- Oh my gosh, look at us! - (laughs)
- How would you deface a Paul?
- (FBE) All right, so this is an annual tradition for FBE
to talk about the issues of YouTube
inside our YouTube Rewind episodes.
- Oh, goodness.
♪ (dramatic chord) ♪
- Space.
- Stars. Rewind. - No, that's the YouTube!
This is YouTube Rewind! - It's YouTube Rewind!
Ohh! - Yayyy!
- Is it that time? - YouTube Rewind every year.
- I just watched this today.
- (Stephen) ...back to YouTube Rewind.
- Oh, snap. - (gasps) Oh, Liza!
- The ambassadors. - (Stephen) Tell me about 2017.
- ♪ Oh no ♪ - I was like, they already
look like they're like, "Oh boy. A lot happened in 2017."
- Oh! - Niana!!
- Oh! - Luis Fonsi!!
- Trying to see who I know.
- Very global. Wonderful.
- Oh, wait. That's me! I got my 0.5 seconds in there.
- Marshmello! - Whoa.
Everybody's getting a split second in this this year.
- ♪ ...suave suavecito ♪ - It's pretty cool that they
got the "Despacito" guys in there.
- Um, oh, okay. That's so fast.
Okay. Fidget spinner.
- Fidget spinners, man.
- ♪ Nobody pray for me ♪ - (both) Oh, that's cool.
- ♪ Way, yeah, yeah ♪
- That's cool. - This is the coolest part.
- Oh my gosh, look at us! - (laughs) And that's it.
That's our whole part. All right - And that's our whole part, yeah.
- Thank you, guys. - I feel like I probably don't get
at least a solid 50% of what the references are here.
- I love salt bae.
- Slime. Slime was big this year. - Slime has been huge this year.
- I can't believe half of these things were this year.
- Oh, this was this year?
- I love this! This is one of my favorite things
on the internet.
- I can't even follow how many people I'm missing.
- I recognize 1% of these people right now.
What does that say about me as a You--
I guess I'm a pretty bad YouTuber. (chuckles)
- Oh, it's the eclipse.
- Casey!
- Oh, I love Casey.
- Oh, it's Caspar. - Oh yeah, it's Caspar, Joe.
- Joe. - Rosanna!
- I don't even know any of those references.
Oh! It's Taylor Swift. The one I should know.
- They should've had a Vine tombstone.
- ♪ Somebody once told me... ♪ - I can't tell who they are.
- Yeah, I know. It's hard with all the makeup.
- I'm glad we didn't have that part. (chuckles)
You can't tell! Oh, that's Anthony, I think.
- Hey! There I am!
(snickers)
And I'm dabbing into another dimension.
- ♪ ...the clock is ticking ♪
- It's Poppy. - (gasps) Poppy!
- (anchor) Much of the Houston area still is in a state of disrepair.
- Now they're doing current events? I don't think they did that before.
- There were a lot of tragedies this year.
- Aww, that's sweet. - Unity.
- Oh, I just got goosebumps! - You got goosebumps?
- (exclaims in excitement)
- Why is it making me feel things?
- Very heavy. - That's nice.
- They will not let fidget spinners die.
- Oh, this is Jake, Marshmello. - Jake.
Again.
- Anwar.
Rudy.
Innana.
- I love all the paint. Of course I love the paint.
- TomSka, right in the face.
- I kind of wish I got to do one of the slime fights.
That looks like it would've been fun.
(silence) - How would you deface a Paul?
- Oh, they're gonna emphasize the war between the brothers.
- Uh-oh. - Oh, they mad.
♪ (upbeat pop music) ♪ - No, they're friends.
It's kind of like their fake online beef with each other.
- That kid made it.
- Don't you dare get Dan and Phil dirty.
- (Stephen) Floor is lava. Floor is lava.
- Oh, the floor is lava. That's cute.
- The floor is lava. (laughs) - Oh yeah, the lava!
- I forgot about that one.
- (Poppy) I'm Poppy. - She gets her own line.
- This is a lot to handle.
- Hannah! Good job. You made a part.
- Wait, I get my moment of fame.
There I am! And there I am.
- I love these videos. They're so creative.
- (Stephen) It looks like you were interrupted there.
- (both laugh) - (Stephen) ...tell me about 2017?
