Elsagate

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Elsagate is a phenomenon on YouTube involving supposed children's videos which actually contain content inappropriate for children, such as sexual content, fetishes, violence, or drugs and alcohol. The videos tend to feature popular children's characters such as Spider-Man and Elsa from Frozen, hence the term Elsagate. The existence of these videos has spurred notable interest from conspiracy theorists, especially on Reddit.

Elsagate videos take on a variety of forms, from live-action costume videos to (crudely) animated ones using either Flash animation, claymation, CGI, or even machinima, such as those made using Grand Theft Auto V of all things (although this is perhaps due to the wide selection of skin mods available, including but not limited to the usual Elsa and Spider-Man, as well as the game being a versatile platform for machinima production). With the rise of generative AI and deepfakes in the late 2010s to the 2020s, such technologies have allowed unscrupulous content creators to make low-quality "children's videos" using readily available computer hardware and AI software.

Despite having a bit of overlap (e.g. the juxtaposition of children's franchises with mature content), Elsagate should not be confused with YouTube Poop, whose videos are often aimed at an adult audience and with a clear intent to satirize instead of deceive (although in fairness, YTP initially started as a series of bait-and-switch videos meant to shock or confuse unwitting audiences).

History

It's uncertain as to how the trend started, although precursors to the phenomenon have existed, such as the Tijuana bibles during the early 20th century (which also involved popular comics and cartoon characters in lewd situations, sometimes even drawn by the original artists themselves), and in the 2000s with the "finger family" videos made by small animation studios in India such as Pebbles, Inc. (who made dozens of those videos on DVD for local consumption prior to the internet becoming more accessible throughout the subcontinent):

I'm from India and I think I could clear up why most of these channels are from India. These nursery rhymes videos with rudimentary 2D graphics were popular in India way before the widespread access to the internet.

A company called Pebbles Inc. would churn out these videos, package them onto CDs and DVDs (I'm talking about a time before Blu-Ray became a household name) and flood the market with them. They were such a hit with the Indian households that you could see atleast 5 CDs in every house with an infant/kid and many schools had these CDs too as a part of their education routine.

YouTube gave the platform for other amateurs to exploit this lucrative market, and hence we could see the barrage of Rhymes channels overrunning YouTube.

- Naughtius Maximus

Around the late 2000s to early 2010s, a cottage industry of children's content creators sprang up making "educational" videos for children, but as they are unable to compete toe-to-toe with the juggernauts that are Disney and Nickelodeon (among others), some of these creators started to resort to copyright-infringing depictions of popular characters from major studios. In 2016, the YouTube channel "Webs and Tiaras" gained notoriety when the Guardian ran an article about the channel and its bizarre premise, where costumed performers dressed up as Disney Princesses and comic book characters like Joker, Spiderman, or the Hulk act out bizarre or nonsensical scenarios. The article also reported that several nearly identical channels called "Toy Monster", "The Superheroes Life", and "The Kids Club" had appeared on YouTube.

The high numbers of views by the videos have led to speculation that the channels have resorted to means such as farms and bots to artificially inflate audience statistics. However, it could also be assumed that this could just be due to unwitting children being attracted to them. Further concerns were brought up when the live-action costume videos have began to feature scatological if not outright fetishistic acts such as "peeing, pooping, kissing, pregnancy, and the terrifying notion of going to the doctor and getting a shot".

Due to rampant proliferation of the videos and the ensuing moral panic from it, YouTube began to crack down on Elsagate videos starting in 2017, where it took down countless channels uploading or mirroring questionable content aimed at minors. It also implemented a series of restrictions on videos involving actual children e.g. those uploaded by minors themselves due to concerns about pedophiles leaving unsavoury comments and collecting playlists of videos showing juveniles for them to lust upon, as well as the "for kids" flag in 2020, which restricts user interaction and monetisation on videos perceived as aimed towards children, much to the chagrin of animation enthusiasts and amateur cartoonists who find themselves unfairly censored over policies done in the name of children's safety.

