Posted December 16, 2025 by Joshua Galecki
Cocomelon is a television show made for children by humans. To make sure that each episode is maximally attention grabbing, episodes are tested in what they call the Distractotron. An innocent child is placed in front of two TVs. One shows a soothing nature scene and the other shows the latest Cocomelon episode in production. If the child looks away from a scene of Cocomelon to the waterfall (or the forest or the zebras or whatever), the scene is cut from the Cocomelon episode. In this way, only the most attention-exploiting scenes make it into Cocomelon.
It doesn't really matter what's happening in the scene, or what the story is for the episode, so long as it gets eyeballs locked on to it.
This horrifies me. I had to make it into a game. I don't think the game perfectly hit the mark with the Distractotron. I never got to make that into an actual mechanic, although there are two vestigial TVs in the focus session room. Still, I think I did the theme and the feeling justice. What does it feel like to work for the Youtube algorithm? Is it different from your boss being an actual algorithm?