REALITY HACKING: Panic, Cruelty, Mayhem, Cartoons
[GRAPHIC CONTENT] From The Theater of Cruelty to the Panic Movement to ElsaGate
Did you ever watch the movie Interview with a Vampire? There is a scene where Louis and Claudia are invited to watch a rendition of Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe at the Theatre des Vampires. During the production, the audience goes through a range of emotions as they see the torment and taunting of a young beauty stripped of her clothes and then murdered before their eyes.
NOTE: The naughty bits in the below video have been blacked out. Since I am horrible with tracking in video, what I did will just have to do.
AUDIENCE
Is awestruck by her beauty, her suffering.
...
ON THE STAGE
The naked Mortal Woman lies dead on the floor. The
vampires seem to vanish one by one. As the curtain
draws across, the Audience loudly applauds what they
presume are theatrical tricks.ANOTHER ANGLE
The audience, milling towards the exits. They talk in
vacuous terms about the beauty of the show, the
symbolism of it, the daring of it as they leave.
Of course, the audience thinks this is just performance art. Theater. A trickery of the stage. Louis and Claudia know differently though.
LOUIS AND CLAUDIA
LOUIS
This is monstrous!CLAUDIA
Yes, and very beautiful.
Louis and Claudia knew exactly what they were watching. An audience mesmerized by trauma and horror. Theater being used to hide reality. Or perhaps reality being changed through art.
Can reality be hacked this way? Can theater be used to persuade you? Make you believe in a cause? Introduce you to ideas and thoughts and actions you wouldn't have come up with on your own? Can it make you believe in a political cause? Donate money? Or even make you believe in a lie?
And what if these same tactics are used against your children?
Was this scene from Interview with a Vampire based on history — distant past, present, and future?
Theater of Cruelty
In the 1930's, a madman with incurable paranoid delirium (some called him a genius) and opium addict by the name of Antonin Artaud wanted to change the face of theater.
Artaud advocated for a theater that would engage all senses, creating a total experience. He proposed that this form of theater should be direct, shocking, and confrontational, often utilizing extreme sensory elements like loud sounds, bright lights, and stark visual imagery. The word "cruelty" in this context refers to a relentless assault on the senses of the audience, aimed at awakening their subconscious.
He didn't just want to revolutionize theater. He wanted to revolutionize society and people through his theater — which just happens to embrace fear, hallucinations, paranoia, phobias, sexualization, seduction, gore, and the macabre. Through the ritual of theater, people, and thereby society, could be transformed. A magical psychological exorcism, if you will, whereby people are horrified into happiness.
In his mind, there needed to be an interaction or connection between the actors and audience. In the Theater of Cruelty, this line was meant to be blurred. He wanted to leave a scar on the psyche of the audience as they walked out the theater's doors. The Theater of Cruelty was theater “in which violent physical images crush and hypnotize the sensibility of the spectator seized by the theatre as by a whirlwind of higher forces.”
It is Antonin Artaud's ideology that acts as a stepping stone to later forms of performance art and reality hacking.
If you want to see the first play in all it's less than 14 minutes of glory, here is Jet of Blood. In my opinion, it bears a lot of resemblance to the scene from Interview with a Vampire. The play is meant to disgust, disturb, and possibly horrify you. It certainly leaves one confused and uncertain.
Fernando Arrabal
Enter another writer, artist, anarchist, communist, recipient of the Ford Foundation Award, and Nobel Prize finalist — Fernando Arrabal. Arrabel is a prolific writer, having written poems, plays, operas, and novels. In fact, at one point he is arrested by the Spanish government for his "blasphemous" writings. He was eventually released due to social pressure from mass protest. However, his plays are banned in Spain.
Here is just a sample of some of his writings.
Plays:
The Grand Ceremonial
Ceremony for a Murdered Black
Ceremony for a Goat on a Cloud
The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria
Impossible Loves
The Four Cubes
The Solemn Communion
Stripease of Jealousy
Youth Illustrated
Has God Gone Mad?
