It's easy to get sucked into the endless vortex that is YouTube. But there are times when you stumble upon? gems you wonder how you never found before. Other times you find things you wish you¡¯d never seen. And believe me there are a lot of those. Just ask the guys at r/ElsaGate.
WSOC-TV
A year ago, the subreddit r/ElsaGate had just a handful of members. It was a very niche community after all, revolving around a YouTube conspiracy theory. Now, it has over 50,000 subscribers, at least a hundred of whom are online at any given time. And all because one ElsaGate moderator decided in 2017 that the Internet needed to know about what was going on in the dark underbelly of YouTube.
Yes, the universally-loved streaming platform is where the term Elsagate was first coined. So then, the question is... what the heck is it?
In case it wasn¡¯t already clear, ¡®gate¡¯ here is from the Watergate scandal, and has become synonymous with? controversy. But why ¡®Elsa¡¯? Well, that¡¯s because Disney¡¯s icy princess is one of the main topics of discussion in? this matter. Her and Spiderman anyway.
Youtube
Let me unpack it for you some. Have you ever watched kids¡¯ videos on YouTube? Likely not intentionally, but maybe while your kid or younger sibling or cousin etc., was glued to the computer? Well then, you¡¯ve seen the general tone these videos carry. Most are nursery rhymes, with saccharine sweet vocals in a child-like voice, animated cartoons dancing to the rhythm, and probably endlessly looped too boot.?
Well, a few people began noticing kids videos on the platform with a slightly different theme. Hiding in plain sight were videos supposedly for kids, but many with decidedly adult themes. Some involved characters being kidnapped, killed, or experiencing gruesome medical emergencies. Frankly, all the sort of things you wouldn¡¯t want your kid to see. And for some reason, all of them involved characters popular with toddlers like Elsa, Spiderman, The Hulk, and others.
No one really know when or how this trend started, but it¡¯s fair to say the r/ElsaGate community were some of the first to point it out. Barely anyone outside the subreddit knew what was going on, at least until a New York Times article came out last year. Since then, thousands of people have been flocking to the subreddit to join in the open investigation into YouTube.
That¡¯s actually a fairly easy question to answer. It doesn¡¯t. In fact, it¡¯s unclear why anyone would make these except for their own sick pleasure. The thing is, most of these Elsagate videos are actually fairly tame, though they¡¯re certainly weird. Those are likely the product of a tiny animation company (or solo uploader) attempting to make easy money with YouTube ads. That means targeting kids, using characters they like, and nursery rhymes they know. After that, probably to save time, the just reuse animations of various freely available 3D character models to provide a video.
How that reached a level where Elsagaters felt they had a sworn duty to warn the world about evil is beyond me.It¡¯s impossible to find any of these videos that fall into the death/ dismemberment/ perversion category. That means those have either been very effectively scrubbed by YouTube or the extent of their existence was? blown out of proportion to begin with.
Youtube
At the end of the day, righteous crusade or hair-brained exaggeration, there's a lesson for parents here. YouTube may seem friendly because of the channels you stick to, but it¡¯s not the same for everyone. It¡¯s a spiderweb of content that can lead from harmless prank videos to horrifyingly racist content in under an hour.
If you want to keep your kids safe, make sure you¡¯re aware of what they do online. Parents need to know and keep an eye on what their kids are watching on YouTube or other online video portals.
Because Elsagate will disappear into nothing just the way it appeared, but there will be others to follow.