In 2015, Ruby Franke, a 32-year-old Mormon woman in Utah, became another parent sharing her family’s life on YouTube. The first video on her now-defunct channel, 8 Passengers, begins with old footage of her standing in a modest kitchen, her five children gathered around in anticipation as she cuts into a cake to reveal the gender of her sixth child. The video jumps to a scene at the hospital shortly after her new daughter’s birth. Resting in bed, Ruby cradles the baby and her youngest son, a serious-faced 3-year-old boy in blue overalls. “Can you show me where her nose is?” she asks him as he points. “Where’s her eyes?” When an elder son reports that the camera is almost out of battery, Ruby replies softly, “Go ahead, turn it off. That’s okay.”
Over the next six years, 8 Passengers would grow into one of the most-watched family YouTube channels of all time, amassing, at its peak, roughly 2.5 million subscribers and more than a billion views. Ruby and her husband, Kevin, distinguished themselves as a messy-butwholesome alternative to the polished, world-traveling, Montessori-practicing parenting influencers taking over feeds. Instead of bringing their children to Disney World, which was initially out of budget, Kevin and Ruby took them hiking; in place of elaborate home-cooked dinners, they ordered Chick-fil-A. Kevin and Ruby were also strict. When one daughter snuck into Ruby’s bathroom and spilled nail polish on the floor, Ruby took away dessert and nailpainting privileges for a month. In another video, their eldest son was allowed to go play in a ball pit—but only after helping to clean the house. The Franke children “had chores and rules to follow, which a lot of family channels didn’t,” one viewer told me. “They weren’t the stereotypical spoiledbrat YouTube kids. It was refreshing.”
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 23 - October 6, 2024 من New York magazine.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 23 - October 6, 2024 من New York magazine.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
THE BIGGEST PODCAST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR
A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS
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IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
2024 WAS one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists. But the year's best music offered a reprieve.
THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR
IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS
THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR
PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.
A Truly Great Time
This was the year our city's new restaurants loosened up.
The Art of the Well-Stuffed Stocking
THE CHRISTMAS ENTHUSIASTS on the Strategist team gathered to discuss the oversize socks they drape on their couches and what they put inside them.