Garden of Delights
Erotic Bestiality
The Lay of Barabbas (TheCrowning)
Heaven and Crap
The Tower of Babel
The King of Sodome
Apokalyptica
Novels:
Baal Babylone (Viva la muerte), an autobiography whose title translates to Baal Babylon (Long Live Death)
Burial of a Sardine
Feasts
Rites of Confusion
The Panic
The Red Virgin
Regarding his plays, critic Javier Villan wrote this:
Arrabal's theatre is a wild, brutal, cacophonous, and joyously provocative world. It is a dramatic carnival in which the carcass of our 'advanced' civilizations is barbecued over the spits of a permanent revolution. He is the artistic heir of Kafka's lucidity and Jarry's humor; in his violence, Arrabal is related to Sade and Artaud. Yet he is doubtless the only writer to have pushed derision as far as he did. Deeply political and merrily playful, both revolutionary and bohemian, his work is the syndrome of our century of barbed wire and Gulags, a manner of finding a reprieve.
Side Note and Fun Fact: Jim Morrison was influenced by and was friends with Fernando Arrabal. They traveled together in Mexico. Fernando Arrabel would also meet John Lennon and would have a painting painted for him by Pablo Picasso entitled Viva la vida.
Panic Movement
Genius... or madness...
In 1962 Fernando Arrabal founds the "Panic Movement" together with Roland Topor and Alexandro Jodorowsky. "Panic" comes from the God Pan, the All. The "Panic" man was a man of total refusal, refusal of all danger, he did not expose himself and did not die a hero's death.
Heavily influenced by the avant-garde and Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, Fernando Arrabal created a style of performance art as a response to surrealism becoming mainstream. The Panic Movement's theatrical events were meant to be violent, chaotic, surreal, and shocking.
The goal was to create ritual and magic that would transform the audience — a new form of psychological therapy that would change the human spirit.
The group called itself the Mouvement Panique, inspired by Pan, the Greek god of fertility whose nighttime noises caused “panic” in the hearts of travelers. However, Jodorowsky’s interest in theater as catharsis began earlier, with his discovery in Mexico of “psycho-magic” at the hands of a sorceress cum performance artist who operated on him before a live audience with a knife and scissors before sealing the wound without a stitch. The power of art to provoke a spiritual transformation has since been a guiding principle of his work, though the Panique happenings ended after a particularly intense one left Jodorowsky feeling both purified and glad to be alive.
To give you an idea of what this looked like on stage...
Of special importance would be Theater of Cruelty champion Antonin Artaud and Spanish playwright Fernando Arrabal, with whom he launched the Panic Movement (from the god Pan) in conjunction with artist Roland Topor. By the mid-'60s, the Panic Movement began yielding full-fledged "ephemeras" or "happenings," theatrical events designed to be shocking. One four-hour ephemera starred a leather-clad Jodorowsky and featured the slaughter of geese, naked women covered in honey, a crucified chicken, the staged murder of a rabbi, a giant vagina, the throwing of live turtles into the audience, and canned apricots. This privileging of the provocative above all other qualities would prove to be a sign of things to come in Jodorowsky's early film career.
If this type of performance theater can influence the artistic world, what would happen if it were used to change political views and influence social movements?
Project Mayhem 2012
On September 5, 2011, an article, half written in French and half in Spanish, was published by Fernando Arrabal in La Regle Du Jeu. Here is what I could translate from it. Note that I don't speak French or Spanish. My best guess at meanings are in parenthesis.
...need... desperation ...disgusting rats... other artistic forms... Project Mayhem 2012...
...other artistic forms: ... the Pope dances with Zarathustra, since his celibacy is less and less hereditary (passed on from generation to generation)...
... We have conceived Project Mayhem 2012 as a sculpture of Panic Social Art and as an Alternate Reality Hacking Game in the purest form Arrabal/Fluxus/Joseph Beuys style.
An Alternate Reality Game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a medium, presenting a series of real media resources to tell a story that is affected by the intervention of the participants....
Without there being a globalized consensus to define the concept, it seems clear that it is somewhere between a game and a set of puzzles. It has been described as the first narrative form born from the internet, because its essence usually lies in seeking and sharing information.
Reality hacking is a term used to describe any phenomenon which emerges from the nonviolent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of politically, socially or culturally subversive ends.
... However, as we well know, there is nothing more dangerous in the Universe than a Work of Art elevated to the category of Mirror...
... We are happy to remain at the disposal of ARRABAL for any clarification it deems appropriate.