- (Liza) It was, uh, it was good. - (Lele) Okay.
- Very descriptive.
- Oh, I love that animators are getting some air time too.
- That's a cute-- oh! They even put the animators in.
- Aww. Cute. It just really makes you
feel so proud that so many different people
with so many different genres and so many different interests
can all come together in this one massive internet.
- That was one of my favorite YouTube Rewinds.
- It was done so much better. They fit so many more people in.
They even honored some tragic stuff, which, you know, I feel like
this is a culmination of everything over the year.
- It was about happiness and unity and bringing people together
and the world coming together
as ONE. - And slime.
- I don't remember what I just watched.
- It was very overwhelming.
- (FBE) So how was your experience being in YouTube Rewind this year?
- Yeah, I mean, I think there's the running joke now
in the YouTube community that we all hope
we get our 0.2 seconds of fame in the YouTube Rewind,
'cause it just gets bigger and bigger every year.
- I was there in costume for four or five hours
getting that makeup done and everything,
and then it's like five seconds of air time.
- We got HAMMERED by snow. - Yeah.
- It was half styrofoam, half-- - And half snow.
They shot it out of a huge cannon, so every time it went off,
they're like, "Hey, act scared." I'm like, "Don't worry.
That sound is like poof."
- It's like BOW! - Everyone was like, "AHHH!"
- (FBE) Being YouTube Rewind, it has a lot of YouTubers in there,
but you weren't in there. - I know.
I was supposed to be in there, but I was out of town
filming a movie. - I KNOW!!
I wanna be in the YouTube Rewind SO BAD!
- To me, this is more of an honor than YouTube Rewind. Who wants--
- Yeah, yeah. I wanna be the kibitzer.
I wanna be the commentator of the-- - Exactly. I'd much rather react
to a YouTube Rewind than be in it.
- How does one get asked to be in the YouTube Rewind video?
- There was one old guy with a tie on during the dancing scene.
- (FBE) So YouTube Rewind in its earlier days,
always had its issues with the reality of not being able
to include everyone. Now it's even more impossible,
because we're growing. YouTube has even more creators now.
- Yeah. I was actually kind of surprised to be invited.
- There are so many controversial channels,
and there are-- you can't fit everybody in,
so how are you gonna choose?
- With so many types of creators, and therefore their fans,
it's impossible to please everyone.
Maybe YouTube should actually split it up throughout the year
and do by country or by region, do it quarterly.
- I know a lot of content creators that passed on doing it this year.
Either their scheduling didn't work out,
or they just didn't feel it was necessary,
they've been in it before. But I always have a decent time.
It feels like a friend that I owe a favor to every year.
- (FBE) All right, so this is an annual tradition for FBE
to talk about the issues of YouTube
inside our YouTube Rewind episodes. - Oh, goodness.
- (FBE) So the continual changes with the algorithm
and the recommendation engine has caused big view fluctuations.
How has this impacted your channel if at all?
- Oh yeah. Algorithm. YouTube algorithm
is a big thing this year. - Mm-hmm.
We definitely have experienced that. We were putting out two
or three videos a week last year. And then this year,
we've gone down to one video.
- If you're putting out random stuff,
which is basically what most YouTubers
start out doing, your audience doesn't know what they're gonna get.
And so, it sort of fluctuates your views
and the algorithm just doesn't like when your views fluctuate.
- You're seeing a general change in YouTube because of the algorithm
where it's rewarding a lot more quantity over quality.
I'm fearful as YouTube continues down this road
that it's going to favor that type of content
that is very now-based, very immediate, and quick.
- If you're just relying on views, views, views only,
that's can go away with the wind, with one little click
of an algorithm change. And you really can't get mad
at YouTube for doing that. You can only be mad at yourself
for not kind of utilizing the resources that you had
at the time to diversify.
- There's a certain amount of them taking a sample size
and determining of that sample, how many people are interested
in that piece of content before they propagate it out further.
If not all of your audience is interested in every kind
of video you upload, I think it can certainly
sort of push down YouTube's score of how much it wants
to throw it out to subscribers.
The way that they've executed so far is far from perfect.
