2 min read
Every year, YouTube releases Rewind, a cameo-filled video which stars many famous YouTube content creators and celebrates the past year on YouTube. However, things went downhill for YouTube with the release of YouTube rewind 2018 which is now the most disliked video in the history of the video stream platform. The video as of this moment has 11 Million dislikes and 2.1 Million likes, crossing the Baby video by Justin Bieber which has 9.9 Million dislikes and 10 Million likes. It should be noted that it took the Baby video 8 years to reach 9.9 Million dislikes with 2 Billion views while it took YouTube Rewind 2018 a mere week with 128 Million views to reach this status.
By definition, YouTube rewind is suppose to highlight the major events that occurred during the year along with the famous content creators that made those events possible, but YouTube Rewind 2018 did the opposite of that which made the video pure cringe-fest according to many content creators. A major reason why the YouTube community responded so strongly against this video was that YouTube purposely excluded major content creators and events because of their controversial nature. For example, PewdiPie vs T-series and KSI vs Logan Paul were the highlight of 2018 but were absent from the Rewind while creators like Liza Koshy who have been absent from YouTube for more than four months starred in the video.
Famous YouTubers like MKBHD, James DeFranco and Casey Neistat uploaded videos in reply to the ongoing dislike-fiesta that was revolving around the YouTube rewind 2018 video. In these videos, the content creators explained the reason why YouTube rewind 2018 turned out to be like this was that the video streaming platform was now targeting investors and brands instead of the YouTube community, in simpler terms, the Rewind 2018 was a one massive ad which was trying to represent YouTube as a friendly and politically correct platform free of any controversial or offensive content. That, however, was not the case as it was evident from the fact that the YouTube community reacted strongly and expressed their feedback in the form of overwhelming dislikes.
