It jumps from “the fierce, fabulous and empowering art of drag” to “all women in 2018 finding their voices” to “those people who have raised money in the field of education” to “the people who have put aside their difference and created something really special” and finally to “everyone who taught or learned something this year.” It gets to the point where you think to yourself as a viewer, “what are these people even saying?” What does this have to do with YouTube? Now, if you didn’t think that Will Smith requesting “Fortnite and Marques Brownlee” was that cringe, then I encourage you to take another look at the campfire scene, which is undoubtedly the most absurd portion of any YouTube rewind - even more absurd than Smosh twerking in a “Breaking Bad” RV to “What Does the Fox Say?” If you take a closer look at this scene, in which everyone is taking turns saying who they think deserves to be a part of rewind, you start to see how little sense it makes. It doesn’t, however, get past the surface level of anything, which begs the question, “why even include this stuff at all?” Every message that comes through in these videos is so empty and insincere that it would really be better off just left out entirely.Īll of this, of course, culminates in YouTube Rewind 2018. It wants to present each passing year in some powerful, uplifting way, while also acknowledging social issues or global crises. Unfortunately, though, hand-holding, group dance circles and passing around a giant red button does nothing to combat exploitative infrastructures or give voice to those who are oppressed.Įssentially, YouTube wants to eat its cake and have it too. It waves in front of your face all of these deeply challenging social issues that are being fought over every day and then glazes over all of those problems with its signature tool: toxic positivity.
The formula was really quite simple: bring together the most popular content creators that are white and family-friendly and then throw in enough people of color, people who identify as LGBTQ+ or international creators and call it a day. It seemed like, from YouTube’s perspective at least, that the primary mission was checking off all of the right boxes so that no one could get too upset. Instead, it is merely a preemptive exoneration from all claims of insensitivity or inequality. This rewind was symptomatic of a disease that would come to plague YouTube Rewind for the coming years, which is the peddling of empty virtue signaling that does nothing for the groups it pretends to be advocating for. From there, we watch a bunch of people randomly dancing and smiling to whatever pop songs were popular that year until we return to the same rainbow-painted wall with more people randomly dancing and smiling in front of it. The video opens up with Lily Singh - who wouldn’t come out as bisexual until 2019 - dancing along a wall painted in the colors of the rainbow Pride flag.
This could only last so long, and 2015 was the year that YouTube went fully corporate and dove headfirst into the digestible, politically correct deep end. This heightened subjectivity would inevitably lead to hurt feelings, but you can see - for at least the first few years - YouTube did its best to hold it all together. When YouTube decided to move away from the simple, objective model of previous years, it adopted the burden of having to consciously choose what to include - and, more importantly, exclude, from its rewinds. A corporation as giant as YouTube could never reconcile its need to maintain its public image with the desires and interests of the people that actually use its app.
Then, in 2012, the model started to change, and this is when things started to go downhill. In 2011, Rebecca Black hosted the rewind - something I mention only because her song “Friday” was potentially the first instance of someone going viral on the internet for making art that people hated - and it was essentially just a collage of the year’s most popular videos. It was simplistic and only highlighted the most viewed videos of the year. In its infant stage, it was much more like a Spotify Wrapped than the disaster we saw unfold in 2018. With that being said, YouTube Rewind used to be a lot better. The music was always boring, the dancing is uncomfortable to watch, the transitions are corny and there is always a late-night host or two to make you say, “what is he even doing here?” No one ever thought that YouTube Rewind was that great.
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