"David After Dentist" Made $150k For Family

It turns out recording your drugged child pays pretty well. 7-year-old David DeVore became an overnight sensation when his father posted a video of his ramblings after dental surgery. To date that video has made the DeVore family around $150,000. Most of the money came from YouTube, but the family has made $50k from licensing and merchandise. From the article: "The one seemingly minor decision to make the video available all over the Internet set off a whirlwind of changes for the DeVore family. Within just four days, 'David After Dentist' received 3 million views on YouTube and the younger David quickly became an Internet celebrity. His father quit his job in residential real estate (did we mention they live in Florida?), and the family started selling T-shirts featuring cartoon drawings of their son post-dental surgery."

Comments

Are You Taking Notes, Ghyslain Raza?

[eldavojohn]

This is the correct response when you become an instant global entertainer--not a $351,000 lawsuit. Or are you going to sue me now for teasing you about losing a lucrative merchandising opportunity?

Re:Are You Taking Notes, Ghyslain Raza?

[casings]

Not everyone wants to whore themselves out for money.

Re:Are You Taking Notes, Ghyslain Raza?

[MightyMartian]

Not everyone wants to whore themselves out for money.

No, just 99% of us.

Re:Are You Taking Notes, Ghyslain Raza?

[Dr. Cody]

It's the 1% who ruin it for the 99% of us.

Re:Are You Taking Notes, Ghyslain Raza?

[Feyshtey]

This guy rakes in a ton of cash because people buy useless crap related to a complete stranger, and he's a whore? I'd say he was just smart enough to exploit the stupidity of people with more money than brains.

Re:Are You Taking Notes, Ghyslain Raza?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

But who knows... confronted with a pile of $150k, tax free...

Effectively this is exactly what actual prostitutes are confronted with every single day. And this is the problem with adopting the position that prostitution is always wrong.

You can say its demeaning, or that greed should not justify selling yourself to others for the evening. But the reality is that most professional prostitutes earn more money doing what they do than they could otherwise. When you make prostitution illegal, you effectively tell these people that they must give up their better paying positions and take on often far lower paying ones simply because you disapprove of what they do.

You're free to disapprove, but is it right to take away someones income for that reason alone? Going back to the topic, these people have made money out of this internet video. A lot of money in fact, that can be used to give a better life to David and the rest of his family. If we claim that David's misfortune is being exploited and that this shouldn't be allowed, will it be right to take away the benefits that this video brought to spare feelings?

Who should be making these decisions? Society or individuals?

Re:Are You Taking Notes, Ghyslain Raza?

[jedidiah]

Most of the 99% don't stoop nearly this low.

"Whoring" really captures what's going on. Actually, "pimping" might be more accurate.

Re:Are You Taking Notes, Ghyslain Raza?

[noc007]

Came here to post that. Seriously, everyone has their price. I find it funny when someone wont acknowledge that they are a whore or at least have a price. Walk up to any person on the street, present them with a large sum of cash, make an offer to exchange the cash for something from them, and they'd seriously consider it and may even take the offer if they feel it's worth it to them.

casings, to expound on Maxo-Texas' post, take for example a young legal-adult lady with strong religious convictions to save her virginity for marriage. Offer her $5 million in tangible cash she could count on the spot to have sex with a dirty old man; she will seriously consider it. If she turns it down, offer her $500 million in cash and I'd wager she'd accept.

Story time:
I frequent an enthusiast forum for a specific car brand. Obviously the majority of active members are heterosexual males. One of the people that frequented the board was a chick who's career was modeling; on her website it stated what types of modling she did, including "tasteful nudes", and had a portfolio of her work. There were some shots of her clothed but in prvocative poses next to her car of the same car brand and these ended up being posted by her or someone else on to the enthusiast forum. Obviously those threads went down the path of comments of how hot she was and other generalized intercourse statements. She bitched about about how those kinds of threads always ended up becoming a "meat fest". I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt that the modeling she does is only for innocent artistic value, but I didn't expect the offending comments to be anything different given the demographic. Through the various posts of her picutures people did over time, at some point, someone identified her porn stage name and a simple search revealed a number of hardcore porn videos of her.

What I found hard to understand was her disgust over the typical "meat fest" that ensued over her in provocative pictures, yet she does porn. She can't be truly ignorant to the fact that millions of 13yo boys to wrinkly old men jerk it to those videos. I suppose I could accept it being her right to be offended at the reaction her pictures and videos create, but in my book it's moronic for her to be offended and she shouldn't expect anything less, especially from paying customers that fund her.

Re:Are You Taking Notes, Ghyslain Raza?

[Danse]

Medicine has advanced tremendously since then. Health issues are not the problem. If that were the problem, we'd outlaw fast food and half the stuff in the grocery store.

College Fund

[RafaelAngel]

Hopefully this will amount to a nice college fund for the kid. But in reality, the parents will use all the money to buy TVs and a car. I can't believe the father quit his job over this. Does he really think this is really gonna support his family in 5 years time?
Also, this kid is gonna have to live with this for the rest of his life.

