Hello, dear listeners, we needed to take this week off, so we thought we'd revisit this classic American hysteria episode that has a lot to do with the disturbing world of mobile game ads, which we covered in collaboration with the Panic World podcast last week.

This one also dives into the depths of the internet's frightening subconscious

in the form of the mysterious, uncanny, and wildly inappropriate children's YouTube videos

that appeared out of nowhere in 2017, a controversy dubbed Elssa Gate. Before we get to that, we just wanted

to remind you that all profits from our new merch are going to the Samir Project, a Palestinian-led

mutual aid group who are working every day to deliver food, supplies, and money to families in Gaza. You can pick up

some merch and support the Samir Project by going to Americanhysteria.com. Okay, here's the episode.

Thank you for listening. I should start off by saying, content warning for like everything.

This is not safe for work, not safe for life or the human psyche, and certainly not safe

for me, I am permanently changed.

I will be describing children's videos that have been manipulated to show everything from sexuality to

violence and pretty much every strange, gross, and unnerving thing you can think of. So if that does

not sound good to you, I totally understand, and I hope you have a great week. For the rest of you, I wish so much that I

could show you the things that I'm telling you about today. So if you'd like to see the visual

representations, please go to our social media. But today, I'm going to try to use my

patented poetry degree the way it was meant to be used

to try to paint you a picture of this Elsa Gate Hellscape.

May God have mercy on our souls.

On this podcast, we explore fantastical thinking, moral panics, conspiracy theories, and urban legends,

examine the forces that shape our culture, and tell the stories that create the realities we share and sometimes the realities

we don't.

I'm your host, Chelsea Weber Smith, and this is American hysteria.

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