Over the past several years, daily vlogging has become a staple of Youtube. Documenting a daily routine, from laying in bed with bedraggled hair in the morning through to making grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and brushing your teeth before bed, is something we as humans have attached ourselves to. It gives us comfort to watch someone else go through the ebbs and flows of daily life and remind us that we aren’t all that mundane and basic after all.
Once daily vlogs took off, family vlogging wasn’t far behind. Before we knew it, parents were filming their children as part of the daily vlogs and including viewers in their kids’ every waking minute. Viewers who were parents could watch these vlogs and assure themselves that their kids were normal; young viewers could watch these vlogs and remember the joy of their not-far-off youth; we could all watch these vlogs and see the children grow over the course of months, or even years. It began to make us feel like we had a bond with these vloggers. We felt like we knew them. We felt like we could relate.
But what happens when one of those vloggers starts to prey on our feeling of closeness to them?
I can think of more than a few vloggers who use clickbait to lure in viewers, but one in particular has been known to go above and beyond just clickbait titles and thumbnails to bring in views. Jonathan Joly, a vlogger on Youtube since 2009, decided to start his own vlog channel after seeing the success his then-girlfriend Anna Saccone had with her channel, TheStyleDiet, which she started in 2008. Jonathan is a self-professed fame-seeker, and when he saw Anna’s views and subscriber counts in the tens of thousands, he no doubt felt that he wanted a taste of the fame Anna was already experiencing. And so, LeFloofTV was born.
Since then the channel, now named SacconeJolys, has reached moderate Youtube success, currently sitting at around 1.8 million subscribers. Since Jonathan has been filming daily vlogs, he and Anna have gotten married, turned two dogs into six by mating the two they had, and had three children: Emilia (5), Eduardo (3), and Alessia (6 months). The birth of the puppies, as well as the births of all three children, have been filmed. It is important to note that the SacconeJolys biggest fanbase lies in the 10- to 15-year-olds demographic.
Since their births, the SacconeJoly children have been filmed in the bathtub, during tantrums, while being sick, at school, in bed, in public, while being frightened from pranks meant to terrify them, and playing with their friends. Jonathan claims to have received a card from an anonymous person threatening to murder the children and cut off various body parts, and yet continued to film his children every day. Not long after Emilia had been born, it was brought to Jonathan’s attention that her photos were seen on a site that sexualizes young infants, to which he replied, “There are a lot of weird websites out there, friend.” No mention of doing anything about it, merely just accepting that it was happening. Accepting that his daughter’s images, which he put on the internet, were being used on pedophilia pornographic sites. Anna, no stranger to the desire for fame, can be found Snapchatting photos of the children in the bathtub more often than not these days. Now, most of us see a child in the tub and see nothing more than that; there are, however, some people out there who see something else in a far more sinister way, and the SacconeJolys are well aware of that, having been exposed to proof of it.
It begs the question: how far is one willing to go in their quest for fame at the expense of others?
When Emilia was a baby, she was being filmed while one of their 6 dogs urinated on her head. Instead of being removed from the situation, her parents laughed. She once cried so hard in her car seat that she passed out, and her parents just continued to film. It makes it quite clear that there is one priority, and it’s not the children. It’s the vlog.
On October 11th, 2017, Jonathan posted a video claiming that he had been sexually assaulted. Sexual assault is no laughing matter, and should never be excused or brushed under the rug. To condense what he has said, he claims he was sexually assaulted by a man when he was 19 years old as he wanted to become a famous pop star and said he felt he had to do it to get there. As he tells the story of his assault, he is chuckling (some say this is classic evidence of “Duper Delight”: the pleasure of being able to manipulate someone, often made visible to others by flashing a smile at an inappropriate moment), diverting his eyes a lot and appears to be treating it like any old vlog. During this video he asked himself out loud what his reaction would be if anything like that happened to his kids. By that point he’d known for years that his daughter’s nude infant body was being used for sexual pleasure on the internet. He did nothing.
Behavioural therapists could make an interesting case of this video. His tense behaviour during the confessional aside, there are conflicting elements of his behaviour over the past several years in the vlogs that are cause for concern, especially after what he said he’s been through.
Jonathan has himself said that the way he got Anna to become his girlfriend was that he told her he could make her famous. As part of his Youtube endeavor, has been known to make music videos. The one I’m referring to here involves him pouring milk all over himself and seductively rubbing himself with tea bags while his wife grinds up against him in a video called, “Dip With Me.”
