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

People don't lie knowingly being told.

[Mal-2]

People don't like knowingly being told what is cool and what isn't. I mean when it's a friend or even a complete stranger saying "check this out, it's cool", that's all well and good (provided it actually is, and not a rickroll). A friend knows your tastes to some degree. A stranger can assume some things about you by where you are and how you're dressed and such. YouTube can't do any of these things, because they're only making one video, aimed at billions of people.

And that would be a best case scenario, where YouTube really does just want to promote what's cool. However, it is incredibly obvious that what they really want to promote is advertiser-friendly content, much of which is quite good, while silently glossing over the parts they don't like. Unfortunately for them, the parts they don't like are the parts their various viewing populations do like. This is why television could only be cool in small batches, the world is simply too big to all have the same tastes.

Gee Sus.

[furiousgeorge]

A bunch of kids downvoting a video to be trolls is not a 'civil war'. This is firmly "things that don't matter to anybody".

A dose of perspective would be healthy.

Re:Gee Sus.

[c]

This. "Pissing match" is the same number of words as "civil war" and is ten times more accurate.

How can it be about creativity...

[SuperKendall]

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.

YouTube Stars

[PopeRatzo]

Nobody cares. Not even their immediate family cares. The most-viewed videos of 2018 were all music videos of bad records. You could literally show videos of goats being hypnotized instead of every single "YouTube Star" and YouTube would make just as much money. If you can name five of these YouTube Stars you should be ashamed of being such a giant loser.

Get over yourselves. Pewdiepie spouting racist shit isn't that interesting and the people that watch him don't buy shit anyway. Advertisers are starting to realize they're better off targeting their parents. The only good YouTube videos are the ones that show you how to de-bone a chicken or unclog a toilet.

Re:YouTube Stars

[DNS-and-BIND]

Hey grandpa, YouTube stars have bigger audiences than prime time TV or the network news.

Re:YouTube Stars

[PopeRatzo]

Hey grandpa, YouTube stars have bigger audiences than prime time TV or the network news.

YouTube stars don't even have the biggest audiences on YouTube. Check for yourself. Go see the list of the most-watched videos on YT for any year, including 2018. Not a single YouTube "star" on the list.

Re:You have to use the word War

[Red_Forman]

Maybe they should start a war on ignorance.
What a bunch of dumbasses.

It's the SJWs stupid

[DNS-and-BIND]

All these words and all The Times can come up with is people are downvoting because they fear YouTube for the same reason The Times does, because YouTubers get more views than them and present alternative viewpoints? That's it? That's the best their intellects could come up with? How parochial, narrow-minded and most of all self-serving. It's because the video was widely perceived as nodding to SJWs, the plague of our age. Weird that never occurred to them as a possibility when it's right in front of your face.

Re: It's the SJWs stupid

[phantomfive]

I don't really want to hear viewpoints, they're all garbage. As much as possible, I'd like to hear the facts, please

Re:It's the SJWs stupid

[DNS-and-BIND]

If your town is liberal, it's no wonder you're unfamiliar with SJWs. Liberals believe in free speech. They might disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it. SJWs are leftists, not liberals. They agree with Google that being able to speak your mind is a great blight and must be done away with.

Re:It's the SJWs stupid

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's right next to that. Much like The Times, you totally missed it.

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."

Thats why they think the downvoting is occurring. There's not enough censorship.

Whitewashing

[argStyopa]

There's no other word for it, and it's why people found this so repellent.

Let's not forget that it took bieber what, 9 years to get to that many dislikes, this virtue-signaling shitshow got there in a week?

DGAF

[sound vision]

Fortnite, PewDiePie, Hollywood celebs... I don't give a shit about any of it to tell you the truth. I don't even care enough to open up and down vote it... That'll put bullshit in my recommendations.

The real travesty here is not what they left out of the video... It's that the alt-celeb internet culture is as useless as the traditional one. It's that there is a market, and marketers, for this video to even be conceived.

Different worlds

[ruddk]

I watch YouTube all the time and have no interest in the people in this rewind thing because I am an old fart. :D
My favorite channel at the moment are a about a guy sailing up and down the canals in England in his narrowboat. Very relaxing. :D https://www.youtube.com/channe...

"I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too"

But my point is that there's plenty of stuff on YouTube that seems to (thankfully?) be off the hype radar and lives it own quiet happy life. A lot of people my age don't seem to know that, maybe because they are not logged in to google/YouTube when they get the front page. I tried that once, it's awful.
Cheers.

Re:Different worlds

[coastwalker]

I Agree that the most interesting entertainment youtube channels are often about quite everyday things but it often helps if their presenters are a little eccentric or unusual. I follow a few on wild camping, one on nail polish (seriously, they just gave $10k to a cat cafe from sales of teeshirts so they must have something about them), some insane Ukranians playing about with very high voltages from microwave oven transformers, a housewife teaching how to cook chinese food, a senior Ham in Florida testing cheap radios and another explaining how mains or battery six tube radios work and how to restore them. Most of them are not making big bucks from their channels but they all have a passion for their subject. Maybe it is just me but most of the people who realy get my respect in this world are enthusiasts of some kind or another, not "Celebrity" entrepreneurs manufacturing random entertainment or doing bollocks like giveaways at subscriber number increments in order to increase "engagement" - a real turn off in fact.

On the other hand all this stuff is the entertainment side of things and my real interest in YouTube are the university talks, lectures and colloquia on various science subjects. You would be suprised just how interesting Dengue fever actually is. I have learned a lot about microbiology for example even though my background is in engineering. The knowledge available on YouTube is absolutely amazing and is actually the strongest reason for hoping the "cat videos" continue to pay for this side of its existence. I have saved playlists of videos I have watched by subject on a dedicated channel - the content out there is just mindblowing. Level ranges from Public to near graduate, (there are some exceptional teachers like Leonard Susskind who can get the guts of the idea over even if you could not repeat the math.)
https://www.youtube.com/channe...

There are also historically important things on there like the first video of an actual rocket taking off and going into orbit to meet up with the ISS - as seen from the ISS. The first time in history that most of the planet can see for themselves what it looks like for an actual real rocket to take off and power up into orbit to join you. Not a "Star Wars" Hollywood movie or a cartoon. The real thing, and I saw it on YouTube. Ace.

This is the value of growing up

[Millennium]

Paul and PewDiePie earned their ostracism fair and square. Maybe if they started acting like people, they'd gain an audience outside basement-dwellers, sockpuppets, and dead accounts.

Re:Mired in Controversy

[Luthair]

I think the overwhelming number of people would consider the n-word and showing the bodies of suicides in videos convroversal.

Re:Slashdot's 2018 Year In Review

[Stomper_Stoddard]

This was the year Slashdot ignored Q Anon for the entire year.

wtg

That is because covering a practical joke perpetrated against idiots is not funny, news worthy or interesting, it is just sad.

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.