Spotlighting the corrupt nature behind the infamous children’s television channel, HBO Max’s recently released documentary entitled Quiet on Set aims to uncover the deeply buried trauma, including abuse and sexual assault, of the child actors involved in Nickelodeon’s live action programming during the early 2000s — an era of Nickelodeon Television notoriously reigned by showrunner Dan Scheinder. With “creator” credits to ionic children’s sitcoms such as The Amanda Show, Drake and Josh, and ICarly all to his name, Schneider seemingly sat on his throne as the King Midas of the Nickelodeon studio, with every TV show crafted by his hands instantly transforming into a new, golden revenue stream for the company. However, even with his success and ability to create a litany of shows that are sure to be engraved into the minds of any current young adult, the docuseries unveils a more amoral portrait of Schnieder’s character, revealing the perverted and disturbing behavior mainly aimed towards his female writing staff and the young child actors performing on his shows. Despite all of this under-the-table activity such as the sexual harassment of women co-workers and his odd inclusion of inuendo-depended dialogue for his child actor characters now being placed in public spotlight, it was to be Drake and Josh star, Drake Bell’s cathartic publicizing of his heartbreaking experience of working with a predatory Nickelodeon-hired dialogue coach, Brian Peck that seemed to catalyze a chain-reaction of online rioting against Peck, Schneider, and Nickelodeon as a whole. With this being the case, it’s clear that HBO’s expository program certainly achieved its objective in deplatforming the tall thrones of corrupt people in power. Yet, as is the case with most reactions, an unfortunate byproduct formed in the process. More specifically, as the internet erupted in discussion after simultaneously watching ex-Nickelodeon members dig up the company’s troubled past, a certain group of TikTok users believed this series was a sign for them to do a little digging investigation on their own, encouraging a slew of users to embark on a 100 mile hiking trip to connect two dots together to continue building this “dark side of Nick” narrative. Yet, these same individuals are so obsessed with discovering these contrived findings in an attempt to be the vigilante detectives of a harrowing case, that they are unable to see how they look like three stumbling toddlers stacked together in a trench coat, digging up holes in their backyard to seem more important than they actually are. In fact, within the first few weeks of the documentary’s release, users across the entire TikTok app are attempting to piece together a deeper lore strung together by their own fascinated imagination.
For instance, following the documentary’s rapid growth in popularity, fans have already been posting claims going as far to state that the Drake and Josh theme song was actually a cry for help from the actors on set, with the only supporting evidence being pure speculation. Moreover, Nickelodeon watchers have begun constructing an entire chronicle of ICarly actor Jerry Trainor, known for his role Spencer Shay, being the show’s unsung hero who consistently and valiantly fought against the corruptness of the Nickelodeon creative team to protect his fellow child co-stars simply based on a short , behind the scenes clip of the ICarly sound stage in which he supposedly seems frustrated with Schneider. As a result, these TikTok brain rot patients of the internet have showered endless praise for Trainor’s daring feats despite the fact that Trainor fulfilling a guardian angel role on set is a subplot that has only been conjured into existence by the very same people extolling his actions, without any factual evidence to even verify the accuracy of it. The entire semantics of this situation just comes across as rather odd and distasteful, almost as though these TikTokers are fan-fictionizing reality in order to validate their opinions on the actors themselves. While sparking conversation on difficult subject matters such as the unscrupulous practices of childhood stardom and the Hollywood Industry is important to launch into mainstream media, the issue here is that a majority of this “conversation” is unproductive and only transforms real-life events into theories as if a child actor’s trauma is just a Netflix mystery series to be solved. Thus, this only leads to individuals aimlessly shoving two opposing puzzle pieces together with an unwavering force to convince everyone around them that they are complementary pieces. Just today, as of writing this article, I even came across a post “revealing” how the Nickelodeon logo is identical to the layout of the Epstein Island, with the even larger issue of the post being how all the comments were along the lines of “This blew my mind!”, “I’ve been looking at this for 10 minutes”, or “The way my jaw DROPPED.” It’s almost like any Nickelodeon related post that ties the company to toxicity is instantly treated as though it were a chapter in a historical textbook, defining any grim rumor as truth in order to progress this “Nickelodeon dark side” narrative down a path that peaks their interest. In other words, the true harm of this documentary simply becoming a trend on TikTok stems from the fact that most of these misleading posts only serve to plague the internet with a database of unverifiable information as well as re-inventing trauma into cheap entertainment through creating these barely supported storylines into this mythical legend of “The Great Curse of Nickelodeon”to satisfy the appetite of their depraved curiosity. This idea of public audiences exploiting celebrities suffering is also seen through the way TikTokers are making edits of Nickelodeon victims such as Drake Bell, Jennette McCurdy, and Amanda Bynes with Mitski or Lana del Rey music playing in the background which, intentional or not, only aestheticizes these peoples’ trauma as if these actors are merely a fictional character whose tragic backstory can be given a soundtrack in dramatic, cinematic fashion.
Finally, in a similar vein of sensationalizing celebrity’s emotional and physical hardships, after the docuseries recently announced the airing of a fifth episode later this Spring, despite initially being planned to only have a four episode long run, many viewers have been taking greater interest in guessing as to what ex-Nickelodeon star the show will bring on to speak out about their experience in enthusiastic anticipation rather than the content of the episode itself in a way that mimics how crazed Taylor Swift fans will gossip about the release date of her next album. Though amassing a group of passionate voices against agents of wrongdoing is essential to ignite positive change, it’s integral to note how these passionate voices must all be shouting coherent thoughts to make any fruitful influence on society. While the dangers and corruptness of the Nickelodeon and children’s media as a whole is definitely an area to explore and shed more light on, maybe that job should be left to the people who actually experienced it themselves, rather than those who simply “put two and two together” after mindlessly scrolling through TikTok for hours at a time.