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People browsing YouTube can no longer see the twenty-seven videos made by "family vloggers" Myka and James Stauffer documenting the process of adopting a disabled, autistic Chinese child named Huxley in 2016 and 2017, nor any of the videos featuring Huxley leading up to his disappearance from YouTube content three years later. Though Myka Stauffer had promised her viewers that "no matter what state he came to us, that we would love him" and that Huxley "is not returnable" (Moscatello 2020), the couple announced in May 2020 that they had rehomed their son. The fallout destroyed their channel, which has since been deleted. They bled subscribers and sponsors, and neither has returned to the public eye; Myka Stauffer has not posted on her Instagram since her apology on June 24, 2020.
The Stauffers had run their channel since 2014, but it was Huxley's story that drew people in:
China definitely was the point where we had a super-loyal fan base following us, and they were always asking, 'Where's the next content? Where's the next piece of this?' [James] continued. We weren't daily at that point. We had slowed down to probably three times a week, and they were asking, 'Hey, can you do daily? Can you do some more content? We want to see how Huxley's doing, how the family is getting along.' It was like, Wow, okay, we have something here, and people are really interested in our journey. (Moscatello 2020; italics in original)
Their "Gotcha Day" video, a vlog about going to China to bring Huxley back to the states, remained in a featured position on their channel until at least November 2019, two years after it was posted, racking up at least 4.5 million views (see Figure 1).
They are far from the only family publicizing their children's lives for an online audience. The family vlogger industry draws in viewers in the millions, with channels like The Ace Family boasting upwards of 1 7 million subscribers for content like "OUR NEW DOG BIT OUR BABY! ··SCARY MOMENT··." Nor are the Stauffers the only couple who attempted to build their brand on an adoption story out of Asia; in 2018, another creator couple named Nikki and Dan Phillippi abandoned their plans to adopt...