How YouTube's Year-In-Review 'Rewind' Video Set Off a Civil War (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: You might guess that a surefire way to make a hit video on YouTube would be to gather a bunch of YouTube megastars, film them riffing on some of the year's most popular YouTube themes and release it as a year-in-review spectacular. You would be wrong. YouTube tested that theory this week, releasing its annual "YouTube Rewind" year-end retrospective. The eight-minute video was a jam-packed montage of YouTube meta-humor, featuring a who's-who of YouTube stars along with conventional celebrities. The video was slickly produced and wholesome, with lots of references to the popular video game Fortnite, shout-outs to popular video formats, and earnest paeans to YouTube's diversity and inclusiveness. It was meant to be a feel-good celebration of a year's worth of YouTube creativity, but the video started a firestorm, and led to a mass-downvoting campaign that became a meme of its own. Within 48 hours, the video had been "disliked" more than four million times. On Thursday, it became the most-disliked video in the history of the website, gathering more than 10 million dislikes and beating out the previous record-holder, the music video for Justin Bieber's "Baby."

The issue that upset so many YouTube fans, it turns out, was what the Rewind video did not show. Many of the most notable YouTube moments of the year -- such as the August boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul, two YouTube stars who fought in a highly publicized spectacle watched by millions -- went unmentioned. And some prominent YouTubers were absent, including Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a. "PewDiePie," one of the most popular creators in YouTube's history, who had appeared in the Rewind videos as recently as 2016. Some YouTubers enjoyed the video. But to many, it felt like evidence that YouTube the company was snubbing YouTube the community by featuring mainstream celebrities in addition to the platform's homegrown creators, and by glossing over major moments in favor of advertiser-friendly scenes. The Times says the Rewind controversy "is indicative of a larger issue at YouTube, which is trying to promote itself as a bastion of cool, inclusive creativity while being accused of radicalizing a generation of young people by pushing them toward increasingly extreme content, and allowing reactionary cranks and conspiracy theorists to dominate its platform."

"But people like Mr. Kjellberg and Mr. Paul -- stars who rose to prominence through YouTube, and still garner tens of millions of views every month -- remain in a kind of dysfunctional relationship with the platform. YouTube doesn't want to endorse their behavior in its official promotions, but it doesn't want to alienate their large, passionate audiences, either," reports the NYT. "And since no other platform can rival the large audiences and earning potential YouTube gives these creators, they are stuck in a kind of unhappy purgatory -- making aggrieved videos about how badly YouTube has wronged them, while also tiptoeing to avoid crossing any lines that might get them barred, or prevent them from making money from their videos." This tension is at the heart of the controversy over YouTube Rewind.

"A YouTube recap that includes only displays of tolerance and pluralism is a little like a Weather Channel highlight reel featuring only footage of sunny days -- it might be more pleasant to look at, but it doesn't reflect the actual weather..."

Comments

Mired in Controversy

[Luthair]

Interesting how the summary doesn't mention (though the article does) that both Logan & PewDiePie have been mired in controvesy for a few years. Hardly surprising that Youtube wasn't interested in showcasing them.

Re:Mired in Controversy

[war4peace]

You know what stops you from being labeled because of such things? By not actually doing something that the overwhelming majority of people dislike.

A great way to stop any sort of progress.
The majority of people disliked the Eiffel Tower project at the time. Same goes for the car, trains, electricity, abolition of slavery, science (remember the Dark Ages?), many forms of art and so on.

Now, in this particular case, the (in)famous PewDiePie is as much of a shallow creator” as any other so-called creators” featured in the Youtube Video. They're all a bunch of clowns figuratively eating shit for the enjoyment of huge crowds of retards. That's modern society, and that was pretty much any society in the past, with one exception: Average Joes were never a good source of income until now, so they were largely ignored by celebrities. They had to entertain each other for pennies. But in today's society, Average Joes are wealthy enough to produce vast amounts of money if they are entertained with relatively insignificant costs. Film yourself absurdly and exaggeratedly reacting to other people's stupid videos, make millions of dollars a year. Get rich being retards' servant. Hurrah for contemporary entertainment!

Re:It's the SJWs stupid

[DNS-and-BIND]

The story here is how The Times, wise beyond all, completely whiffed on the story and could not see past its own nose. It came up with the idea the downvoting was caused by people dissatisfied that YouTube isn't doing more to suppress speech that The Times itself fears. W-T-F. Maybe they're not as smart and insightful as they tell us they are.

Re:How can it be about creativity...

[quantaman]

It was meant to be a feel-good celebration of a year's worth of YouTube creativity

How can that be true when it doesn't feature most of the CREATORS that make YouTube so popular?

A parade of B-List celebs doing Fortnite dances is not a "celebration of creativity".

I don't really follow YouTube much at all, but this seemed like a big tone-deaf misstep on the part of YouTube that is trying to pretend like some people do not exist. Absurd. Celebrate what you are, all of it, or say nothing at all.

How is it supposed to be feel-good if the big creators you're referring to are extremely controversial due to repeated racist statements and making fun of dead bodies?

There's always been two ways to approach fame, you can be mainstream, and your audience will probably be very small, but if you do make it big then virtually everybody will be happy to associate with you.

Or you can be controversial, and you'll get a big audience just from the notoriety, but you'll piss off a bunch of people who aren't your audience and make yourself toxic to mainstream venues. Like the videos that YouTube chooses to showcase itself.

Logan Paul and PewDiePie made their choice, they went for controversy and got a boatload of cash and fame at the cost of mainstream acceptance. Everyone needs to deal with the consequences of their choices, I don't see why YouTube stars should be immune.

Nothing to do with celebs left out

[esperto]

The number of down votes doesn't have much to do with youtube pseudo-celebreties being left out, but everithing to do with being a HORRIBLE video.

Truly, it is really that bad, they poured huge amounts of money into it and they've got something simply unwatchable, i've seen (or tried to see it) on the first day, before any of those news about it being the must disliked video on the site, or the analysis said that so and so are missing and some other random guy that only stream on twitch is there, and I still could get to half of it.

The video is the most disliked because it was pushed to everybody that visits the site and it was writen by a committee that has no idea of what it is doing.

Re:People don't lie knowingly being told.

[Mashiki]

Would be nice if they included some really cool and interesting stuff, like some of the more niche channels. Show us some wood/metalworking stuff instead of 50 different Fortnight clips.

Those metal and woodworking is advertiser unfriendly so those channels got demonitized beside channels for gear heads, hobby shooters(of everything from BB guns to high power pistols and rifles), center and right wing political commentators first and so on.

So you'll take your fortnight clips and like it.

I'm not even talking about Pew

[SuperKendall]

Logan Paul and PewDiePie made their choice

I can sort of understand leaving out Pew as punishment for gaffes (he''s not actually racist though, try not to spread lies m'kay?).

But there are a world of other very popular creators on YouTube, as as I said it had none of them. It was not a reflection of YouTube, or what people saw through the years. I don't even have a beef with sugar-coating it and presenting only nice moments... just don't make things up that do not reflect the YouTube people know and use through the year.

They would have been better off just having the crazy Russian dude make stuff that science every day guy could explain as it exploded.