.... Receive the PANICO DE ARRABAL our warmest greetings, PM2012
La Regle Du Jeu: …ἀνάγκη … desperados…rats d’égout… autre arrabalesque… Project Mayhem 2012…
War of the Memes
Coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene which was published in 1976, the word meme can be defined as a "cultural concept." The word itself comes from a combination of the Greek word mimeme, which means emulates or one who imitates, and the word gene. Most of us are more familiar with the images themselves.
Much like a gene, they replicate, reproduce, and imitate the original form from which they are born. They have become a digital art for a digital age. And like all genes, they are able to pass on information. Sometimes this information comes in the form of a joke, sarcasm, a history lesson, or political idea.
This idea wasn't lost on the Department of Defense either. Although not in a digital format, I would argue that the propaganda posters that came from the World Wars were a form of a meme. Richard Dawkins, I think, would disagree with me and say it was a 1940's cartoon character named Kilroy. Given the definition of the word meme and the idea behind it, Richard Dawkins may be correct.
Our great-grandparents may not know how to operate the computer or talk to Siri, but even they had their meme, which can still be found around the globe today. His name was Kilroy. With his long nose and bald head, he was there for it, whatever it was. While there are myths and legends about his origins, the truth is that no one is sure where Kilroy started. One legend has it that it originated from ship inspector James Kilroy, while another credits a serviceman named Francis Kilroy. His origin isn’t as important as what Kilroy symbolized, kind of like today’s “blinking white guy” meme.
Kilroy was the fighting spirit of American soldiers during WWII, and so prolific was the “Kilroy” mark it’s rumored that Germans thought Kilroy might be a real spy. He traveled overseas and back again, and like a good meme, hung around for a while. He crossed over from mere graffiti to film and television, appearing in the 1970 war movie Kelly’s Heroes and was referenced in a 1975 episode of M*A*S*H*. Kilroy was the meme heard round the world.
On July 14, 2011, DARPA announced that it was starting a new program called the Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC).
The general goal of the Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program is to develop a new science of social networks built on an emerging technology base. Through the program, DARPA seeks to develop tools to help identify misinformation or deception campaigns and counter them with truthful information, reducing adversaries' ability to manipulate events.
Shortly after DARPA started the Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program, a presentation was given at the Social Media for Defense Summit on October 2011. The presentation consisted of a 152 page PowerPoint presentation titled Tutorial: Military Memetics and was given by Dr. Robert Finkelstein who was president of Robotic Technology Inc.
In the 2005-2006 academic year for a Master of Operational Studies at the School of Advanced Warfighting at the Marine Corps University at Qauntico, Major Michael B. Prosser wrote a paper titled Memetics—A Growth Industry In US Military Operations. In it, he presented "a military application and construct using memes designed to understand and defeat an enemy ideology and win over the masses of undecided noncombatants." Part of his proposal was the creation of a Meme Warfare Center. Major Michael B. Prosser is now a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps.
The point is that memes can be used as a form of warfare. Not only is it an art form, it is also a powerful tool to change public perception and share ideas. The ideas and information shared in these memes are designed to replicate, reproduce, and imitate the original form from which they are born.
With all the freeware used to generate memes and the number of people willing to create them, they are also a cheap form of warfare with almost inexhaustible amounts of ammunition. They are only limited by the imaginations of the people creating them. These memes can change opinions, uplift and inspire, degrade... the sky is the limit as to how they can be used.
So when an artistic movement like the founder of the Panic Movement suddenly comes up with an idea of using memes to promote violent, chaotic, surreal, and shocking content in order to accomplish reality hacking as a form of psycho-magic, you could understand that there might be a cause for concern.
Anonymous
In 2011 and 2012, a series of documents were written by what seems to be several members of Anonymous to paste bin regarding Project Mayhem. This is a list of what I was able to find. I am sure there are more documents should anyone care to go look. They include:
PasteBin: Project Mayhem 2012 Tyler (September 15, 2011)
PasteBin: Project Mayhem 2012 'Dangerous Ideas #1 and #2' (September 15, 2011)
PasteBin: Project Mayhem 2012 Artistic Disclaimer (October 1, 2011)
Internet Archive: PasteBin: Anonymous Project Mayhem 2012 Call to HackZION! (May 3, 2012)
Internet Archive: Knowledge of Today: THINK Anonymous - Project Mayhem 2012 (May 25, 2012)
NOTE: In the essence of full disclosure, I have also found various videos and posts on YouTube and on X (formerly Twitter) under the #PM2012 hashtag.
