Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably aware of the YouTube Rewind 2018 situation. YouTube reqind started off back in 2010 when YouTube put out an 85-second video of the top 10 most watched videos that year. And the next year, they made a 2 and 1/2 min video hosted by Rebecca Black. But over the past few years, YouTube rewind has transformed into an extravagant event where it spends millions of dollars into making a 6-8 min long video. And year by year, it slowly kept getting out of touch with its consumers and its content creators.
Last year was the first time when YouTube received a reality check in what seemed to be an upward trajectory in terms of the popularity of the Rewind videos. Many fans expressed disapproval over Rewind 2017 when they couldn’t even identify who most of the YouTubers in the Rewind 2017 were! YouTube listened to them and said they were scaling back from 300 Youtubers to a 100 of them for Rewind 2018.
Oh, but boy did their plan fail! In fact, it generated so much unprecedented hate that the Rewind 2018 turned into the cringiest and most catastrophic ever. The video became the most disliked video on YouTube, with 11 million dislikes (at the time of writing this article) in a week’s time, beating out Justin Bieber’s Baby which had 9.9 million dislikes. Not to mention the field day the internet community was having as all this unraveled, with thousands of memes flooding Twitter, Reddit and Instagram.
Many prominent YouTubers had things to say about the Rewind 2018. PewDiePie reviewed the video (who wasn’t included in the video in spite of being the most subscribed YouTubers!) and mentioned how it didn’t include any of the significant events that took place this year, and how it featured the same old personalities without shedding light on most of the up and coming ones. Given how much the Rewind 2018 was talked about, YouTubers like Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) and Casey Neistat used this opportunity to give a shout-out to go subscribe to PewDiePie to help in his ongoing battle with T-Series for the most subscribed channel.
Marques also made a video explaining why the video flopped so hard. He mentioned that there was a severe disconnect between what the YouTube community and creators wanted and what YouTube thought everyone wanted. He also explained how this entire Rewind turned into a glorified ad campaign for YouTube to show to its advertisers.
YouTube finally responded to all the negativity yesterday, when they tweeted this:
They also thanked the YouTubers who took part in the video, and the community that responded.
We hear what you’re saying, and we want to make next year better for all of you. Watch this space!
YouTube, via Twitter
All we can do for now is wait and see what YouTube will come up with next year. Will they actually listen to the community now or will it be Rewind 2018 all over….?