In the early to mid 2020s, the rise of deepfake and generative AI technology has led to the proliferation of artificially-generated "kids videos" made using off-the-shelf AI software such as ChatGPT and ElevenLabs, such as those from Hyderabad-based "Super Crazy Kids" which garnered 11 million subscribers. Both Super Crazy Kids and fellow "kids channel" Yes! Neo have been noted to make use of scripts generated from large-language models and deepfaked audio, leading to concerns about their supposed educational value.

Conspiracy theories

Given the enigmatic and intriguing nature of the phenomenon, it isn't surprising that Elsagate videos have become the subject of conspiracy theories. Rapper-slash-conspiracy theorist B.o.B took notice of the trend, as did Joe Rogan.

Some have alleged that it is a state-sponsored scheme to desensitize unwitting children, judging from foreign-language versions of the videos, while others have linked the trend to either pedophilia, or in extreme cases, satanic ritual abuse. However, the videos, despite their unsettling nature, were made mostly to cynically profit on the popularity of children's content by tricking the algorithm (similar to how spammers bend Google's SEO to their will through equally unscrupulous means) and churn out videos with reckless disregard to their educational value. Not to mention that the pedophilia allegations amounted more to a moral panic than a genuine cause for concern (e.g. poor parenting by those who'd just leave their offspring glued to a screen and treat it as if it's a cheap alternative to babysitting).

Similar videos

The popular children's edutainment franchise Cocomelon is also occasionally compared unfavourably to Elsagate, though there is a notable distinction: while Elsagate videos are typically illicitly made by unscrupulous content farms and cosplay troupes to profit from children's supposed naïveté, Cocomelon has the benefit of being more well-established compared to its content-farm counterparts, though much like Elsagate it has also been questioned by some parenting groups for its effects on small children such as its potential for overstimulating young ones over colourful clips of JJ and company (mindlessly) frolicking about on screen.

Other notable YouTube Kids channels such as the Ukrainian-American child YouTuber Eva Diana Kidisyuk—who runs the Kids Diana Show channel with her parents—do share similar tropes to Elsagate such as the use of colorful thumbnails and focus on infantile subject matter (and was herself victim to the Elsagate crackdowns at some point), but are otherwise mostly spared from the Elsagate controversy unlike channels such as DaddyOFive whose hosts were charged of child abuse in 2017.

A similarly successful child content creator is Vietnamese-American YouTuber Ryan Kaji (born Ryan Guan) of Ryan's World, who started off making similarly infantile content on YouTube but went on to have a noted children's entertainment career, with associated merchandise such as toys, a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade float and even a theatrical feature film; there has been a dark underbelly behind Mr. Kaji's success, however, as netizens expressed concern over whether Ryan has been unfairly exploited by his parents even well into his teenage years, not helping matters was that Ryan's mother Loann was reportedly jailed for shoplifting in the early 2000s. Similar concerns were also levelled towards Kaji and other kids content creators over their possible negative effects on children, such as the use of targeted advertising for nutritionally questionable items such as fast food and soda as well as promoting excessive consumerism through frequent product placements for toys and other playthings.

Another similarly bizarre trend that's making the rounds with children in the 2020s is the Skibidi Toilet series of machinima videos popularised by Georgian YouTuber Alexey Gerasimov, aka DaFuq!?Boom!, which gained so much viral notoriety that it attracted the attention of American film director Michael Bay, who entered negotiations with Gerasimov for a possible film adaptation. Besides being criticised as lowbrow "brainrot" at the expense of youths, Gerasimov's animated videos spurred a moral panic in Russia where legislators and law enforcement alike are reportedly investigating the Skibidi series' supposed effects on children.

See also

• Fake restoration videos, what amounts to the tech world's equivalent of Elsagate videos in terms of virality and cynical exploitation of gullible viewers

External links

• The Ballad Of Elsa And Spiderman
• What is ElsaGate?
• I think it's time more people knew about Elsagate.
• Elsagate color codes
• ElsaGate: The Problem With Algorithms
• The disturbing YouTube videos that are tricking children
• YouTube's "Elsagate" Illuminates The Unintended Horrors Of The Digital Age
• Weird Kids' Videos and Gaming the Algorithm from YouTube channel Folding Ideas