- Algorithm-wise, I would say we've definitely
been impacted a little bit. - Yeah. I've had friends
that were with me that are subscribed,
and then I'll post a video, and then three hours later,
I'm still hanging out with them, and they're like, "Oh,
I just got notified." I'm like (huffs).
- If someone makes a conscious choice
to subscribe to your channel, they should always see your content.
- Truth!
- (FBE) Another big issue this year has been demonetization.
As a result of scandals around ads being placed on videos
advertisers didn't want to be on, resulting in YouTube
sometimes incorrectly demonetizing content that has no issues.
Can you talk about what you've seen with demonetization?
- I have not been affected by demonetization too bad.
- I haven't had major issues, but I've always sort of
subconsciously created content that wasn't pushing too many boundaries,
but I've seen channels like Phil DeFranco's channel,
a channel that I rely on, I've seen him have issues with it,
and that sucks. - They stopped demonetization,
right? Like if you curse or something like that.
So if I say [bleep] right now, it's been bleeped.
You bleeped it, right? - (FBE) Yeah. (chuckles)
- (laughs)
- My channel is super family friendly,
and I got some videos demonetized.
They're going back through old videos.
There's three. One from a year ago, one from three years ago,
one from seven years ago, and I'm like what?!
I've been on YouTube for 12 years, and this has never happened.
- I got a ton of my stuff demonetized by the machines.
And it really sucks 'cause you have to
click that button to have that manual review done,
and then that could take days.
- We never relied on ads in the first place.
We make short films or we make sketch comedy.
They need to keep the advertisers happy
so that we can even get anything, right?
So I see both sides.
- Seeing those videos demonetized, it's really disheartening,
'cause there are really important creators
who have an important message and are helping information
get out there. If they can't make money,
that content's gonna go away. - However, making steps
to take away child abuse videos, I think is really important.
- I know why they're doing it. I get it. It's just...
what they need to do at the very least
is implement some kind of good behavior system,
where for channels that are either at a certain threshold
of viewership, It'll take someone to manually review the video
before it is demonetized. Rather than putting the burden
on the creator, put the burden on them.
- (FBE) Moving on to questions that we ask every single year
when we do this episode, what's something
in your YouTube career or your life
that you're very proud of that happened in 2017?
- 2017, what was most memorable?
I did this movie called The Babysitter.
- We had a big goal to get to a million this year,
and now we're almost at two million.
- In 2017, we reached $100,00 raised for diabetes awareness.
I'm a type I diabetic. It's like WHAAT?!
- We have a video coming out in 2018 where we got to fly to Alaska,
and helicopter... - Take a helicopter.
- ...to a glacier... - ...via a sea plane.
- And then we got to race dog sleds on a glacier, right?!
- Wow, wow. - Like pretty dope stuff.
- The most memorable thing for me by far was leaving Smosh
and venturing out to do things as a solo, independent creator.
I feel like I'm still in a transition period
of trying to figure out what It means to do stuff
on my own now. - I'm just glad I'm still here.
With YouTube, we've been doing this for over 10 years.
We've seen so many types of creators come and go.
We've seen so many trends and waves. And for us to be able
to weather all of that, I'm really grateful for that.
- (FBE) Finally, one year from now, what is a prediction you have
about the evolution of YouTube? - Oh, god.
The Paul brothers will be czars of the YouTube Empire.
- There will be an individual, independently run channel
that'll be doing a billion views a month.
- I feel like YouTube Red is okay, but I don't think
it's gonna be the future of YouTube. - I mean, I might be pitching
a YouTube Red series next year, so hopefully it does good. (laughs)
- In order to grow, they're gonna have to start competing
with Hulu and Netflix and Amazon in different ways.
I think they're gonna have to start taking bigger risks.
- YouTube has to address some of these problems,
because creators are what makes the platform great.
And if they don't address the problem,
creators are gone, we'll go somewhere else
and continue to make great content.
- Thank you so much for watching this episode of YouTubers React.
- If you like what you saw and wanna follow these YouTubers,
check their links out in the description below.
- I'll see you guys next time. - Hey, guys! Vartuhi here
from FBE. Thanks for watching this episode of YouTubers React.
A big thank you to all the YouTubers that were in this episode.
And special thank-yous to Broken Wind, Moni V.,
and Mariah flips 123 for watching last week. Bye, guys!