Spider-Man and Elsa Videos / Elsagate

About

Spider-Man and Elsa Videos are videos on YouTube featuring people dressed as the Marvel superhero Spider-Man and the Frozen protagonist Elsa, who are often filmed engaging in various bizarre acts. The videos have gained much notoriety on YouTube, garnering considerable amounts of views, and with some speculating they are being aimed at younger audiences using manipulation of YouTube algorithms and bots to generate video views.

Origin

On August 30th, 2014, the DisneyCarToys YouTube channel uploaded a video titled Frozen Elsa Dates Spiderman!", in which a Spider-Man action figure jealously watches an Elsa from Frozen doll kiss a male doll (shown below). Within three years, the video gathered more than 36 million views and 7,800 comments.

Spread

On December 25th, the Toy Monster channel posted a video featuring a man wearing a Spider-Man costume and a woman wearing an Elsa costume (shown below, left). Within two years, the videos gained over of 10 million and 80 million views respectively. On February 16th, the SuperHeroClub YouTube channel uploaded a video titled "Supderman saves Frozen Anna!" (shown below, right). Within two years, the video accumulated upwards of 12 million views and 300 comments. On February 20th, Redditor Mr_Venom submitted a post asking "What's with all these weird superhero videos on YouTube?" to /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[2]

On March 19th, 2016, the Webs & Tiaras – Toy Monster Compilations channel uploaded a video titled "Spiderman & Frozen Elsa vs Joker!", which received upwards of 279 million views and 14,600 comments over the next 14 months (shown below). On April 25th, Redditor ShockerRider5 submitted a post asking "What is up with all these Elsa and Spiderman videos?" to /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[3] On May 20th, the SuperHeroFightsVs channel uploaded a video in which a young girl dressed in an Elsa costume cleans a "Poop Princess" doll with the help of a man in a Spider-Man costume (shown below, right). Over the next year, the video accumulated more than 89 million views and 5,900 comments.

On May 17th, 2016, Ethan and Hila Klein uploaded a video titled "Webs, Tiaras and Bradberries," in which they speculated that the high view counts on the videos were coming from bots and that Mohammed and Etayyim Bradberry were involved (shown below, left). Over the next year, the video received more than 1.6 million views and 4,400 comments. On June 18th, Youtuber iDubbbz partially covered the subject on his Content Cop video on toy channels (shown below, right). On June 29th, The Guardian^[9] published an article about the Spider-Man and Elsa videos titled "YouTube's latest hit: neon superheroes, giant ducks and plenty of lycra." On August 14th, another post about the videos was submitted to /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[4]

On December 30th, YouTuber Aaron DeBoer posted a video in which a woman dressed in a blue Spider-Man costume fights with various characters over cereal (shown below, left). Within six months, the video gained over 77 million views and 1,800 comments. On January 5th, 2017, the Spiderman Frozen Elsa & Friends channel uploaded a video titled "Joker Kidnap Frozen Elsa baby e/ Police Baby vs Spiderman Baby Rescue Elsa", which received more than 107 million views and 4,800 comments over the next four months (shown below, right).

On January 25th, h3h3productions published a video titled "Toy Channels are Ruining Society," which gathered more than 2.8 million views and 15,800 comments in the next four months (shown below). On February 2nd, the YouTube news blog TubeFilter^[8] published an article titled "YouTube’s Latest Bizarre Trend Has Adults Dressing Up In Spider-Man And Elsa Costumes." On February 23rd, the news site The Awl^[1] published an article about the YouTube phenomenon titled "The Ballad Of Elsa and Spiderman."

On June 23rd, 2017, Redditor^[10] DrDejavu launched the /r/ElsaGate subreddit to discuss the controversy, garnering more than 27,000 subscribers in five months. In the subreddit, the rules describe ElsaGate:

"#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."

Five months later, on November 5th, the New York Times^[10] published an article entitled "On YouTube Kids, Startling Videos Slip Past Filters" detailing how videos, like the Elsa and Spider-man videos work to reach kids through algorithms.

Two days later, on November 6th, James Bridle published an article entitled "Something is wrong on the internet," which detailed the spread of these and other such videos, like fake Peppa Pig. Within the month, the article had received more than 135,000 claps.

Search Interest

External References