you get along really, really well as a family. I would go out on a limb and say that there are a lot of parents that wish that they had a relationship with their teenage daughter like you guys have with yours.
Molly
Yeah. Most days.
Jess
We're very fortunate. She's a great kid and she has a very good heart and we thank our lucky stars every day that she is well-adjusted as she is.
Dusty Weis
Of course, you can make an argument that lucky stars don’t have all that much to do with it.
That it takes a strong family bond, careful foresight, and ironclad convictions to survive a brush with viral fame and still preserve what really matters.
And for the millions of social media parents who chase virality today, Kevin and Jess say it’s important to keep everything in perspective if and when you actually catch it.
Kevin
It's gonna be overwhelming at first, and you're gonna take so much criticism.
I can't even tell you how many people thought that we were endangering our dog. We were poisoning our dog. Oh, the dog's gonna maul the baby.
You know, there was a lot of a lot of presumptions made about us and our family and the dynamic. And it's like, yeah, you know, you saw literally a one-minute sliver of our life. That is literally all you saw.
I guess it's one takeaway is don't take it so seriously.
Be true to yourself, be true to the things you like, the things that you like doing. The success will be a byproduct of that.
This sounds very conceited to say, but it's like I'd like to think that I'm a fairly grounded person and so I like to stay realistic to what the opportunities are for us and making sure that we're not getting too far ahead of ourselves in pursuing them because, we don't want to be left holding a bag. We don't wanna ruin the dynamic that that we have as a family because for us, the three of us, this household, this family paramount. It is the absolute most important thing.
And so don't let any kind of success or any kind of opportunity like that tear you apart.
Jess
Ultimately your family is more important than a view count or reactions and comments. Because at the end of the day it's like that is fleeting. But your family is still gonna be there. So you have to treat that relationship with respect and cherish it.
Dusty Weis
I’m a parent… I've got an eight year old, a six year old, and almost four year old at home. And so my kids have not gotten to the age where they are on or even care about social media yet. But I can see it coming.
Molly
Hold it off as long as you can.
Dusty
Well, and that's my question. Like, I wanna know how you went about navigating Molly's relationship with social media and how you, Molly, honestly, feel about it as someone who is a teenager right now in this era when social media is everywhere and its effects have now been studied and are proving to be fairly toxic.
But also, it's everywhere. It's where people's social lives play out.
And so there's this sort of tug of war between, well, I want to be a part of the scene where my friends are and I want to understand the culture and the memes and the references that they make, but also I don't want to be crippled with depression and anxiety and not enjoy my life.
Molly
I tell you what, it is paralyzing.
At first it's like, yeah, I can post pictures. It's so much fun. I love posting pictures and stories and all that.
But just like scrolling and it just gets to a point where it's just like, my god, I feel my guts are rotting right now.
Like if you can hold it off as long as you can, hold it off as long as you can.
My mom has set screen time limits on Instagram since the minute I got it. I tell you what. I only have two hours on Instagram a day. Prior to that it was an hour.
Kevin
And you still don't have TikTok.
Molly
I had TikTok and I tell you what, I hated TikTok.
Jess
You loved it so much you ended up hating it.
Molly
I loved it so much I ended up hating it because single time I opened up TikTok, I found myself just getting so much depressing content all the time.
So I was just like, I don't wanna watch this because every single time I leave I'm so like sad.
Like every once in a while I'll look at it, like to see what my friends post, but like that's like three times a year, not even.
Dusty Weis
It seems like there's a recognition that like this is a thing that makes me feel icky, so I need to limit my exposure to it.
Kevin and Jess, was it always like that bringing her up? How did you go about like setting limitations versus letting her explore and arrive at that conclusion on her own?
Jess
With TikTok is where it really started. That was the first kind of social media platform that she had because her friends had it and everybody was doing the cute dances.
And so we're like, okay, it appears harmless because at the time it was just everybody's just doing the latest dance trend and…
Molly
Yeah, it was 2019. It was before it became what it is today. It was because it was just rolling off of musically. So it was just everybody was just singing and dancing. There was nothing bad.
Jess
But then it started to turn into the monster that it is now. And as she was describing earlier, she would sit and just like scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll.
