Elsagate
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The following work contains material and themes that may include coarse language, sexual references, and/or graphic violent images that may be disturbing to some viewers. Mature articles are recommended for those who are 18 years of age or above. If you are 18 years old or above, or are comfortable with mature content, you are free to view this page; otherwise, you should close this page and view another one. Reader discretion is advised. |
| This article was copied (instead of imported) from the original Qualitipedia wikis, with minor edits. |
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 If the Nostalgia Critic's "You know, for kids!" phrase had some kind of media for embodiment, chances are it'd be this. | ||||||||||||
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Elsagate (or rather known as YouTube "Kids" Cartoons or Content Farms) is a neologism/term referring to the controversy surrounding videos on YouTube and YouTube Kids that are categorized as "child-friendly", but which contain themes that are inappropriate for children, and employs large numbers of freelance writers or uses automated tools to generate a large amount of content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by the search engine. Most videos under this classification are notable for presenting content such as graphic violence, sexual situations, fetishes, obscene language, drugs, alcohol, injections, toilet humor, and dangerous or upsetting situations and activities. They are now mostly known for the YouTube Kids cartoons.
The term itself is a portmanteau of Elsa, the main character from the Frozen film series, known for frequently appearing in such videos, and "-gate", a suffix for scandals, with the analogy originating from the Watergate scandal.
Why They're NOT Made For Kids (or Anyone)
- To address the videos out of the internet, most of them are cringeworthy and lazily made.
- Although some are innocent, many are disguised to be innocent and many children go down the rabbit hole by straying into utterly unsafe content such as blood and gore, sex, death, suicide, murder, flatulence, urine, fecal matter, injuries, pregnancy, fetishes, and dangerous or upsetting activities and situations.
- There can be one explainable reason: the people behind these videos can have shocking sexual fetishes.
- It is possible that the shock content involved is to draw an audience into their media and rake revenue like how most YouTube channels do on their videos nowadays, with the addition of inspired humor from popular media such as Spongebob Squarepants, Family Guy, Despicable Me or other trending media.
- There are several videos with various characters and their properties that are used without permission, such as
- Spiderman and other characters from the franchise of the same name
- Elsa from the Frozen film series (hence the name Elsagate)
- Minions from Despicable Me
- Batman from the franchise of the same name (although to a lesser extent)
- The Hulk
- The Joker
- Characters from Skibidi Toilet
- Characters from Inside Out and it's sequel
- Characters from Paw Patrol
- Characters from Minecraft
- Characters from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Characters from The Powerpuff Girls and its infamous 2016 reboot of the same name
- Characters from Peppa Pig
- Tom and Jerry from the franchise of the same name
- Characters from Thomas & Friends
- Lightning McQueen and Mater from the Cars franchise
- Characters from Hello Kitty
- Characters from the Angry Birds franchise
- Characters from the Super Mario Bros. franchise
- Pac-Man from the franchise of the same name
- Pikachu from the Pokémon franchise
- Characters from Piggy
- Ben 10 from the franchise of the same name
- Characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise
- Mickey and Minnie from the Mickey Mouse franchise
- Characters from the Star Wars franchise
- Rabbids from the franchise of the same name
- Characters from Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go!
- Characters from the Trolls franchise
- Characters from Masha and the Bear
- Squid Girl from the franchise of the same name
- Characters from Oggy and the Cockroaches
- Characters from The Amazing Digital Circus (currently the "mascot" of Content Farms)
- Characters from Fundamental Paper Education
- Characters from Murder Drones
- SpongeBob SquarePants from the franchise and animated series of the same name
- Characters from Hey Duggee
- Characters from the video game Poppy Playtime, especially its antagonists, Huggy Wuggy, Mommy Long Legs and (most recently) CatNap
- Characters from the web series by DaFuq Boom! such as Skibidi Toilet
- Characters from adult media such as South Park, Hazbin Hotel, etc. (see WTNMFK(OA) #28)
- Characters from teen/adult anime such as Naruto, One Piece, Dragon Ball and Demon Slayer
- Characters from the Incredibox fangame Sprunki
- These videos are completely nonsensical and gross, with a feeble grasp of the source material.
- Gene and someone who looks like Smiler are in a relationship and have two children.
- Minions have a standalone world they live in, and they get pregnant (which doesn't make sense in the slightest, because Minions have no gender or are purely male, there are no female Minions, so they cannot raise any children they have).
