YouTube’s Rewind 2018 just beat out Justin Bieber’s Baby music video as the most disliked video on YouTube. It currently has around 10 million dislikes, which it got in about 9 days.
So what’s so wrong with this video, exactly? Let’s unpack that.
First things first — what is YouTube Rewind?
It’s basically a recap video of the year or 2018 in review.
It’s supposed too highlight the most watched videos on the platform and give an authentic presentation of what was trending, what was popular.
This is where it becomes problematic. A lot of YouTube users feel that this year’s (and recent years) Rewind have been getting more and more whitewashed. I don’t mean that in the racial context. What’s happening is that a lot of the controversial content was purposely left out of the video.
Riskier references like Logan Paul’s Aokigahara Forest video was forgotten. Even PewDiePie’s battle with T-Series went unmentioned, presumably due to PewDiePie’s known anti-semitic statements. And people aren’t happy about it.
It does, however, make sense to a certain extent. People theorize that it was done to either please investors or the greater majority of YouTube viewers. That kind of “dank” content doesn’t necessarily fit with everyone’s tastes. As a business, I guess it’s better to play it safe than sorry.
A YouTube representative had this to say on the issue: “Honest feedback can suck, but we are listening and we appreciate how much people care,” the representative said. “Trying to capture the magic of YouTube in one single video is like trying to capture lightning in a bottle. We also learned that creating content can be really hard and this underscores our respect and admiration for YouTube creators doing it every day. Keep the feedback coming and maybe we’ll release a top 10 list of ‘Rewind dislike’ reaction videos.”
What did you think of the video? Loved it or hated it, let us know in the comments!
