E2: Mistaken Identity

What ever happened to some of the first girls to grow up – and blow up – on the internet? In the late 2000s, YouTube gave rise to a new profession: kid-fluencer – kids making content for other kids, earning millions-strong audiences and massive paycheques. And for years, some of the most popular YouTube videos for girls lived on one channel: Seven Super Girls. It featured a rotating cast of tween and teen girls uploading sketches, skits and vlogs daily. Host Split Screen: There Goes My Childhood, Lauren White was one of them. Over time, they gained billions of views, big-name sponsors, lineups of screaming fans and more money than a child would know what to do with.But with their growing success, came new rules from the man in charge: their manager. He began as a mentor, a kind of father figure. Then, he began dictating how the girls had to look, dress and behave. Above all, they had to look as young as they could for as long as they could. And for years, the girls did as he said… until he was put behind bars for hurting one of their own.Almost a decade after the YouTube empire they built collapsed, the girls are now old enough to tell their own stories for the first time – the fame, the fortune, the friendships and the man they trusted for far too long.About Split Screen: Welcome to Split Screen, an examination of the utterly captivating, sometimes unsettling world of entertainment and pop culture. From reality TV gone awry, to the cult of celebrity, each season of Split Screen takes listeners on an evocative journey inside the world of showbiz. More episodes of There Goes My Childhood are available wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/TGMCxCBC

How does it feel to find out you’ve lived another person’s life? Are the parents you thought you had no longer your parents? Those are the tough questions facing far too many children switched at birth — and they want accountability.

Another mother at another rural Newfoundland hospital has suspicions that the little girl she brought home isn’t her own. Over fifty years later, an online ancestry kit connects the dots and allows a mother and daughter to reunite.

It turns out this once in a lifetime mistake might not be so rare. A few months before Clarence and Craig were born at the Come By Chance hospital, a young mother named Muriel felt like the little baby boy she brought home from the hospital wasn’t her own.

As the Avery family mourns a devastating loss, Clarence Hynes resists their multiple appeals. But the cost of turning away becomes greater and greater for Clarence. The two families hurtle towards an inevitable truth.Note: This episode references suicide, please take care when listening.

When baby Clarence Hynes was brought home from the hospital, someone casually asked if this small dark haired baby was really a Hynes? His parents ignored it, taught to let mysteries lie. And after they died early, Clarence put his head down and focused on being a good big brother and supporting his family. So when someone mistook him for an Avery brother, he shrugged it off: “Somebody always looks like somebody, right?” But the coincidences became too insistent to ignore.

At the same time people were mistaking Clarence Hynes for an Avery, others were mistaking Clifford Avery, Craig’s older brother, for Clarence. In side by side photographs, the two men with their bushy mustaches looked eerily alike. So when Clifford and Craig finally take a DNA test, the results confirm long-standing suspicions. Clifford, overwhelmed by the revelations, reaches out to Clarence. Note: This episode references suicide, please take care when listening.

At a worksite on Newfoundland’s coast, the staff take a break for birthday cake in honour of Craig Avery’s 52nd birthday. Coincidentally, another coworker Clarence Hynes is also turning 52 and was born in the same hospital in the same small town as Craig — Come By Chance. The serendipitous discovery starts a chain of events in motion that will ultimately change the course of their lives.

The island of Newfoundland keeps its secrets close, shrouds them in mystery. But sometimes the fog lifts, difficult truths emerge. When two men discover they were born in the same hospital on the same day, an unbelievable secret changes everything forever.Hosted by Luke Quinton. Seven episodes releasing Tuesday, June 4, 2024.