SECONDARY NOTE: When you read these documents, you will see many esoteric references and references to Satanism. With Anonymous, one cannot be sure of the intent. In some cases, they are being very serious. In others, it's just a joke... an offensive joke. They got a laugh out of it because it made you react. You got upset and offended. (In Anonymous parlance, this is called Lulz.)
We are going to segue into what Tyler was reported to be in these documents before we move back to Project Mayhem 2012.
Hello, we are Anonymous.
We come to you with a message of Revolution, or more so, Evolution. We have all witnessed the United states uprising with Occupy Wall Street venting their frustration with politicians, banks, and corporations. While we do agree with their message, their tactics of civil disobedience has only invoked violence with police officers around the country which has caused an extreme distraction for the Occupy movement. With censorship bills being passed and bills that attempt to rid us of our freedoms that this country was founded upon the time has now come to act. We have devised a plan to bring forth the final act of the evolution. This act however will only be as real as the people of the world decide it to be. The United States Government is fully aware of this plan and has been preparing for it with the cybersecurity act of 2012. The United States Government foresees a plan that will destroy the system and now they fear us. You say you want a revolution and now the time has arrived. We now call upon the top hacktivists, coders, crypto anarchists, cypher punks, Non-violent Civil Rights activists, Internet Censorship and Freedom of Speech activists everywhere to collaborate to jointly BRAINSTORM IDEAS to develop TYLER. TYLER is a massively distributed and decentralized Wikipedia-style P2P cipherspace structure impregnable to censorship. TYLER will improve where Wikileaks could not. In other words TYLER will be a Wikileaks on steroids. We not only call upon the people of the United States but the people of the world to gather evidence of illegality, corruption, and fraud and upload it to TYLER From the 12th of December 2012, to the 21st of December 2012. On the 5th of November TYLER will be out of beta testing. To construct TYLER and leak it all is only one phase of Project Mayhem 2012. Remember, there is no certainty, only opportunity.
You are Anonymous,
You are Project Mayhem 2012,
Together we are legion,
To the global and financial leaders of the world,
Expect us.Follow the hashtag #PM2012 on Twitter for more information regarding Project Mayhem 2012.
Internet Archive: PasteBin: Anonymous Project Mayhem 2012 Call to HackZION! (May 3, 2012)
In short, Tyler was supposed to be a new improved Wikileaks able to gather and distribute evidence of illegality, corruption, and fraud that people have collected worldwide. I am not sure what came from this project directly. However, there were some very interesting leaks that came after these dates. Members of the collective called Anonymous have contributed to the exposure of information that brings us to today.
The second part of Project Mayhem was to create art. Whether this is the Panic Art of Fernando Arrabal, I do not know. However, he was heavily referenced in some of these documents.
Fight Club
Since the theme behind Project Mayhem 2012 borrows heavily from the movie Fight Club, I am going to take a moment to use this clip to segue into my next segment.
JACK
Tyler was a night person. He
sometimes worked as a projectionist.
A movie doesn't come in one big reel,
it's on a few. In old theaters, two
projectors are used, so someone has
to change projectors at the exact
second when one reel ends and
another reel begins. Sometimes you
can see two dots on screen in the
upper right hand corner...Tyler points to the side of OUR FRAME and the TWO DOTS
briefly APPEAR ONSCREEN.TYLER
They're called "cigarette burns."JACK
It's called a "changeover." The
movie goes on, and nobody in the
audience has any idea.TYLER
Why would anyone want this shitty job?JACK
It affords him other interesting
opportunities.TYLER
— Like splicing single frames from
adult movies into family films.JACK
In reel three, right after the
courageous dog and the snooty cats —
who have celebrity voices — eat out
of a garbage can, there's the flash
of Tyler's contribution...In the AUDIENCE, CHILDREN suddenly start squirming,
confused, looking at each other.A WOMAN abruptly stops sucking her soda straw, feeling
vaguely terrible. Her uncomfortable HUSBAND slowly leans
back in his seat.Jack and Tyler watch from the projection booth window.
