My theory is ridiculous.
*Music & singing about hidden lore*
Hello, Internet. Welcome to Film Theory. The show that needs you to skibidi dom dom that
subscribe button. Yes. Yes. If you haven't seen the astronomical rise of the series
skibidi toilet over the last few months, get your head out of the toilet and let me
tell you that no one and I mean no one has seen this much success so quickly on YouTube before.
As I write this episode, the channel's creator, dufu... I can't say his name,
can I? Fine. How about I make it classier for you. Daffick boem is getting somewhere
between 3 and 4 billion views a month with a B. Those are numbers that are so
big they'd make Mr. Beast blush. It's not just a lot of random views either.
People are sticking around for this thing. The channel had about one and a quarter million
subscribers when it posted the first skibidi toilet video back in February. Now, just five months later,
it's already passed 20 million. So, yeah, to say that this thing has taken over YouTube,
it'd be a major understatement. In one of the episodes, one of the titular skibidi
toilets literally destroys YouTube HQ in a not so subtle metaphor for how the show has broken,
the website. Skibidi toilet has fully taken advantage of YouTube's push for shorts content,
and it has rode that wave to create a level of virality that has never been seen before.
So those are the numbers. But what is it? Well, it's a head in the toilet.
Yep. It's some g mod animations singing a song. The internet is truly a weird and wonderful place.
No, if I'm being completely serious, that's just how the whole thing starts. As the series goes on,
the whole thing evolves into a full on cinematic war between toilets with
human heads and people with camera heads, complete with massive titans, mind control.
And wait for it here in law. And I got to say, after binging every episode of the
series multiple times, getting that dance song permanently etched into my brain,
what became clear to me was that this goofy meme show wasn't just about being lol so random. It's
also not content just remaining as an epic toilet action anime. Yeah, that doesn't sound good.
Probably should rephrase that one. Instead, there's an entire meta story buried in this thing,
a story about the changing world of entertainment and the fight for survival of art. Yeah, this
This man's face in the toilet. He's trying to teach us a profound lesson about
the meaning of art. And once you see the story that's hiding right in front of your eyes,
it becomes clear where the story is ultimately going to end.
So grab your knob toilets, plungers and KPRL speakers,
loyal theorists, as we flush ourselves deep into the fever dream that is skibidi
toilets. Now the details for the base story here are pretty straightforward. The whole
thing starts when a man's head appears out of a toilet and starts singing a mash up of
the 2007 song Give It to Me by Timbaland and the 2022 Turkish song called Dom Dom.
Yes, Yes, by Biser King. But things quickly escalate from there,
the toilet head start to spread. Pretty soon we see an army of these toilets marching,
or rather sliding their way down the street military parade style. They clearly pose a threat,
considering they run over people, they shoot lasers, they even transform humans into more
skibidi toilets. Pretty soon they've established their own cult like religion, a police presence.
They even have themselves a leader of the army in the form of the G-man from Half-Life. For
those who don't know in the Half-Life games, the G-man is described as this
sinister interdimensional bureaucrat, and he has this strange, reality bending powers. So
why not just throw him into a show about evil toilet, man? Very quickly, it becomes
apparent that the people of this universe are no match for the toilet terrors. At the time
episode six rolls around we pretty much stop seeing humans altogether. Enter the
cameramen. People with cameras for heads, pretty self-explanatory. But it quickly
becomes clear that these characters serve both literally and figuratively as our point of view.
Pretty much all episodes are shown from the perspective of one of these cameramen,
often ending with the POV character either giving a thumbs up to one of
their comrades or being killed at the hands of one of the skibidi toilets.
This ragtag group of cameramen have made it their mission to eliminate the skibidi
scourge. They form an organized militia, they Fortnite dance away from the police,
and then they form unlikely alliances with other species that inhabit this world. The
Speaker men and the TV men to other groups of creatures that are just here
for some reason probably better suited for a RadioShack than the front lines.
And together they plan to protect the planet from these porcelain pirates. And yeah,
that's pretty much about it in terms of broad strokes.
The rest of the series basically follows a fairly standard formula. Well, I mean,
as standard is a show about sentient monsters from Bed, Bath, and Beyond gets. We constantly see
the cameramen inventing some new technology, such as their giant toilet kicking boss robot.
In turn, the toilets repurpose the discarded remains of their fallen foes
to become more and more powerful. This cycle of escalation repeats over and over again,
eventually leading to where we currently are in the story with giant Kaiju level
battles between the G-man toilet and the various Titan robots that are created or partnered
with the cameramen. And that to 99.9999% of people is what the story of the series is.