Again, I remind you that his main demographic is very young teens, mostly girls. About a year ago in a now-removed video, Jonathan made a joke about giving a roofie to his wife to drug her up so that he can have sex with her and make another baby. Just last year, he went on the adult chat site Omegle to video chat with his young fans and asked them to “look nice” for him when they got on video with him. At this same time, he was asking those same girls to send him direct messages with their phone number so he could call them. If someone had been sexually assaulted as a 19-year-old, why would behaviour like this be looked upon so lightly by the victim? Why would he continue to put images and videos of his children on the internet, many times barely, if at all, clothed when he knows there are sites out there using their images in a pornographic fashion?
When it comes to consent, especially when filming children, it can be difficult to say whether that consent is assumed given that their own parents are filming, or if the children are simply too young to understand what’s happening. When a child does understand when they’re being filmed and doesn’t want to be, shouldn’t their wishes be respected? Not according to some parent vloggers.
There have been numerous times in the vlog where the children have verbally not consented to being filmed. They will chase after Jonathan, swinging at the camera while yelling “No!” and he continues to film them, even when they’re become visibly agitated and upset by this.
Jonathan has been in such a manic rush to get shots in or make them do something they don’t want to do that he ends up hurting them. In one notable instance, he ran one of his children down while running just to get a shot. Instead of rectifying the pain he’s caused them, he continues to film them:
He is constantly behaving erratically and dangerously with his children “for the views.”
Some of this erratic behaviour extends to the vehicles, as well. Jonathan often vlogs while driving, and the children can be seen in the backseat incorrectly strapped into their seats as if it were done in a careless rush.
Jonathan is widely known for his clickbait titles (using titles and/or thumbnails that stray far from the truth in an attempt to bring in more viewers and revenue). He preys on people’s sensitivity and caring natures to lure them into watching videos that will increase the amount of money he makes and up his viewership. He also uses titles like “Blonde Chick Doing It Solo,” “Bikini Teens,” “Teeny Bikini,” “Teen Rave Party,” “Shaved Skinny,” “Hitting A Teenager,” “Sexy in the Shower,” “Milf Gets a New Car,” and “Teen Car Wash” as his vlog titles, obviously in an attempt to draw in a different kind of audience with less-than-moral intentions. He knows these kind of viewers are on Youtube and he uses his children and family to draw them in. He exploits his wife and children to appease the sexual desires of those searching for titles like “Sexy in the shower” on the internet. In addition to this, when Emilia was younger, Jonathan was filmed feeding her yogurt in a disgustingly provocative manner saying things like, “Ram it in there now baba. Let it dribble down. Don’t make eye contact!” The clip of this video, titled “This Will End Badly,” can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/v/VF7XJp-EMWw?autoplay=1&start=1184&end=1231&controls=1&version=3
He said this while feeding his infant daughter. Let that sink in.
One of the best examples of Jonathan preying on people’s sensitivities was when he filmed Anna just after they’d received the news that she had miscarried. He set up the camera just right in the examination room to be able to get the shot, and even checked it after he’d started filming to make sure it would catch his wife crying and upset as he hugged her.
Fast forward, and the titles around this time remain clickbaity. He admitted in the autumn of 2017 that the miscarriage happened quite a long time before they posted about it, so they had been pretending to be pregnant in posted videos while Anna had already miscarried.
Behaviour like this screams desperation for attention. It has shown that he will say, or do, anything in his quest for fame. And he certainly isn’t the only one on Youtube, but he is the most glaring example of how these daily and family vloggers can take advantage of their viewers and stop at nothing to increase their views, subscribers, and income. Where does it stop? Why is there no legislation that protects the children of YouTube from having their lives filmed every day and used in inappropriate ways by people on the internet? As adults, we can choose what we put on the internet, and if we find that our privacy is violated in some way, we are able to do something about it. Children are not.
Futhermore, why are we letting vloggers behave in such a manner without questioning what their intentions are? Why are they permitted to behave this way on YouTube, use titles that are completely inappropriate for their audience, and straddle the lines of whether this person should even be allowed to continue making videos. When are they considered a threat? When do we step in and see what someone’s true intentions are, especially when children are involved? These are questions we need to start having answers for.
The Truth About Vlogs 