YouTuber Jordan Cheyenne Is Facing Criticism After Asking Her Crying Son to Pose for a Thumbnail

While many people do subscribe to family-friendly YouTube channels to see how others from around the world live their day-to-day lives with their children, others are critical about whether some vloggers take it too far by showing their kids' emotional moments for the sake of getting views.

Jordan Cheyenne is the latest influencer and YouTube vlogger to face public backlash. She posted a video asking her nine-year-old son, Christian, to pose for a photo that could be used as a thumbnail.

Though content creators often pose for the eye-grabbing thumbnails to entice users to click on their videos, Jordan is going viral because her son was crying during the exchange.

The video has since been deleted, but screen recordings of the original post are still circulating online.

Who is Jordan Cheyenne, and what did she do? Read on to find out more about the original video she posted, and to learn how she reacted to the backlash.

The 30-year-old single mom of one, who is the older sister of fellow vlogger Dominick Whelton, has been posting content on YouTube for about eight years.

Jordan is known for sharing very personal stories on her channel, and for posting beauty vlogs as well. Many first learned of the content creator when she posted her now-deleted viral video, "We Are Heartbroken," in September 2021.

In the post (per a screen recording shared on this YouTube channel), Jordan discussed adopting a puppy named Rosie, who had contracted the highly-contagious and often-deadly parvovirus. After expressing her desire to bring the dog home for herself and for her son, Jordan then asked her subscribers for their prayers.

Once she was done recording the main video, Jordan then wanted her son, Christian, who was sitting in the passenger seat of her car, to pose for a thumbnail photo. The boy could be heard crying in the background before his mom turned the camera toward him.

"Come here. Come closer for the video," Jordan said in the video, before repeating the phrase, "Come closer" several times in a row.

She instructed her son to put his head on her chest, and to place his hand over part of his face to make him appear more emotional.

"Act like you're crying," Jordan said. "Really quick."

"I am crying..." Christian responded as Jordan continued to ask for a pose. "No, Mom, I'm actually, seriously crying."

"No, I know, but go like this for the video," she said again, while mimicking a crying face.

She told Christian again to cover his mouth with his hand. When he finally did, she asked him to move it in a different pose.

"But let them see your mouth," she added. "Let them see your mouth!"

He repeated that he was "actually crying." Jordan requested that he look at her, and then at the camera. The mother and son then posed in silence for several seconds.

"OK. It's OK. It's OK. It's over," Jordan shared before shutting the camera off and ending the video.

Once the thumbnail portion of the video, which many thought was only included because of an editing error, received a lot of negative attention, the California-based content creator took the post down. She later issued an apology for posting that moment with her son in a video entitled, "I Am Immensely Disappointed with Myself."

"It's so wrong. I should never have done that," she said, per Yahoo!. She went on to say that she was "disgusted" with her actions.

"Today I want to let you know I'm so disgusted with myself for posing for a thumbnail on such an emotional video," she added.

She said that the backlash has allowed her to recognize that she needs to be less focused on social media and vlogging while emotional events are happening in real time.

"It made me take a step back and realize I need to just be way more present in the moment and not even be thinking about anything like this when things are happening in my life," she continued.

During an episode of The Dad Challenge podcast, Jordan shared that she would likely not be featuring Christian in any more of her videos in the future.

Her apology video and her channel are no longer available online, but the podcast episode is.