As the name suggests, YouTube Rewind is a series of videos that give us a recap of the most viewed, liked videos and YouTubers of the year past. These annual videos are created by YouTube in conjunction with the digital content studio Portal A Interactive. Each year the length of the videos and the number of YouTubers they featured were seen to go up. However, mysteriously, the number of dislikes these videos earned were seen to rise exponentially recently.
This one came out in 2010 and boasted about “Over 250 million views combined”. In today’s world of videos with billions of views, all we can say is, how sweet. People seemed to like the 1.25-minute video though. 64k likes v 4.8 dislikes.
However, by 2018 YouTube Rewind had started to attract major hate. The YouTube Rewind 2018 video has 187 M views; but more importantly, it has 17 million dislikes vis-à-vis just 2.6 million likes.
YouTube is supposed to be about unknown people earning attention and popularity because they are talented, different, audacious, or have a new idea. This review video wasn’t about that.
People hated that while the video featured several celebrities, it carefully tip-toed around some controversial acts. The video ignored altogether, the whole PewDiePie vs T-Series phenomenon. The fact that PewDiePie was the most subscribed YouTuber with the most formidable fan following resulted in a significant backlash.
The video platform was seen to look after their commercial interests by doing what their advertisers wanted and somehow betraying the essential egalitarian premise of the platform.
YouTube Rewind isn’t supposed to be about piggybacking on celebrity popularity. Even little kids apparently thought that the video was ‘cringy’.
People were happy to hit dislike. So it was that YouTube Rewind 2018 became the most disliked video of all time.
YouTube Rewind 2019 features a montage of most popular YouTubers and YouTube videos. They seem to have tried to include as many of the popular acts as possible. Clearly the backlash of last year made a difference.
“In 2018, we made something you didn’t like. For Rewind 2019, let’s see what you DID like,” says the description below the video. Clearly YouTube is treading carefully with YouTube Rewind 2019. Netizens don’t appear willing to be mollified, however. This one has been described variously as ‘Lazy AF’, ‘lacking energy and soul’, even as ‘passive-aggressive’. So it is that at the time of writing this, the video has 1.8million likes and 4 million dislikes. Clearly, there’s no pleasing people – why would YouTube even try?
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