It seems that Youtube Rewind 2018 was a failure as soon as it was uploaded. The video, with over 6.8 million dislikes, became the second most disliked video in the history of YouTube within the course of three days. Even though the popularity of YouTube’s rewind videos has steadily decreased since 2013, the fact that a YouTube video with the title “Everyone Controls Rewind” would be so scathingly rebuked by Youtube’s own community should be cause for concern for the media giant. It calls into question whether YouTube is able to balance its role as both business and user experience and not alienate those that gave the platform early success. Decisions over the number and type of content creators YouTube sought to include in Rewind 2018 to be more about how what YouTubers want advertisers to think about the YouTube community than the YouTube community itself.
YouTube Rewind 2018 can be praised for the unprecedented diversity it showed. As evidenced by the rapid growth of the Bollywood juggernaut T-Series on the site and the massive popularity of non-English content producers like HolaSoyGerman, YouTube isn’t simply an American or English-speaking media platform, and Rewind 2018 reflected this. Rewind 2018 also showcased YouTube’s animators like Domics, TheOdd1sOut, and Lucas the Spider. When it came to being better at featuring diversity among both creators and the content they produced, YouTube listened to its community and created something special. However, Rewind 2018’s bold move towards diversity was undermined by other casting and collaboration decisions by the Rewind team.
From the outset, YouTube Rewind 2018 was criticized for the creators the video excluded. For the second year in a row, Youtube top content creator, PewDiePie, was not asked to contribute to the Rewind, despite the fact that his channel’s battle for dominance with the usurping Bollywood channel T-Series has been the focus of YouTube new for much of November and December. Additionally, the Paul Brothers, who owe their fame to the site made no appearance. However, these appearances are understandable. PewDiePie has been engaged in numerous racist, anti-semitic and sexist scandals, and his lack of an appearance this year’s Rewind is consistent with his exclusion from Rewind 2017, a video which was much better liked by the YouTube community. Similarly, the Paul Brothers carry controversial baggage of their own, such as Logan Paul’s infamous filming of the corpse of a suicide victim in Japan’s Aokigahara forest.
Far more worrying was the culling of YouTube content creators featured in total. Despite the continued growth and diversity of the platform, this year’s Rewind included around 100 creators, less than half the size of last year’s over 250 strong creative cast. While the decision may have been a stylistic choice to help with Rewind 2018’s more storyline structure, the loss of so many creators was felt during the video. It felt empty and lackluster. Additionally, very few of the people who are featured in the Rewind have a strong presence within the YouTube community. There were many celebrities who did not start in the YouTube community, such as actor Will Smith, late night show hosts John Oliver and Trevor Noah, and Twitch streamer Ninja.
Even some of the content creators in the Rewind that started in YouTube are no longer as attached to its community. Featured creators like Lily Singh, Casey Neistat, and Lisa Koshy, have all attempted to move towards more mainstream acting projects. Despite her continued popularity and talent, it’s difficult to make the case for why a creator like Koshy should be featured in a video reviewing 2018 when her last content video was in late February of that year. In exchange, the Rewind failed to highlight creators that defined the year like Shane Dawson, who’s documentary videos on the lives of YouTubers changed how people viewed the platform.
By having a small cast of creators that were not all well attuned to the YouTube community in 2018, the year’s Rewind couldn’t speak to trends and events that had shaped the year for that site. While Walmart Yodeling Kid thankfully made it into the video, similar internet phenomenon like T-Series and Johnny Johnny Yes Papa was not even mentioned. These more relevant YouTube allusions were replaced with overdone Fortnight references.
Lack of connection with the community even affected the video’s more political messages. The campfire scene in the middle of the video wasn’t bad because it mentioned important and divisive issues like diversity, mental health, and representation. It was bad because there was never any overt linking of these issues to movements in the YouTube community and user experience. In the unfairly maligned Rewind 2017, YouTube masterfully balanced events that occur within the community with events that affect as all by having the creators hold hands and showing some of the news coverage about traumatic events that year. In Rewind 2015, YouTube celebrated gay marriage in the U.S, but the focus still remained on the community and its tapped-in creators.
Why YouTube Rewind 2018 was so disliked by its own community was that it focused more on its advertisers than its community. It is important to remember that YouTube is both an online community and a business. These roles are often difficult to balance and compete with one another. As demonstrated by user backlash over Tumblr’s new policy concerning NSFW art, media platform sites may make business decisions to the detriment of the community, and YouTube has done this with Rewind 2018. While it is understandable that neither advertisers nor some in the community would want controversial creators like PewDiePie and the Paul Brothers in Rewind, YouTube’s blind insistence on purely advertiser-friendly creators has led it to miss the people and content that made YouTube great in 2018.