- Elsa and Peter Parker/Spider-Man are somehow in a relationship as well, although Peter Parker is a minor, even if he is an adult, so there is a low chance of having Elsa as a girlfriend.
- For some reason, the Trolls are human-sized, despite being tiny in the 2016 movie.
- The Paw Patrol, Blaze and the Monster Machines, and Thomas & Friends characters are now fully anthropomorphic humanoids, despite them not having humanoid features of any kind in their respective original series.
- They also come up with original characters, such as gummy bears, but they don't even look original and look like they were stolen from other media.
- However, there is no need for this as they were published without other companies' consent as stated before.
- Most of them have misleading thumbnails and are clickbait. The channels can also have False Advertising and are clickbait.
- For example, one thumbnail has Ghostface driving a chainsaw through Spider-Man, but that never happened in the video.
- Besides them being clickbait videos, they're usually compilations, which is something that the videos don't mention.
- The animation used is very cheap and limited, even for Flash standards. It is made in a few minutes or less, compared to much better animation taking weeks or even months to make. Plus, anyone can easily make the animation, or even better stuff, at their very own home, or on video makers like Adobe Property, Vegas Pro (stylized as VEGAS Pro, also called Sony Vegas), Blender, Autodesk property, Source Filmmaker, MikuMikuDance (MMD), Moho, Toon Boom, SideFX Houdini, Cinema 4D, Vyond (previously GoAnimate or sometimes known as Go!Animate) and its unofficial Wrapper: Offline, Plotagon, iClone, Garry's Mod, Machinima, Final Cut Pro, and other well-known types of animation software are used as well. Some of these videos are even made with the Rockstar Editor from Grand Theft Auto V (which is an M-rated game, by the way).
- Content farms: When something becomes popular, Elsagate channels called content farms are created. The sole purpose of a content farm is to milk whatever is currently trending on the internet and receive as much money as possible. Content farms also give the things they milk a bad reputation among the general public with lots of people misinterpreting non-content farm things featuring the trends as bad.
- The most common example is The Amazing Digital Circus, Which even made fun of it in one official video.
- Tons of stock sound effects. The videos also steal sound and voice clips from other movies, shows, games, and YouTubers. For example, a channel called SMILE KIDS TV used SAMTIME's voice in one of their videos, which is copyright infringement.
- There is also another example where BeepBeepTV, ZinZin Cartoon, Colorful Club, Simple Funs, and Big Cartoon use the George Pig crying sound from Peppa Pig without permission and with a laughing sound from a PigTV video at the end of the video, which is also copyright infringement.
- When there are educational videos of this type, it's always the subject of colors, shapes, and numbers. It gets repetitive and annoying that they don't even have a point.
- If you remove all the over-reliance on shock imagery, the cartoons themselves are bland and basic, lifeless and underdeveloped just to generate a quick buck.
- Many have bypassed YouTube's filtering system, with some even managing to sneak into the YouTube Kids app or Restricted Mode. This could mean children would get easy access to the cartoons, as pointed out by many sources online.
- They are often rushed so that there are as many videos that get millions of views.
- The titles are in broken English (as most, if not all of them, are from foreign countries, more onto the secondary article), so it seems as if they were translated into English from a foreign language, or with Google Translate, or translated word for word (also known as Blind Idiot Translation) or mashed together with English, like Chinglish. In addition, some titles even contain or translate to profane swear words or offensive slurs, which is hypocritical because they're called "kids' channels", and they somehow contain profanity in them, which is completely inappropriate for children.
- As stated, here are some examples: "JOKER VS SPIDERMAN & SPIDERBABIES 💗 Superhero Pranks Frozen Elsa Cartoon Play Doh Stop Motion", "Bad Baby with Tantrum and Crying for Lollipops Little Babies Learn Colors Finger Family", "SPIDERMAN GIANT EGG SURPRISE TOYS Spiderman Opening Surprise Toys Spiderman Videos IRL Kids Video" and so on.
- Obnoxious thumbnails with gaudy backgrounds that are poorly made.
- The thumbnails also lazily use the Battle for Dream Island mouth asset.
- The inappropriate content can sometimes be taken too far and to the next level, possibly even worse than Happy Tree Friends. Some examples include:
- One video where Elsa is depicted as a sex slave and has to dance in a strip club.
- Minions drink urine and eat feces which is coprophilia and also it is very dangerous because it can cause health problems including pneumonia.
- One video where the Minion children take their father's bottle of beer and drink it, which is underage drinking. If only we were kidding!
