The biggest Youtube scandal of them all? Elsagate explained

For several months now, strange things have been happening on Youtube, but it wasn't until this week that they got exposed on a worldwide scale. Specifically, we're talking about the 'Elsagate' scandal which is still surrounded by a number of different conspiracy theories and mystery.

First, an explanation of 'Elsagate' is needed. The term is used to describe graphic videos which are aimed towards children - these can feature real children, but are mostly animated using computer graphics or claymotion. These videos often feature characters such as Spiderman or Elsa, hence the name.
Instead of being child-friendly, they are everything but. Often they have graphic, extreme themes such as scat, BDSM and other fetish porn, some even have connotations of paedophilia.

The odd thing is that these videos are in their thousands, some of them are from popular Youtube channels with millions of followers; some of the videos get tens of millions of views and are being shown to very young children. So, imagine your child gets hold of a tablet and searches for 'Spiderman' on Youtube. It is innocent enough, until they find one of these videos which features sickening content.

Anyway, that is the problem of Elsagate - which Youtube are now trying to tackle, having originally being slow on the uptake, they are now in the process of banning videos and removing controversial channels.

The next issue is why these videos exist in the first place.
The most easy explanation is money; some videos get lots of views, which equals very good add revenue. But this still doesn't answer why the videos are so disgusting? Surely they would get good views without being so graphic?
Well, perhaps not. Some speculate that their views come from paedophiles who get off on watching the sickening material; some also speculate that it is used as mass propaganda from a greater force to brainwash millions of children.

We can all agree that the creators of such videos have some kind of deviant purpose - and blaming it on 'money' seems lazy at this stage. The next step is whether these videos are part of some kind of network, or merely lone-oddballs working for themselves.

So, it's gotten into the realms of conspiracy theories, but quite frankly it is truly bizarre and right now, none of the theories should be disregarded, as it's clear that there is some kind of sick motive behind pushing such shocking content onto children.

Hopefully Youtube is successful in cleaning up these videos and can return to a safer place for its content watchers of all ages.

- Youtube Drama

Youtube star Zoella gets old, 'offensive' tweets exposed and apologises

This week, it unfolded that British Youtube star Zoella had previously tweeted some mean and possibly offensive stuff nearly 8 years back. We will get to this later, but it also means that someone went back nearly 8 years on her timeline and dug through her past.

Anyway, posting as a then-20-year-old, Zoella called someone a 'fat chav' whilst watching the TV show 'The X-Factor', someone a 'tramp' for wondering why designer clothes are expensive, and also said gay men weren't macho when spitting on the floor.

These tweets were revealed this week and have since prompted an apology from Zoella who said she doesn't speak like that anymore, and that she made mistakes in the past.

Overall, her apology can be classed as typical, cliched and stereotypical for this day and age - as she will obviously try to cling to her squeeky-clean image. And of course her tweets were offensive and judgemental to put it nicely.

Time will tell if this affects her Youtube career, as she has built an image based on being nice.

- Youtube Drama

KSI explains Sidemen beef

A few months ago, Youtube was flooded with drama surrounding The Sidemen and naturally it involved a lot of corny diss tracks, which on a side note seems to be a very popular way of gaining views in 2017.

Anyway, yesterday KSI released a video explaining whether the beef was actually real or not. In short, the first video was meant to be a bit of a joke, but then the rest of The Sidemen jumped on board and it got more serious...albeit was never anything major.

So, the cynic in us thinks it was a ploy to gain views and Youtube cash which perhaps went on a bit longer than was originally planned. As KSI joked in the beginning of the video, his diss songs gained tens of millions of views, as did the other Sidemen. We have spoken about this before on this blog regarding Ricegum; that Youtube diss songs can easily gain tens of millions of views per video - and it seems that this is the case here.

As of right now, the 'beef' has stopped (if you could ever actually call it that) and probably won't happen again, but in the meantime the videos have all done very well commercially and will continue to sit at get views, making people like KSI even more money whilst his fans wait for the next over-the-top style video he releases.
To clarify, the beef was not ever truly serious but did evolve into something which possibly did get more personal than originally intended, whilst succeeding in gaining both KSI and The Sidemen masses of views. Once again, there are no losers it seems in the land of Youtube diss songs. Hopefully this 'saga' is over and is confined to the depths of Youtube history.

- Youtube Drama

Martinez twins quit Team 10 and say 'F*** you' to Jake Paul

For the past few months there has been constant speculation and rumours based around the Team 10 house, so much so that some of the stories have been covered already on this blog.

Well, yesterday it seems that some of those rumours may in fact be true, as The Martinez twins decided to quit the house and told Jake Paul "F*** you' in their video. Here they claimed that he basically turned into an asshole who bullied them and caused their lives great misery and annoyance whilst living with him.
In particular, they seemed most annoyed at him waking them up, which he did on several occasions to form prank videos. Some of these pranks looked stupid and harsh at the time, and it looks like the twins agreed.

Not only this, but they also said that he often laughed at them behind their backs and they also promised another video shortly which would highlight his bad behaviour in more detail.

Going back to the original rumours, one story was that Jake Paul got most of the Team 10 money and that the house mates weren't as close as the Youtube videos portrayed. In this case, the rumours look likely to have been true. Stay tuned for the follow up video which will probably be more in depth and will once again show Jake Paul to be one of the least likeable characters on Youtube.

- Youtube Drama

Boyinaband Trolls Youtube in 'apology' video...spoiler inside

So, last month we covered the iDubbbz Content Cop vs Ricegum which ended with a semi-ironic diss song, similar to those which Ricegum often uses to gain Youtube views.

In this song, iDubbbz admitted that it was created by Youtuber 'Boyinaband' who is well known within the industry for his creativity.
Anyway, yesterday he uploaded a video called 'Apology for the diss track (I went to his house) which insinuated that Boyinaband had apologised to Ricegum. The video begins with Boyinaband quite seriously talking about how he felt the beef had created too many negative reactions.

Anyway, skip towards the end of the video and the twist is revealed. Instead of Ricegum, the Youtube personality he meets is actually Casey Neistat (who unlike Ricegum is somewhat likeable). Here they talk about the line in the Ricegum diss song where Boyinaband mentions Neistat's 'nice tats' in a reference to his nice tattoos. The video ends in comedic fashion with Neistat tattoo'ing a 'subscribe' message on Boyinabands back.

Although this video is under 5 minutes long, it shows the playful side to Youtube, laughing at clickbait headlines and that Youtube personalities can actually get a long. That and the fact it nearly has 3.5 million views already shows how Boyinaband is quickly becoming a very likeable Youtube personality.

- Youtube Drama