She would come down to dinner and she'd have black circles under her eyes and she would barely talk to us at the dinner table.
And after we took it away, all of the sudden she was coming to dinner, black circles are gone, and she was chatty-chatty about everything that was going on in her life.
And I was like, That's all the evidence that I need that after you know the break that she was mandated from TikTok, that she wasn't gonna get it back on her phone.
So she still doesn't have it on her phone, she has it on her PC, she can access it there.
But she's actually gone to the point where she installed a Chrome plug-in to limit her time on that as well because she has found herself still falling back into that rabbit hole.
Molly
Yeah, I've given myself twenty minutes.
Dusty Weis
This is like a learned behavior. This is something that you learned from your parents.
Molly
Yeah, yeah. 'Cause I don't know, I started having screen time all the way like in fourth grade.
So, you know, I was just kind of like growing up with, you know, there are limitations to having a screen. Nowadays it's more loosey goosey, but that's just kind of a part of it.
So I don't know, even if like you took like my Instagram screen time away, I would still be like, Okay, I have to use my time preciously.
If I'm sitting with a friend and I'm on Instagram and then they start talking to me, I close it and I'm like and we talk and then I open it back up again. Like I'm saving each second of it.
Jess
That's healthy!
Molly
I know! But even if I got that weight off of it, I would still be doing the same exact thing.
Kevin
And we still require there are no phones at dinner. Like every night. We always eat dinner together and phones are not allowed at the table.
Dusty Weis
That's a huge rule. No, I like that a lot. That's great.
Jess
It's yeah, it's hugely important.
Dusty Weis
Of course, as those pushy Fox News producers pointed out when they were trying to fly them to New York, Molly was only one half of the duo whose viral magic made the world chuckle.
And while she has grown into a remarkable young woman who’s getting her driver’s license this summer, the passage of 15 years means that Benny the dog, unfortunately, is no longer with us.
Molly
He was the sweetest boy.
Jess
He was the best dog.
Kevin
He was. And the line that we said the whole time was that we were really happy that we got to share the joy that he brought into our lives with the world in the way that we did, because he made millions of people laugh around the world and that was just a small amount of what he did for our family every single day, and we miss him.
Dusty
That’s a really sweet tribute. I like that.
Last question that I have then, and this is an important one, maybe the most important question of the interview. Does Molly still have that laugh?
Molly
I don't know. Does that sound like it?
Kevin
To be honest with you, that was even unique for its time. That was a very rare appearance of that laugh. And it was never really replicated after that.
She always obviously had a great laugh, but even, you know, as a baby, I didn't hear anything like that again. So it truly was a one-off thing.
Jess
Yeah. Yeah. She still has the joy that exuded from that laugh, so
Molly
Do you know that one trend where people would like exhale all the air out of them and then like someone would press on their chest and they start laughing to show…
Dusty Weis
No, no.
Molly
Okay well look it up after this. You exhale all of your air out and then you cross your arms and then somebody presses down on your chest and you start like laughing and it shows like your real laugh.
And I still think mine's very similar to it. It's very giggly, you know, but it's just a lot deeper now.
But I still kinda see it in some ways.
Dusty Weis
Well guys, this has been super awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your story and it couldn't have happened to nicer people is maybe my favorite thing about this.
But Molly, Kevin and Jess… thank you so much for joining us here on Lead Balloon.
Molly
Yeah, thank you.
Dusty Weis
And, of course, thank you for tuning in.
Here on Lead Balloon, these are the sorts of mass communication Freakonomics moments … that we love to talk about.
So we hope to see you back here in this feed again sometime soon. Follow us on your favorite podcast app, and please tell your friends. That’s the best way for me to grow this into something that pays the bills around here.
Or, hire us to make a podcast for your company.
Because Lead Balloon is produced by Podcamp Media, where we help global brands use podcasting to tell worthwhile stories and connect with their audiences. Our podcast studios are located in the heart of beautiful downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We work with brands all over North America to help them launch and build podcasts that work. Check out our website, PodcampMedia.com.
Music for this episode by Reveille.
And, until the next time folks, thanks for listening. I’m Dusty Weis.