- A thumbnail with Mickey Mouse ripping Minnie Mouse's hand off with blood all over, despite Minnie being Mickey's love interest.
- A Teen Titans Go Funniest Moments video, where the thumbnail consisted of Rule 34 code red level of graphic pornography of Robin and Starfire in a kids' channel. This is just appalling to look at.
- Some of the thumbnails look like the creators are criminals, such as a thumbnail where a little pink girl gets shredded and some human Minnie Mouse watches in shock.
- Some thumbnails contain a character either taking a urine shower or drinking urine from a faucet (yes, really). What kind of sewage system is this?
- The music plays over and over again. The most common examples are instrumental nursery rhymes, poorly sung "children's" songs, crappy, off-key "kids' music", and royalty-free stock music.
- Repetitive, annoying, cliché-like, gross, and just plain weird trends are used in many videos, such as farting on a character, a baby version of a character cutting a lady’s bikini off (usually the bra) with something sharp, a baby character crying after being left at an airport and/or another location, getting giant bleeding lumps on their heads, failing on an art contest, and even pooping in a bathtub filled with M&M'S or other candy types.
- Overused background music. One example is that some videos overplay the infamous "Finger Family" song. Some even use royalty-free music, especially the ones by Kevin MacLeod & the Green Orbs.
- On occasion, there are continuity errors, as in one video, Spider-Man's colors are switched, with red being black and black being red.
- Sometimes, these videos are even made with AI on programs such as DALL-E, and they look hideous due to the AI system not being able to accurately translate the user's text into art, and it shows as some of the characters look disturbing due to how blurry they are and the backgrounds are atrocious in general.
- The videos sometimes have no context whatsoever.
- Similar to Robot Chicken (although the latter was positively received), they like to cash in on overrated (if not dead) trends and memes in various media such as the "Dame Tu Cosita (roughly translates to "Give me your little thing" in English)" dance, Fortnite, fidget spinners, Pop-Its, Huggy Wuggy from Poppy Playtime, Among Us, Squid Game, Peppa Pig, Bluey, The Gummy Bear Song, Friday Night Funkin', Gangnam Style, Learning With Pibby, Mr. Incredible Becoming Uncanny/Canny, the IShowSpeed Talking Ben Meme, Talking Bella, The Cuphead Show!, the 1000-degree knife and many more.
- They commonly flood the YouTube site. Even if some are taken down, more are uploaded, day after day, and year after year.
- The titles for these videos like to use random buzzwords (i.e. "Finger Family", "Learn Colors", "Funny Kids Video", "Fun Toy Videos", etc.), which makes them more deceiving.
- Some of the people who upload these videos can't handle even the slightest bit of criticism. This happened once with Daniel T. Gaming, where he falsely got a copyright strike by DCTC Toy Club (now known as Sandaroo Kids) for using one of their videos in his "Disney Cringe 2" video. Thankfully, Daniel won the claim and got his video back.
- Many people who make them also use the "It's made for kids" excuse just to avoid criticism, which always fails due to the inappropriate content featured.
- Some of the people whose source material has been farmed don't even take action and join in. For example, EnchantedMOB made cringe animations of their source material, Poppy Playtime, and didn’t bother to take it down.
- Even all of these gross-out videos are deleted, videos about changing diapers to a baby version of a character that has fecal matter and it can be disturbing and even worse that the fecal matter shown in the thumbnail is not deleted yet! Not even the nurse videos that contain the patient character having nipples aren't deleted at all.
- As said above on WTNMFK(OA) #3, those types of videos always appeared and were suggested in videos about cartoons aimed at toddlers such as Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Handy Manny or Special Agent Oso. Not only do they appear in niche-audience TV shows but there are occasions when those videos are suggested even in media that are not aimed at kids (such as South Park, Hazbin Hotel or Robot Chicken.)
- In some of the videos, they even have adult media in them, with examples such as Poppy Playtime, and Squid Game, and one of the videos has Adolf Hitler, of all people in them.
- The reason why they have a million or even a billion views is that they use bots and click farms. And certainly, because of their high view count, they may get automatically recommended by YouTube's algorithm and be spread much further.
- Some of those types of channels could hack into someone's YouTube channel and upload their content, just like what "Nursery Rhymes DisneyCars" did to Leeroy Jenkins.
- The videos have a weird fixation on injections, pregnancy, feces, and urine. Sometimes, they even use mukbangs for their videos and make the characters eat an unhealthy amount of food.
