Overview

Santa Inc. is an eight-episode stop-motion adult animated miniseries produced by the HBO Max streaming service, which stars comedians Seth Rogen as Santa Claus and Sarah Silverman as an elf that wants to become the next Santa. The show premiered in December 2021 and was critically panned, largely for its reliance on shock and raunchy humor, becoming the lowest-rated TV show on IMDb within days. The show was also criticized online for allegedly pushing a woke agenda, among other things. Rogen blamed the negative reception on white supremacists review-bombing it.

History

On November 22nd, 2021, a red band trailer for the series was released a week prior to the series debut, gaining over 823,000 views in just over a week (shown below). On December 2nd, all eight episodes of Santa Inc. premiered on the HBO Max streaming service.

The trailer inspired discussion on 4chan,^[1] particularly the /pol/ (politically incorrect) board in the days following its premiere, with many taking a critical stance. One thread made to /pol/ on November 25th, 2021, was titled "JEW SUBVERTING CHRISTMAS LIVE" where the OP claimed the movie was anti-Christmas and said "the whole premise of the film is that Santa is a white man and needs to be replaced with a PoC." Some hypothesized that Santa Inc. is an anagram for "satannic."^[2]

Online Presence

Review Bombing

Following the trailer's premiere, viewers expressed their distaste for the series in the trailer's comment section on YouTube, which has since been turned off. Many of the comments use anti-semitic references but use the word "elf" in place of "Jew" (example shown below). On November 29th, 2021, Twitter^[4] user @Catsplaining posted a tweet thread consisting of a number of these comments that were screenshotted before deletion.

On December 2nd, 2021, the series' release date, Rogen posted on Twitter^[3] blaming white supremacists for review-bombing the film, tweeting "We really pissed off tens of thousands of white supremacists with our new show #SantaInc which is now available on HBOMAX!"

Sarah Silverman was also critical of the review bombers, tweeting^[7] on December 2nd, "Now that Elf is now a new code for Jews, please enjoy all the codes for antisemitic shite on the web. I won’t put a trigger warning on it since it’s just Jew hatred. People seem 👌 w it" (shown below). By December 3rd, Santa Inc. became the lowest-rated series of all time on IMDb^[6] with a score of 1.1/10 at the time of writing in early December 2021.^[5]

Reception / Reactions

On December 2nd, 2021, YouTube reviewer The Critical Drinker posted a negative review of the film, gaining over 843,000 views in five days (shown below, left). On December 6th, conservative commentary YouTuber Steven Crowder posted a scathing reaction to the trailer, gaining over 300,000 views in a day (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References