Re:College Fund

[pak9rabid]

I can't believe the father quit his job over this.

Uh..not like that's really a job. Realtor's generally make their own hours and work whenever they see fit. Worse comes to worse he just picks up where he left off.

One can only hope...

[soulsteal]

that they put some away in a 529 plan to pay for his future education!

Re:One can only hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget that. Hire the kid as an actor and put the money in a Roth Ira. No-tax mega bucks on retirement.

And in 6 months time?

[OzPeter]

So what is he going to do in 6 months time when this little bit of internet trivia gets lost in the next big thing (tm)?? Will he schedule surgery for his kid? Or back to the dentist? Or will he realize that this was all a flash-in-the-pan and its back to a real job to support his family? And I wonder what the IRS thinks about all of this!

Re:Abusing children now profitable?

[hedwards]

You mean all the money. Considering that this was presumably done without his permission, I doubt very much that the limit is that low. I suspect that he could get all the money. Which in my view he's entitled to, the money was made solely upon his embarrassment, I don't think it would be a hard sell to demand all of it.

Actually, i find it difficult to watch.

[((hristopher _-*-_-*]

I kinda thinks it's exploiting the little boy. When I watch it all I see is a poor child mind struggling to understand what is happening, and can't understand to amusement, and therefore reason why this video is advertised.

I'd also rather keep the image of kids on drugs out of the media.

Re:Actually, i find it difficult to watch.

[lawpoop]

This seems like some anti-drug histeria in the vein of Reefer Madness.

First off, they weren't giving the kid illegal drugs. This is something a medical professional gave him for a dental procedure. This is a good use of drugs. Using drugs properly promotes good health and reduces pain and suffering.

Second, would you have any problem with a video of a kid, say, being fooled by a game of peekaboo, or startled by another kid in a mask? These are both normal parts of life. If you have problems with people making money off their young kids in general, congratulations; you're not a hypocrite. Getting doped up on drugs for routine medical procedures is not a bad thing.

He didn't quit

[name_already_taken]

I can't believe the father quit his job over this. Does he really think this is really gonna support his family in 5 years time?

"Quit" is a euphemism for saying he wasn't making any money selling residential real estate anyway, so he decided to sell t-shirts, which turned out to be the right decision. I know a realtor who right now is decorating cakes at a local supermarket.

It's not like realtors are "employed" anyway - they can be affiliated with a brokerage, but they're not employees in the classical sense. They can come and go as they please and work as much or as little as they choose to.

He can go back to selling real estate any time he wants, it's not like he gave up tenure or something.

Nothing special.

[MaWeiTao]

I'd say they were smart in that they capitalized on this video's popularity but stupid in that they seem to believe they're going to be able to live off this.

What I find surprising is that something so relatively uninteresting is able to garner this much attention. It's like on America's Funniest Home Videos when some crappy video would win $10,000 simply because it featured a baby. What kid doesn't say something cute or funny? The people compelled to buy a lame t-shirt about some random Youtube video are arguably the stupid ones.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The thing that really floors me

[sean.peters]

Dad gave up his real estate job in favor of... selling t-shirts about this? How long does he think America is even going to REMEMBER this whole silly thing?

Re:$100,000 through youtube?

[amicusNYCL]

the owners (the kid's despicable parents)

Initially, the video was meant to be shared amongst friends and family. At the time, however, YouTube's only alternative to sharing a video with the world was to share it with just 25 people. So, instead of setting "David After Dentist" as "Private," the video went "Public" for everyone to see.

The DeVores, however, say the licensing deals for their video fell right into their laps.

Their largest deal came from a Vizio Super Bowl ad featuring several other Internet celebrities, such as the "Numa Numa Guy." In total, they received around $8,000 and young David DeVore, already used to the on-screen exposure, was seen by millions during the biggest game of the year.

the younger David is just trying to live like a normal 9-year old kid. After finishing the 3rd grade on the honor roll, David is on summer break and just attended football camp in Tampa Bay. He is also taking guitar lessons though that doesn't necessarily translate to more on-camera time for the young viral star.

"He's not interested in becoming a TV star, he's just a regular kid," his father tells us. "He's got other things that interest him."

The father speaks very highly of his wife and two sons, and he is extremely grateful for the video's wild success. "We do look at it as a blessing, in a crazy 21st century way," says David. "It's allowed me to have the flexibility and freedom to be with my family."

They're also open to posting videos of aspiring musicians or performers looking for exposure onto their YouTube channel which, according to David, still attracts 100,000 - 125,000 views a day.

Despicable, despicable people. No doubt these people are deserving of the world's scorn, and are in fact useless human beings. I am only too pleased to be able to cast my righteous judgement down upon these worthless sub-humans. I look forward to more opportunities where I can judge people I don't know from the internet. I believe that doing so makes me a better person. I'm glad that you agree.