- Many of them have syringes for some reason, which adds to the disgusting factor. Children’s Joy TV is a channel where almost all of their videos have to do with syringes in toy babies’ buttocks. The most notorious video is where a guy throws syringes into a toy baby’s butt with a paper target on it. Thankfully, his channel got terminated after too many people were reporting it.
- It has been suggested that the depiction of syringes is to normalize injections used to sedate sexual abuse victims.
- Almost all of these videos use the same licensed characters from copyrighted material, which is copyright infringement.
- Even after the thing that happened in November 2017, at the start of 2020 even more "kids" channels started to exist due to the account change that happened in the same year (marking your channel and videos as “made for kids" or "not for kids"). And due to them being marked automatically as “made for kids”, they somehow still manage to bypass YouTube's restrictions! There are even channels that have been terminated that have come back again like Doggy Doggy Cartoons (formerly "Toys And Funny Kids Play Doh Cartoons").
- This feature is now being incorporated into mobile game ads but to a lesser extent. Some games have even started implementing them into the game itself (as a justification for having a game that's exactly like the ads), meaning that Elsagate could plague the mobile game industry soon.
- To continue from WTNMFK(OA)#33, Elsagate is not only on YouTube but there are also in other media, such as mobile games on Google Play and AppGallery, bootleg merchandise (e.g. clothing, T-shirts, mugs, and even toys), and mobile game ads.
- To add insult to injury, it could potentially normalize this sort of content, as it is targeted towards easily impressionable children.
How To Protect Your Child(ren) From Elsagate
- First of all, the idea of not letting children go on YouTube or the Internet unsupervised until they are at least 13 y/o. It’s easy for them to get hooked on Elsagate, especially the content that is inappropriate for them.
- Make a playlist of videos that you’ll approve for your child(ren). That way, they can watch videos that don’t have this type of content.
- There are plenty of official channels that offer authentic episodes and clips; including WildBrain, Kabillion, Disney, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., CBeebies, Cartoonito, Nicktoons, NickRewind, PBS Kids, WB Kids, Akili Kids! TV, Treehouse Direct, Retro Rerun, Keep It Weird, Kids TV English, Throwback Toons, BRB Internacional, ZooMoo, Pinkfong, DreamWorks, Cartoon Network, Peacock Jr., Netflix Jr., Peacock Kids, Prime Video Kids, HBO Max Family, Animated Cartoons for Children (for Universal/DreamWorks cartoons), Hasbro, Mattel, Animakids and Boomerang. Of course, check for equivalent channels on your territory if you're not from the USA.
- A few TV shows even have their own official channels, including Mickey Mouse, Winnie-the-Pooh, Thomas & Friends, SpongeBob SquarePants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Fairly OddParents, Dora the Explorer, Curious George, Arthur, Cyberchase, Work It Out Wombats, Peppa Pig, Pocoyo, Polly Pocket, Pokémon, My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, The Amazing World of Gumball, Adventure Time, Dexter's Laboratory, We Bare Bears, Johnny Test, Woody Woodpecker, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Maisy Mouse, Peter Rabbit (2012), Mofy, Miffy, Hello Kitty, Fireman Sam, Postman Pat, Pingu, Noddy, Musti, LazyTown, Pinkfong, Peg + Cat, Lalaloopsy, Hey Duggee, The Backyardigans, Yo Gabba Gabba, Franklin, Little Bear, Blue’s Clues & You!, Barney & Friends, Sesame Street, The Muppets, Gummibär, Bob the Builder, Fifi and The Flowertots, Roary the Racing Car, The Powerpuff Girls, Garfield, Chuggington, The Berenstain Bears, Olivia the Pig, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Peep and the Big Wide World, Ben 10, Kid vs Kat, Toopy and Binoo, VeggieTales, Peanuts, Trulli Tales, Storybots, Jelly Jamm, Superbook (both 1981 and 2011 versions), Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Let's Go Luna, Molly of Denali, Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum, Steven Universe, The Loud House, The Casagrandes, Caillou, and Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!.
- Some shows, like The Owl House, The Ghost and Molly McGee, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Nature Cat, and Ready Jet Go, don't have their own YouTube channels, but you can still find clips or full episodes of them on Disney Channel, Peacock Kids, PBS Kids, and more respectively.
- There's also an anime that you can watch clips and full episodes, but only appeals to children, such as Doraemon, Shin-chan (though it could be inappropriate in some scenes), Beyblade, Bakugan, Pokemon, some Toei Animation shows; such as Pretty Cure, Ojamajo Doremi, Digimon, etc, Transformers (Unicron trilogy), and so on.