TYLER
One-forty-eighth of a second. That's
how long it's up there.JACK
No one really knows that they've seen it.
But they did.
Reality Hacking
Reality hacking is a term used to describe any phenomenon which emerges from the nonviolent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of politically, socially or culturally subversive ends.
La Regle Du Jeu: …ἀνάγκη … desperados…rats d’égout… autre arrabalesque… Project Mayhem 2012…
Reality hacking is generally defined as using online tools to create changes in political, social, or cultural trends. So it could be the use of video to sell a brand, change an idea, or make someone think about a topic that they haven't before. It is the propagation of online ideas into the physical world.
What if this went further? What if reality hacking didn't limit itself to online tools and instead used art and books in order to create political, social, or cultural trends. Could someone use offline tools to hack reality -- to change it as they want it to be rather than what it started as?
The idea of the panic movement was to use some form of trauma based mind control in order to shock the targeted victim into believing they lived in a more utopian reality. While Fernando Arrabal might disagree with the way I phrase his Panic Movement, he cannot argue that this may be well what he is doing. He is introducing violent, chaotic, surreal, and shocking content in order to create a happier world. He was world renowned for this idea. Celebrated for it. He had the attention of cultural idols and politicians alike.
Here is the awful truth. What part of the population is most susceptible to trauma based mind control? Would it surprise you that it was around 2012 that publishing houses had a sharp uptick in publishing children's books on transgenderism? Up until that point it was a fringe market. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be until 5 years later that statistical data would be collected on transgender trends in America.
In 2021, about 42,000 children and teens across the United States received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, nearly triple the number in 2017, according to data Komodo compiled for Reuters. Gender dysphoria is defined as the distress caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and the one assigned to them at birth.
Overall, the analysis found that at least 121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria from 2017 through 2021. Reuters found similar trends when it requested state-level data on diagnoses among children covered by Medicaid, the public insurance program for lower-income families.
Gender-affirming care for youths takes several forms, from social recognition of a preferred name and pronouns to medical interventions such as hormone therapy and, sometimes, surgery. A small but increasing number of U.S. children diagnosed with gender dysphoria are choosing medical interventions to express their identity and help alleviate their distress.
These medical treatments don’t begin until the onset of puberty, typically around age 10 or 11.
Reuters: Putting Numbers On The Rise In Children Seeking Gender Care
How do you start a cultural revolution?
After School Satan
On July 30, 2016, the Satanic Temple put out the below video (or is that a commercial) advertising a new program they were pursuing — After School Satan. The video shows everything from creepy children walking backwards, spiders, scenes that look like they belong to an 80's horror movie, even creepier dolls and comes complete with music (or is that chanting) being played backwards.
In it, you see elements of fear, suspense, distorted reality, and phobia. Was this meant to entice children to an after school program? Is it meant to give them nightmares? Could this be a form of trauma based mind control?
ElsaGate
Someone or something or some combination of people and things is using YouTube to systematically frighten, traumatise, and abuse children, automatically and at scale, and it forces me to question my own beliefs about the internet, at every level. Much of what I am going to describe next has been covered elsewhere, although none of the mainstream coverage I’ve seen has really grasped the implications of what seems to be occurring.
Remember that the idea behind the Panic Movement and Panic Social Art is to introduce violent, chaotic, surreal, and shocking content into art in order to shock the person into a happier existence.
In the same year that Fernando Arrabal's Project Mayhem 2012 started, a YouTube channel was created called Toy Freaks. The channel's videos featured Gregory Chism, a single father, and his two daughters, Victoria (age 6) and Annabelle (age 4). Before this channel was shut down, it had 8.5 million subscribers and was one of YouTube's top 100 most viewed channels.
Now it is important to note that Gregory Chism and his company, Freak Media LLC, underwent 3 different investigations due to his YouTube channel. One by Grantite City, Illinois where the company was registered to. They said it was outside their jurisdiction due to the fact that Gregory Chism and his daughters lived in another state.
The second investigation involved the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). They were at a loss as to what to having never encountered anything like this before. When they were able to locate the city and state where Gregory Chism actually resided, a third investigation happened which involved local law enforcement. The local police department couldn't find any specific violations of the law and dropped the case.
The dad, Greg Chism, made wildly popular videos showing his youngest daughter terrified when he placed creatures like a frog and lobster near her and her sister as they were in the bathtub — they were both wearing swimsuits.
