For Millennials. By Millennials.
It’s that time of the year again where YouTube creates a special video honoring the platform and the most notable creators and trends of the internet. It’s like a digital summary of everything 2018. A grand way to make you cherish all the good moments and acknowledge all the bad ones. Furthermore, it’s a cohesive farewell to one hell of a year. YouTube Rewind 2018, however, managed to disappoint many over its failure to honor some of the most popular things on YouTube. But the title of this year’s video was “Everyone Controls Rewind”. So, why did it suck so much?
YouTubers Featured
The premise of this year’s YouTube Rewind was that allegedly everyone controls YouTube Rewind. But, it seems like that only the most politically correct and non-controversial YouTubers were put into this video. We see mainstream YouTubers with no drama or controversy this whole year, such as Liza Koshy, Superwoman aka Lilly Singh, The Gabbie Show aka Gabbie Hanna, Markiplier, Ninja and a whole lot of Fortnite. Accompanying these are The Try Guys, the sister squad of James Charles, Emma Chamberlain, Dolan Twins and the up and coming YouTuber Molly Burke who landed herself many collabs this year. Casey Neistat and the ex-viners turned YouTubers Lele Pons, Rudy Mancuso, Anwar Jibwani and Hannah Stocking were starred too. Although these content creators make an important part of the YouTube community and should have been honored, they’re not the only ones. Plus, YouTube Rewind also landed itself in a pot of controversy when it starred Will Smith, John Oliver and Trevor Noah who do have a place in the YouTube community but don’t represent the heart and essence of it.
It had a lot of Asian YouTubers who were speaking in their languages which is a big kudos to representation. Famous Indian YouTuber is known as BB ki vines also had a part in it. So, the YouTube Rewind took notice of this problem in previous Rewinds and fixed it this time. Though, it was just a minor thing they did.
Famous YouTubers Not Featured
But what it didn’t feature was the major game changers of YouTube this year. Yes, we’re talking about Shane Dawson and how his beloved docuseries transformed the landscape of the platform. PewDiePie and his battle with Bollywood company T-Series got no place in the YouTube Rewind 2018 at all, even though it was the biggest YouTube trend this entire year. The Swedish Youtuber was not in the video because of the same reason the Paul Brothers weren’t: their controversial pasts. PewDiePie’s anti-Semitic comments didn’t sit well with the YouTube community.
The major Logan Paul vs. KSI fight that reigned in over a million viewers didn’t get a nod either. It’s probably because Logan Paul was a controversial figure this whole year due to his suicide forest video. Interestingly enough, YouTube let Logan Paul’s movie The Thinning out but canceled PewDiePie’s show “Scare PewDiePie”.
Internet Trends
Most importantly, they didn’t tackle major negative events happening in 2018 but again chose to focus on the positive aspects. The Kiki challenge made a cameo. The Royal Wedding got a nod as well. But the majority of the video featured the popular game Fortnite and K-pop. It’s true the internet community has a cult-like obsession with Fortnite and K-pop. But again it’s not the only thing that gained a lot of popularity. Eminem’s surprise album Kamikaze made no appearance. His beef with Machine Gun Kelly didn’t get a chance in YouTube Rewind 2018. And the beauty community of YouTube got a big shout out whereas other communities had very little parts in it. They didn’t even have the brains to feature Jeffree Star in it!
A major positive theme that YouTube Rewind 2018 managed to add in was that of mental health and self-growth. Superwoman started the inspirational speech where she suggested the idea that we should add in the people who managed to do something greater than themselves. Later on, Gabbie Hanna and Caspar Lee joined her. All three are strong advocates of this positive message. Superwoman took a break from YouTube to focus on her mental health. Gabbie Hanna released music covering the same topic. The YouTubers honored all the times people engaged in charity during difficult times. But all these YouTubers ignored the fact that they mostly got sponsored from BetterHelp for these videos.
What YouTube Rewind 2018 Ignored
Many videos came out this year where YouTubers opened up about their mental health problems. But YouTube Rewind 2018 conveniently glosses over the fact that these same YouTubers got sponsored from an online counseling service called BetterHelp which turned out to be a total scam. Along with that, Defy Media shutting down was not discussed either.
The US Midterms in which almost every public person urged people to vote didn’t make the cut either. They ignored all things political, and had a neutral and liberal approach. Though, adopting that approach meant that major internet and YouTube trends were outright ignored.
In conclusion, YouTube tried really hard but managed to disappoint many. It wasn’t that everyone controlled the rewind, it was more so about the least controversial and mainstream YouTubers controlling rewind.
Guess what! Ricky Dillon made an edited version of YouTube Rewind 2018 primarily focusing on Shane Dawson. Check it out here.
