Quadrobers blew up search engines, social networks and marketplaces
Requests for the subculture have increased 30 thousand times in two years, and product sales have increased by almost 5 thousand percent in nine months
According to Yandex Wordstat, from April to September 2024, 2,718,920 queries for the word “quadrober” were entered into the search engine. Two years ago, in October 2022, only 43 people were interested in the subculture. Communities on social networks gain thousands of subscribers in a few weeks, and adults want to know about the movement more often than children. And the press service of Wildberries told Parliamentary Newspaper that sales of goods for quadruple players are growing exponentially. How the popularity of the movement has changed in numbers, and what dangers await young quadrobers on social networks – in the material of our publication.
Cats are more interesting than anime
The quadrober subculture combines sports and cosplay. Children move on all fours wearing animal masks, imitating the movements of cats, dogs or lynxes. Just two years ago, few people were interested in this movement. In October 2022, the Yandex Wordstat statistical service recorded only 43 requests for the word “quadrober.” And already in September 2024, the number of such requests exceeded 1.3 million, which is 30 thousand times more.
The popularity of quadrobing began to grow in the spring of 2024. So, the number of requests this year was:
March — 16 171
April — 95,098
May – 198,186
June — 279,774
July — 385,499
August — 435,498
September – 1 324 865
The popularity of quadrobers on the Internet is almost equal to that of cosplayers and furries, although these movements are decades old. Both of them recreate the images of their favorite characters from cartoons and comics, but furries are precisely animals. So, for the word “cosplay” in Yandex in September of this year there were 813,430 requests, and for the word “furry” – 1,181,094.
Parents want to know
According to data from Brand Analytics, prepared at the request of RBC, from October 1, 2023 to October 16, 2024, more than 1.18 million messages mentioning quadrobers were published in Russian-language social networks. They generated more than 39 million reactions.
Blogs and communities of quadrobers cannot yet boast of millions of subscribers. But you can find followers on any social network and on any Internet platform. Thus, one of the Telegram channels dedicated to quadrobing has more than 3,600 subscribers as of October 21, 2024. A month ago there were a thousand fewer of them. The largest community of quadrobers on VKontakte consists of 4,956 subscribers. They managed to gain an audience in just a few weeks – the group was created on September 13th. The public audience consists not only of children from 10 to 15 years old, the community administrator said. Among the subscribers there are many adults aged 30-45 years. These are parents or journalists.
Parents’ interest is quite justified. At the very least, it would be a good idea to check which pages a child who is into quadrobing is subscribed to. Most groups publish completely harmless content that is appropriate for a teenager’s age, for example, tutorials on movements or photos of people wearing masks. But public pages with the words “quadrobing” in the title may also contain materials for adults, including 18+. One of these telegram groups has almost 40 thousand subscribers.
Carnival all year round
Most often, quadrobers make their own masks. On marketplaces you can also buy ready-made kits for quads – with a tail, ears, mask and paw-gloves. The price of the issue is low – from 500 rubles to 2 thousand.
The demand for products for quadrobing has grown very sharply this year, the Wildberries press service said. Over the three quarters of 2024, people bought 4,800 percent more of these products in units and 4,700 percent in total sales. In Moscow, the growth is slightly lower – 4200 percent and 4400 percent, respectively. First of all, the growth is due to the effect of the low base of last year, when the demand for such goods was spotty, the press service noted.
The first product whose description included the word “quadrobing” was purchased on the marketplace on January 2, 2022. It was a carnival mask. Then sales grew exponentially. “Until April 2023, monthly sales did not exceed a thousand units. Sales spiked in December, a traditional time of increased demand for carnival supplies. The absolute sales record occurred in May 2024, after that and until now, demand remains at a consistently high level,” the press service said. At the same time, buyers already have a tendency towards a gradual cooling of interest in quadrobing products.
Game of the generation
Kvadrobika is not a new phenomenon, the head of the intangible heritage department of the Russian Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage named after D.S. told the Parliamentary Newspaper. Likhacheva, Doctor of Historical Sciences Yuri Putrik. According to him, this sporting phenomenon began to emerge in the 2000s. The founder was Japanese sprinter Kenichi Ito, who was fond of running on all fours. In 2008, Ito ran the 100-meter dash on all fours in 18.58 seconds. Seven years later, he broke his own record, running the same distance in 15.71 seconds. Since then, the athlete received the nickname Man-Ape.
Since 2020, more and more people around the world have begun to imitate animals. Teenagers began to copy their habits and behavior. It is important to understand that this trend has spread thanks to social networks, Putrik noted. In Russia they started talking about this phenomenon in 2024. So far the subculture in our country is small, but there is a tendency towards its development. Internet technologies help the community of quadrobers to quickly grow and unite people from all over the world, find like-minded people on forums and social networks. Today, representatives of quadrobers conduct entire seminars, presentations, art exhibitions and performances dedicated to the subculture.
