Important things to note: The rest of the Do5 videos have been privatised/taken down, now including their previous apology blame video.
I will not link to the video. I will summarise it as evenly as I can manage and put my own thoughts under the cut.
Heather says, “This week has been the worst week of their life” but she also says it is a result of their “terrible parenting decisions.” The tone of this video is very much them FINALLY taking some of the blame for what has happened.
Thing to note about editing: Anyone who watches the video will notice the odd fade to blacks in weird spots, even in the middle of sentences. I’ll talk about this more in my own interpretation.
Mike claims, once again, that he has been able to stand back and look at how their videos may have come across. “I acknowledge and respect how everyone feels about this and I do agree that we put things on the Internet that should not be there.”
Heather says if she had seen those videos on the Internet, not knowing the people, she would be thinking the same things. She says that after seeing the kids have fun with it, they started going more and more for the shock factor. (S/O to the train in the background noise)
She goes on to say that the kids think some of it is their fault BUT FOR ONCE she says, “But it’s not. We’re the parents and we should have made better decisions.” (Yes, yes, YES)
!!!!!! “We are now in family counselling because we need it. [...] We need it to come back together and have everybody, even the kids, to understand what we did wrong in all this.”
They want to give back their kids normalcy, especially when they start school again. They end it saying they just wanted to make their kids feel happy and not to get any backlash for their “bad decisions.” They apologise again.
There is no mention of the videos being fake.
Now my thoughts:
I’m gonna get this out there first and foremost. There will be no forgiveness from me. Those kids will have to deal with this for the rest of their lives. So I will continue to never forget what these parents did for the same amount of time. That said, my forgiveness does not matter; the kids’ do. If they are in family counselling as they say, then I have hope the kids will eventually realise the gravity of their parent’s “bad decisions.” Whether they forgive or not is entirely up to them.
Now for the rest of the video. I 100% believe they either hired a PR person or someone approached them. There is absolutely no way that they prepared and filmed this video on their own. The fact that they even hired someone when for the past week they seemed content fumbling around themselves shows that perhaps very very serious consequences were brought up against them.
1. Their attire. They obviously made an effort to make themselves look more homely and picket-fence-like parents. Despite them beginning the video with their usual “Hello Team Do5″ they are transparently addressing those critical of them. Their base audience LIKES their non-apology, they LIKE their casual style. No, they were made up to come across more palatable. Note the mic on Heather. I can almost assure you that is not theirs and most likely belongs to whoever is their new PR person.
2. Context and Speaking. Right off the bat, there is a very good chance that this video is scripted from the way they talk (which brings into question if they’re this bad at acting how are all the other videos ‘faked’). To be fair, this does not mean it is not from their heart. There are many YouTubers who use scripts and can be sincere. It's just a matter if those words actually DID come from the heart or their new PR guy wrote something up for them. Also, notice that Heather is the one speaking the most. This is another tactic to assuage the audience and critics. As a woman, she is the more sympathetic of the two. In addition, while people are outraged at BOTH parents, it is on the DAD’S channel and the DAD’S twitter getting most of the backlash (People have universally been calling it the DADDYoFive situation). Putting Heather in the spotlight instead of Mike alleviates some of the residing anger in people.
3. Editing. I mentioned this before, but the video is editing in a very weird way. There are random fade-to-black cuts, very different from their editing style. I think I mentioned it before, but one of the reasons I doubted the pranks were filmed was because they often filmed with long, uncut shots. This is a prominent characteristic of their style. Even their last two ‘apology’ videos were all one shot. In addition, in previous videos when they were going for heartfelt and sincere they layered cheesy music underneath all their kids thanking the dad (sorry, I forgot the video name). This editing also shows someone else’s assistance in all this.
Now, despite all this, I’m not sure how to feel. One thing is for sure, I will not stop looking for developments with this family. It would be SO EASY for everyone to look away and for things to go back to how they used to be for those kids. BUT if those parents are sincere and honest about learning from their mistakes, going to counselling, teaching their kids how the parents wronged them, then perhaps this isn’t the WORST outcome.
But in the end, actions speak louder than words and right now we just have words.
Big update on the daddyofive situation!!! Emma and cody are now with their birth mother, the source i have (which i cant link bc im on mobile but its Chambers of my Heart on youtube). Chambers will be going into detail tonight so tune in to that later on.
EDIT (9:53 PM 05/01/2017) : heres the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDSCEc_NsX4
these kids are gonna need a fuck ton of therapy so if you have any spare money here’s the gofundme
please reblog this instead of just liking it
Listen up, internet-goers. There’s another channel related to Do5 called MommyoFive. If you’ve never heard of Do5, it was a “prank” channel on YouTube in which the parents abused their children physically, verbally, and emotionally (bullying one child named Cody in particular). The channel has since been taken down--thank God--but now, DaddyoFive’s wife has put up another channel called MommyoFive.
Putting aside the fact that it should be MommyoThree (ha, ha, ha!), we should take a look into this channel in case it turns into another channel about abuse. So far, I’ve only watched a few videos--I don’t want to give them views and thus more money--and haven’t found any child abuse yet. But just be on the lookout for MommyoThree’s content--they’ve already got 100,000 subscribers.
for instance dad of five, after removing all the videos of their unstable domestic life (child abuse for the lolz), is on facebook attempting to rally his fanclan and maintain social media attention.
That dude Mike and wife Heather initially decided to do a youtube channel; which devolved into the theme of harming their kids for views and profits, and are still seeking attention from this demography of 10-14 year olds (Nerdcity and others marked this as the usual view/commenter). Can you say ‘Ew’?
Look, if you have kids and you have this idea for a stable income which will involve exploiting those kids in some way, the safety and sanity of your children should always be top - no Exceptions. Perhaps exploiting your kids won’t pan out - you need to see where it won’t work and why, and ACCEPT IT LIKE AN ADULT YOU PIECE OF UNWANTED GARBAGE. Or in the least, accept it gracefully and go quietly into the night. You’re not winning brownie points by arguing they were ‘pranks braw’, not after scaring the piss out of those lil tots.
Pranks can be scary, yo, but they should have a predetermined cutoff point. AND they should not involve the abuse of the power difference between child and legal guardian. That shits fucked up. It’s good that the videos ended when they did, the guardians had no vague concept of restraint. Taking video requests from 10 year olds and sadists; the fuck?
There are oodles and oodles of Mike’s and Heather’s out in our world. They destroy good kids, but sometimes the kids they manage to raise can still overcome the odds set against them and make it out doing something fantastic. The point of outrage was people saw themselves in the children Mike and Heather tormented, and they wouldn’t allow that to happen to someone they could help. More vividly so, someone that was presented to them in such a fashion. Good job Team Troglodyte, you provided all the evidence for your own downfall. Ya done a service.
I made a video about Daddyofive. I'm downloading editing software atm, it's not up yet. Basically this video is addressed to kids who were Do5 fans and don't understand how the videos showed abuse, and why the kids were taken away. It's funny because the kid who's confused video inspired me to make this just cussed me out on YouTube 😂