- Or, if your family wanted to watch something they want, you could also buy the official (VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray/iTunes/Amazon, etc.) releases of the shows or buy the subscription service (Netflix, Disney+, Max, Paramount+, etc.).
- Supervise and watch said videos with your child(ren) to check for inappropriate content.
- Report the videos, and if necessary, the channel, if it doesn't have child-friendly content. It is better to do so on the channels that imitate kids' shows to look nice but in truth aren’t.
- Use the filter “Restricted Mode”. Keep in mind that it isn’t 100% accurate, though.
- Click the “Not Interested” button if any of these videos show up on a video that is not related to these cartoons.
- If these videos keep appearing in the related videos section, go to your watch history and remove the Elsagate videos from them by hovering over the video and clicking on the X button.
- Always analyze the video if it looks suspicious or if it has a weird and crazy long title. Don't judge these videos just by the characters, channel name, description, thumbnail, and/or title. You might be fooled by trusting the content at first sight.
- If your child(ren) enjoys these types of videos, check certain videos to see if any inappropriate content is in them, and save the clean ones in a playlist.
- YouTube Kids is ideal, but be careful, as some of these videos can pop up on there.
- Leave auto-play turned off on YouTube, as the auto-play feature is incredibly useless because it plays random videos until you turn it off.
- If you can, get the Safe-Vision app. It will ask for your child's age and it will give a good list of videos for them to watch. You can even go to Parent Mode to select some good videos that are blocked to be unblocked.
- Inspect Element can help as well, as it can remove these videos from the recommended. But please note that it isn't permanent.
- If possible, download the YouTube Go app. You can save approved videos and watch them offline. However, if you have an iPhone, then you can't get the app, as it's not available on iOS yet.
- If you don't have cable or satellite television, but have YouTube and your kids want to watch cartoons, try finding some DVDs and/or Blu-Rays (if you have a DVD or a Blu-Ray player) at retailers such as Walmart, Target, Best Buy, or any store that stocks cartoon DVDs or Blu-Rays. If you can't find any, then you can find some on online stores, like eBay (beware of scalpers and scammers though) or mostly on Amazon.
- If you want, find children's videos on YouTube, but the ones that want to teach something to children, can give them something productive and useful for their life, and if it can be something beyond the colors. For example:
- English (alphabet, words, sentences, conventions)
- Math (numbers, units, shapes, arithmetics)
- Science (physical, life/earth, and space sciences)
- Social studies (history, geography, civics)
- Health (diet, exercise, hygiene)
- Technology and engineering
- Social, emotional, and problem-solving skills
- A foreign language, like French or Spanish
- YouTube Kids has an option that allows you to approve certain videos for your kids, so you can turn on that feature and make sure that they are watching specific content that you find appropriate for them.
- Use extensions such as BlockTube to block the videos.
#ElsaGate Phenomenon
Ever since the people behind the really weird and inappropriate “kids’ videos” knew about their popularity, they have also started resurfacing their content because of #ElsaGate which is fundamentally a subreddit full of people sharing all the info they have on all the explicit "kids' channels."
It was until the subreddit permanently closed on August 20, 2023.
The "Welcome to #ElsaGate" paragraph shown on the right side of the subreddit reads:
#ElsaGate refers to a wave of videos being produced by different channels, containing pop culture characters (typically Western) that are shown doing bizarre and usually violent/sexual acts. The reasoning for the existence of these varies. For example - some believe, controversially, that it is a form of communication used by child pornographers; others believe that it is to appeal to children for maximum ad revenue. Others believe that it started as a project for maximum revenue, and has now derailed into bizarre competition. The majority of the live-action videos are made in Russia and the animations in India.
YouTube is aware of this controversy. Around 2016-2017, YouTube has started deleting these kinds of videos. In October 2021, YouTube began demonetizing low-quality kids' content, such as heavily commercial/promotional videos or videos that promote negative behaviors, and removed comments on videos made for children. YouTube Kids now has a lot tighter and stricter rules and guidelines about what content to post, due to these videos.
“YouTube Kids Be Like/YouTube Kids at 3 AM” Memes
In February of 2021, a user named “El Benja” made a meme titled “YouTube Kids a las 3 am”. A few months later, memes by the title of “YouTube Kids be like” surfaced on YouTube, satirically mocking the bizarreness of a majority of the content seen on YouTube Kids.
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