He also dressed them up like babies as they pretended to engage in infantile behavior. And in one video the younger daughter “pees” on her older sister.
Some of the videos from Toy Freaks showed the girls eating something and then vomiting. Others showed them in obvious pain, scared, crying, and/or various states of being terrified. This content was marked safe for children to watch.
There is a dark side of YouTube. There is an even darker side if you are a child watching videos that are being categorized as child friendly content. Videos which depict child friendly and recognized characters with themes that include cannibalism, murder, rape, drinking bleach, violence, gore, and sexualization.
A step beyond the simply pirated Peppa Pig videos mentioned previously are the knock-offs. These too seem to teem with violence. In the official Peppa Pig videos, Peppa does indeed go to the dentist, and the episode in which she does so seems to be popular — although, confusingly, what appears to be the real episode is only available on an unofficial channel. In the official timeline, Peppa is appropriately reassured by a kindly dentist. In the version above, she is basically tortured, before turning into a series of Iron Man robots and performing the Learn Colours dance. A search for “peppa pig dentist” returns the above video on the front page, and it only gets worse from here.
This trend continued on until 2017 when parents first noticed it and started complaining about it. It was in August 2017 that YouTube finally responded to the growing complaints. They updated their community standards. As a result, 50 channels were removed on November 22, 2017. Then on November 27, 2017, another 270 accounts were removed. Over a hundred thousand videos were removed.
The Google subsidiary said in a statement to BuzzFeed News that in the last week it had "terminated more than 270 accounts and removed over 150,000 videos from the platform." It also "turned off comments on more than 625,000 videos targeted by child predators."
"Finally, we removed ads from nearly 2 million videos and over 50,000 channels masquerading as family-friendly content," YouTube said.
YouTube has previously said it demonetized 3 million such videos since June, bringing the new total to 5 million.
BuzzFeed: YouTube Has Deleted Hundreds Of Thousands Of Disturbing Kids' Videos
YouTube went to all out war against this content. Why? They were in danger of losing their advertising. And it seemed at first that ElsaGate went away. Children's content was once again safe. However, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
ElsaGate is making a return. It is evolving. It went from targeting children's cartoons specifically into something else.
Excerpt from the below video:
YouTube specifically targeted channels that were labeled for kids. So these channels have to get creative if they wanted to keep profiting from traumatizing children. They pretend to be for adults while simultaneously marketing themselves to children. ElsaGate channels have evolved to full the algorithm and proceed to profit from it just like before. But why? Why has this horrific sub-genre persisted even after the very site that it's hosted on is actively hunting them down? Why does ElsaGate still exist?
Excerpt from the above video:
There's two popular theories that try to explain why ElsaGate content exists in the first place and the third lesser known theory that could explain its resurgence. Videos meant for children easily get thousands of views. It doesn't have to have a high production value since children won't care or notice.
Take the Alpha and Omega movie. It is the worst thing I've ever seen. But the fact it made double its budget at the box office is insane. It's because it's colorful. The thumbnails, the cheap animation, and loud music are usually enough to keep a child stimulated.
The potential financial gain from uploading shocking and attention-grabbing content can be hard to resist for individuals with maybe looser morals. Even creators that make normal content for children rely on trending family-friendly characters and over-the-top presentation to get views.
Unfortunately, making a quick buck off children's content isn't that easy anymore since YouTube has put more restrictions in place. This eventually led most people to abandon ElsaGate entirely and go into more lucrative ventures on YouTube. It's far easier to make less questionable content than deal with the threat of termination at a moment's notice. The lack of financial incentive has completely deterred people from making ElsaGate videos, as we observed with Kissy Show.
But what if money wasn't the main motivator behind the new wave of horrific videos?
The minds of children are easily impressionable they're influenced by anything and everything that they interact with. What their parents say. What games they play. What they watch on the family iPad. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that online predators are aware of this and try to take advantage of it. From the normalization of violence and needle usage, these are all just standard themes that ElsaGate endlessly promotes.
In a Reddit thread posted in January of 2023, users that had watched ElsaGate growing up discussed how it potentially affected their development. Some claim that it caused them to develop weird behaviors that they weren't proud of. While others also claimed that it had little to no impact on them. Unmonitored access to the internet can have unintended side effects on a developing mind.
