YouTube recently released its year-in-review
"Rewind" video, showcasing 2018's notable trends and highlights on the platform. It was a jam-packed montage of YouTube stars, Fortnite references, and talk of Youtube's diversity and inclusiveness. What could go wrong?
Rather than encompass for fans the year in YouTube culture, it is now the most disliked video in the platform's history. It garnered over ten million dislikes in the space of eight days. To put that into perspective, the second most disliked video - Justin Bieber's 2010 song "Baby" - managed to achieve just under that amount in the space of eight years.
Speculation flowed as to why the video was so badly received, including a
recent article by Kevin Roose of the New York Times. He argues that the video...
...was trying to please two separate audiences - creators, who want to see the breadth of YouTube's output reflected back at them, and advertisers, who need to be reassured that the platform is a safe place to spend their money.
YouTube has been busy dissociating itself from the controversies that have surrounded some of its most popular creators. There was no mention of Felix Kjellberg (better known as 'PewDiePie'), for example, whose ongoing
subscriber battle with T-Series has dominated discussions on the platform for months. YouTube inevitably cut ties with him after a
Wall Street Journal hit piece supposedly revealed anti-Semitism in his videos, but YouTube's own users do not seem to be deterred.
Comment: It's a rather tricky situation where tradition comes up against an increasingly 'modernized' culture. A clash that appears to be having quite a profound effect in India right now: Virtue-signalling blowback: Twitter CEO Dorsey provokes backlash for holding sign in India denouncing caste system
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