Nearing the end of every year, YouTube releases a video commemorating the most popular YouTubers and trends of the year. It is meant to be a celebration, to applaud beloved creators of their platform. However, viewers did not seem to appreciate YouTube’s video recap this year. The video is currently the most disliked video on the entire platform, surpassing Justin Bieber’s “Baby” music video in a matter of days. In fact, the dislikes have been exponentially increasing on these year-end YouTube videos since 2014. Some of these dislikes can be attributed to people simply wanting to see this be the most disliked YouTube video, simply for the irony that YouTube itself created it.

But a large number of people genuinely disliked the video and how YouTube went about making it this year. In the opening scene, you are greeted by Will Smith, a mainstream celebrity. Initially, this may seem like a great idea for YouTube, but many YouTube users were infuriated as Will Smith cannot be considered a true YouTuber, and instead gathered his fame in the mainstream. Then, we are introduced to Marques Brownlee, a beloved tech YouTuber, alongside multiple large Fortnite content creators such as Ninja. Given that Fortnite was the trend of the year it was heavily incorporated into the video, and many felt that it was excessive and overdone.

With this YouTube rewind, the goal was to make it seem as though the creators on the platform were celebrating the things they wanted to get across. Additionally, there were multiple, supposed heartwarming messages that came across as a forced piece of the video, instead of being creatively integrated into the video. Another problem that the community appeared to have was the lack of original content creators committed solely to the YouTube platform. Instead, YouTube featured many mainstream celebrities like talk-show hosts and the super clean, PG creators. Basically, anything that was advertiser friendly was featured in this rewind.

In fact, the largest YouTuber on the entire platform, Pewdiepie, was left out this year because of previous mishaps. His growth was unmatched by any other solo YouTube channels this year and he boasts over 75 million subscribers on the platform. The decision by YouTube to leave out Pewdiepie and other extremely large creators who can be considered “edgy,” confirmed the opinion of many viewers that YouTube is swaying towards mainstream content. The difference between what the Youtubers, creators and audience look forward to in rewind compared to how YouTube keeps making it is why people are so upset, and it is why the video is the most disliked of all time on their own platform.                  Caption: YOUTUBE REWIND 2018: Recently, YouTube released their year-end video which recapped all the best parts of 2018 on their platform. Unfortunately, it became the most disliked video on the entire site and has received a lot of backlash.