Netflix: Now Streaming Regret

Turns out stuffing pronouns into cartoons is not a marketing masterstroke

If you’ve got youngish kids, you might want to grab your extra-large coffee mug—this one is going to get a little spicy.

Elon Musk urged his followers to cancel Netflix this week before going on a wild posting spree, retweeting (double X-ing?) dozens of accounts accusing the streaming giant of “grooming kids into the gender cult,” packaging radical content as “children’s entertainment,” and refusing to condemn pedophilia. Unsurprisingly, half the Internet reacted like this was some shocking new development—as if (sane) parents haven’t been side-eyeing the “kids” lineup for years wondering why it looks more and more like it was curated by the gender studies department at Berkeley.

I mean, it’s not wrong.

The outrage started when Musk—whose own relationship with “gender ideology” could fill a miniseries—caught wind of Netflix promoting a parade of “Trans Day of Visibility” shows and a now-canceled cartoon featuring a transgender teen ghost-hunter. Having very publicly blamed his transgender daughter’s transition on the “woke mind virus,” Musk didn’t exactly approach the subject with Zen detachment. Instead, he went full flamethrower, regurgitating clips, quotes, and memes faster than Netflix could ask, “Are you still watching?”

“Netflix is an activist outfit hellbent on ideological indoctrination,” proclaimed one of the posts Musk shared to his mere 227.2 million followers. Conservatives applauded, liberals short-circuited—“what do you mean we can’t ideologically manipulate your kids?”—and Netflix stock took a 5% hit, which may not sound like a lot but equals roughly $25 billion in equity value alone. “Nothing to see here,” said CNBC analysts, who somehow manage to sound bored by Wall Street behemoths losing billions.

But here’s the thing: you can’t keep pushing sexualized content on kids and expect sane parents not to notice. There’s only so many nonbinary bison (an actual thing) and “gender-fluid, shapeshifting mercenaries” (ditto) you can slip into the Saturday morning slot before someone stands up at the virtual PTA meeting and says, “Can we maybe stop using preschool programming as therapy for mentally unwell adults?”

It actually is a really funny thread.

It’s not just Netflix, BTW. Disney Channel, Disney+, Disney Junior, Paramount+, HBO Max, even the Cartoon Network are dishing out what many might consider questionable content. (Note in the chart below, TV-Y is for miniature humans ages two to six, Y7 is for seven and up, and PG is for ten-plus. Oh, and FV stands for “Fantasy Violence,” so that’s lovely.)

I was born in the late ‘60s and weaned on Saturday morning cartoons. We had the Flintstones, the Jetsons, Bugs Bunny, Scooby-Doo, and—my absolute favorite—Josie and the Pussycats. To my knowledge and recollection (and verified by an Internet-wide search), there were no queer or even questioning characters on any of these shows. There wasn’t even a whispered suggestion of how Fred and Wilma might have conceived Pebbles or what Jane and George Jetson did with all the free time they must have had (having a robot maid and all). Children’s programming existed to a) give parents a break and b) push sugary cereals and trendy toys. They were not a subversive tool used to encourage kids to explore their sexual identities. I can promise you that.

Here’s what no one at Netflix HQ seems to get: This isn’t about banning—it’s about boundaries. It isn’t a “right-wing panic”—it’s actual adults entering the chat. Grownups can stream whatever glitter-covered, rainbow-wrapped fever dream makes their toes curl. But when the same algorithms that recommend Peppa Pig also toss in a cartoon about “finding your true gender spirit in another dimension,” we’ve officially crossed from “inclusive content” to “what in the actual hell?”

And while Elon may have made the most noise, plenty of parents quietly hit “cancel subscription” without tweeting a word. That’s how FAFO works: you keep feeding families garbage they didn’t order, and eventually the table flips.

In a perfect world, we’d all promptly boycott Netflix and call it a day. (We’d also break up with Amazon, grow our own produce, and live in self-sustaining communes on hundreds of acres. Nobody said moral or philosophical purity was going to be easy.) Barring that—meaning, you’re not quite willing to forsake Black Rabbit or House of Guinness, even for your kids—you can block specific shows on Netflix rather than the whole category (since, somehow, many of these “trans-agenda for toddlers” titles are still labeled appropriate for kids, SMH).

Here’s how: log in to your Netflix account on a computer—you can only do it through a web browser, not the app—select the profile your kids use to watch, and then navigate to the “Viewing Restrictions” settings to find the “Block Titles” or “Title Restrictions” section. From there, you can add or remove shows and movies from that profile’s access. (Please note that this info is courtesy of ChatGPT because your author freely admits she doesn’t even know how to turn on her own TV.)

Congratulations—you’ve just done more for your kid’s mental health than the entire programming department at Netflix.

I’ve said it before: I am all for gay rights. Love who you love and live your truth and kumbaya and all that warm-and-fuzzy stuff. All lives matter isn’t a catchy bumper sticker slogan; it’s a fact. But is it really too much to ask the post-adolescents in the room to keep your private lives private? Precisely—and granularly—how you “identify,” or with whichever genus or species you enjoy doing kinky things, ranks right up there with how regular your bowel movements are on my Want or Need to Know list.

I actually can’t even believe I had to type that paragraph.

Congressman Tim Burchett says he’ll be hauling Netflix executives before Congress to explain why the platform keeps slipping sexualized content into shows marketed to toddlers—calling it “recruiting, grooming, the worst of the worst.” You can bet I’ll be watching that hearing and reporting back on it.

They’re super sorry they showed a bunch of 11-year-old girls looking like strippers.

From the looks of things, I’m not the only one who’s fed up with companies pretending they’re saving the world while quietly normalizing concepts that make kids more confused, anxious, and medicated than ever. Netflix built an empire on the idea that you could escape reality for a few hours. Now—hopefully—they can’t escape the reality that they pushed their woke agenda way too far.

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