my two cents on the “johny johny is harmful” debate: its not. people lump all “weird kids content” as “elsagate” but theyre all pretty distinctly different. i find this stuff fascinating and with my Expertise™ i’d divide the genres of “weird kids content” as:
“finger family”: the mass-produced, usually bot-generated nursery rhyme videos, ranging from “finger family”, to “wheels on the bus”, “5 little monkeys”, and ofc “johny johny”. usually as benign as t-rex heads glued to a waving hand with off-key singing in the background. i’d say these are only harmful if you run into “hitler finger family” but even then its not like your kid is gonna recognize who hitler is
“surprise egg unboxing”: these are channels that specialize in toy unboxings, especially kinder eggs and other blindbag/box-oriented “surprise” toys. not traumatizing but not good either since it promotes materialism, “ooh look at these $5k worth of toys im gonna unbox today :)”
“elsagate”: THIS is the bad stuff. elsagate can be disguised as a nursery rhyme (they usually include this as the title to get clicks) or “surprise eggs” (again, same thing) but while elsagate can be a “nursery rhyme”, nursery rhymes aren’t elsagate. the term “elsagate” was coined specifically to describe the Bad side of Youtube Kids
elsagate vids are most commonly crudely animated using 2d puppet animation (like you’d find with flash), or live-action skits using people in costumes. the controversy with “elsagate” videos was the content, including all of the following:
harassing women: stalking, undressing, upskirting, etc
use of drugs/alcohol: including babies being poisoned by kidnappers, getting injected with syringes, babies drinking their parents’ beer when they’re not looking, etc
gore and harm: babies getting….injected with syringes, getting cut by blades, getting infested with maggots and flies/trypophobic imagery, suffocating, getting trapped in elevators/escalators, getting hit by cars, the infamous “paw patrol suicide”, death in general, and much, much, much more. all with animated blood, mind you
fetish: you have videos like “elsa farts on spiderman” or “mickey mouse pees in bathtub” which is probably st a kid would find funny, so maybe calling it “fetish” is a stretch. what about crushing by stiletto heels? the aforementioned getting run over and trypophobia (the maggots)? (or would it be trypophilia in this case? judging by the comments) elsa and anna wearing bikinis while they do all this? what about live-action, REAL children being taped up against the wall?
kidnapping: you probably saw this one coming with the drugging and stuff going on, but this is an especially popular trope in live-action videos
idk if anyone ever found out the POINT of what’s going on with elsagate videos, other than to abuse the algorithm or how many of these were genuine elsagate vids or trolls (we’re not going to talk about the Conspiracies but its worth briefly mentioning here), but it all blends together and they all find their way onto the youtube kids app. youtube cracked down on elsagate-specific videos but you’ll still find them with key terms. if you type “equestria girls” the top examples are these videos. mickey mouse is also very popular, but “ivy mouse” is guaranteed to finding this content
johny fits into this solely because of the algorithm. if a kid is watching johny videos, eventually autoplay is going to take him to elsagate content bc “it’s for kids”
tldr “johny” is not harmful, just weird. the problem is youtube’s algorithm that will autoplay bad content. there’s a distinction between the genres and nursery rhymes typically aren’t doing anything bad.
off-key singing with minions dancing =/= twilight sparkle being harassed and her child being mutilated
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