So ElsaGate might not be the sole cause of the behavioral issues. However, when certain individuals are actively trying to spread themes to as many children as possible, it should become a concern. The fact that almost all ElsaGate channels are demonetized makes it even more likely that someone out there is trying to get these kids to just see these disgusting acts as normal. It wouldn't be the first time that have directly interacted with an underage population through the kids side of YouTube.
Back when comments on kids videos existed, predators would try to groom children or communicate among themselves through coded language. The comments on many children's videos back then seemed like gibberish. But once decoded they seem to make a lot more sense and were very sinister. Thankfully though, it is no longer possible to use this avenue to reach children.
But what would happen if a child that has been exposed to this side of YouTube internalizes these ideas?
The amount of children exposed to ElsaGate is unknown. There could be millions of people who grew up on this side of YouTube and have completely internalized it.
GRAPHIC WARNING: The String
ElsaGate isn't even the worst of the content being shared on YouTube (or any other platform for that matter). Some of the most disturbing content that you can possibly imagine is sitting right under your fingertips. You don't even need to go to the Dark Web to find it.
You won't find it under any hashtag that makes sense. Most of the time, it is hidden and encoded through what may seem to be a gibberish string of text, emojis, or unrelated terms. What do I mean? Just like an eggplant emoji doesn't actually refer to an eggplant, certain characters and symbols have taken on a new meaning. Sometimes a watermelon emoji doesn't actually mean a watermelon. Sometimes a watermelon emoji is a euphemism for blood.
Some of these symbols are used to find persons and content of a particular nature or similar taste. Other times, it is used to encode and obfuscate the content to make it harder to moderate.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
I am going to place a warning here. Don't go looking for what I am about to describe. If you are curious or fascinated by such subjects, go watch a cheesy movie. Go read a book. Go exercise. Go take up a new hobby. In other words, it might be a good time to change your habits.
You become what you feed your mind. This content has a way of messing with even the most mentally resilient of people. Know yourself and know your own limitations. This is not anywhere you need to go looking. But people need to know that it exists... as a warning... and in the hopes that this type of content eventually it gets shut down. By "shut down," I mean there needs to be criminal prosecutions on some of the videos (and possibly all of them).
There is a thing called The String. The String is a long list of characters that when entered into YouTube's search bar will bring up Dark Web content. Videos upon videos depicting, at best, unsettling content to, at worst, real people being hurt in the most horrific of ways. These aren't scenes from a movie. While some of them may be fake, some of them are definitely not.
People have been stumbling across it for years. Accidentally. All because they mistyped a word in YouTube's search bar or hit a wrong button. There are no age restrictions on these videos. There are no content warnings. All that exists there are the worst imaginings of humankind.
Now I need to ask some questions. If adults are accidentally coming across this, then what about your children? Are they? Who is most likely to type a random string of characters into some search bar? An adult or a child?
Parents, be aware of what your children are watching and consuming online. What they consume, what they feed their minds, helps shape who they become.
Sources
Curriculum Vitae Of Fernando Arrabal
La Regle Du Jeu: …ἀνάγκη … desperados…rats d’égout… autre arrabalesque… Project Mayhem 2012…
Orwell & Goode: The History of Memes (The Ultimate A-Z Guide)
Internet Archive: Pentagon Wants a Social Media Propaganda Machine
Medium: Why the US Government Spent Millions Trying to Weaponize Memes
Reuters: Putting Numbers On The Rise In Children Seeking Gender Care
I have never heard of this before Dove. Thank you for bringing it to light. This really is some disturbing content and it needs to end. Children are Gods most precious gift and their young minds are being warped by this sick, satanic garbage.
This is an area I had no clue about! We didn’t have any devices or internet when we were raising our children, but our children are dealing with everything that is electronic. They Al are extremely diligent in what the grandchildren are watching as well as the length of time online. Our youngest grandson, now 5, was addicted to the IPad and it took a couple of months to stop after Christmas last year. He went from throwing fits to get back on to playing outside, drawing, puzzles, games, reading, etc. It was amazing how talented we realized he is and how muted his abilities were with all of the time on devices!
Thank you for raising this attempt to control our children! This is much appreciated! God bless you.🙏🙏