Elsagate

I saw a reddit post proclaiming that "ELSAGATE IS BACK." Personally, I don't find Elsagate content any more offensive than the gross clickbait ads that were all over childrens' websites in the early 2000s. The only major difference I can see is that this is, god forbid, copyrighted American property being desecrated instead of just photoshopped images of rotting fruit or toe fungus.

I've never watched a Spider-Man movie. Frozen is insignificant to me except for possibly being the most visually bland-looking piece of children's media I've ever seen in my life. But when I see Elsa and Spider-Man contorted through the lense of surreal internet fetish content and AI-generated clickbait, I find a lot of the resulting images to be beautiful and interesting. Evolved purely in the ecosystem of the algorithm, based entirely on which thumbnail images are shocking enough to get the most attention. These ubiquitous characters, their likeness unavoidable even for adults who have no interest in their franchises, become vessels for our most base fears and fascinations.

I drew Elsa and Spider-Man with their AI shadow baby, and added some collage pieces I cut out from a pamphlet advertising some kind of Christian doomsday seminar that got left in our mailbox.

Written January 2026, edited Sept 2026.