But I'm here to tell you, it is so much more than that. The battle between the
toilet heads and the cameramen is really symbolic of the battle between YouTube
content and traditional medias like the film industry. Yes, I'm feeling okay and no,
I don't want your long sleeved jacket, even though it looks very pleasant and
warm. Skibidi toilet is at its core a story about how entertainment is changing and how the
series creator daffick boem is going to be the one that merges those two worlds together.
It sounds insane, right? I know. That's why I'm so excited about this one. Let me explain it
to you. As you might or might not know, this series is littered with models,
assets and references to an age gone by on the internet. An age before
YouTube. Yeah, for our Gen Z and frankly, most of our millennial audience there was a
time where internet videos didn't solely exist under the careful watch of Google and YouTube.
In the beginning, the world of Internet video was splintered off from each other. Sites like
New Ground's, Albino Black Sheep, and Ebaums World is where you'd go to find the memes,
viral videos and animations. This is where Internet meme culture truly began.
Not to be too internet boomer about it, but there was a time that when you saw a funny video,
you'd have to send it to your friends via email.
Yeah, that platform that your parents use for work these days, it used to be where you got all
your lolz from, like the numa numa guy and I'm a snake. And one of the biggest styles of
video that arose from this early internet age was the genre that would eventually come to be known
as the YouTube poop. Ironically enough, the style of YouTube poop just predated the age of YouTube.
These videos would involve taking clips or assets from TV, film and music,
just mashing them all together into an unholy stream of consciousness.
The Internet back then: very different, but still very much the same. By the way,
I didn't edit that clip at all. That is it unedited in its 240 p. Goodness. Did
these videos make sense? No. Was it insane? Absolutely. Did any of it matter? Who cared?
Anything goes. It was the earliest days of online video. For the first time in history,
you could literally make anything you wanted and upload it to a website.
Anything that came out of your head. In the eighties and nineties, if you wanted
to make your own movie, you needed a video camera. The ability to cut and edit, film,
a platform to share your creations, all of which were either prohibitively expensive,
difficult to achieve, or quite frankly, just didn't exist. In the early 2000s, though, free
software like Windows MovieMaker opened up the world of filmmaking to a wider audience than ever.
One company that really embraced the Wild West nature of the Internet was Valve. Today,
they're best known for creating Steam. But back in the day, believe it or not,
they used to make video games. They were responsible for tentpole series
like Half-Life, Counterstrike, Portal, Team Fortress, Dota valve dominated the gaming scene and the one
game that truly embodied both their gaming ethos and their embrace of the online was Garry's Mod.
Garry's Mod was a sandbox game where players could mess around with the physical objects and assets
found in Valve's popular franchises and then use those to create their own little movies, games and
shorts. This eventually evolved into the creation of Source Filmmaker in 2013, a video editing
tool that allowed creators to more easily create funny videos just like they had with Garry's Mod.
And this proved to be a godsend for YouTube poop creators. If you've ever seen a video
featuring characters from Team Fortress 2 doing insane things, it's probably created using SFM.
In fact, the daffick boem, creator of Skibidi Toilet, as we all know, originally made a name for himself
online by making these sorts of videos. SFM content exactly like this. I mean, unless I'm wrong,
skibidi toilet seems like it still is being created in SFM. So why the big trip down
memory lane? Well, I believe that those edgy videos, those YouTube poops that came and went
with Internet trends, I believe that those are what the toilet heads in skibidi toilet represent.
Look at the evidence. First, there's the fact that the characters are literally toilets, the place
where you poop like YouTube poop. Pretty direct connection there. Second, there's the fact that
the heads of all the skibidi toilets are straight from Garry's Mod, Half-Life, SFM, drawing yet
another direct connection. There's also some more subtle hints as well if you look between the
lines. In episode four, there's a subtle background detail that shows how humans become toilet people
as soon as they're exposed to the influence of the toilets. We pan across a normal restaurant,
the toilets march in, and suddenly people are transformed into more
toilet heads. Some of those toilet heads even rise through the ranks,
appearing in later episodes as leaders of the toilet army. It is the definition of virality.
The toilet people are a disease that's spreading, just like a video going viral in the early days.
We also know that the events of the series are happening sometime in the past. In episode 20,
after going toe to toe against the G-man, the camera titan flies away,
flying past two very important buildings, the Twin Towers. Notice here how it's an exact
replica straight down to the spire at the top of one of those buildings.
This tells us that the events of the series pre-date the events of September 11th, 2001.
Now, admittedly, YouTube poops didn't exist back then. They originated back in 2004,
but websites like New Grounds did exist back then, and G mod videos were also big
in the early internet days like around 2006. So while it's not an exact timeline
match, this toilet world isn't meant to be some dystopian future. Instead,
it's much more of a dystopian past, a reference to an earlier time gone by.
Also, just take a look at the way that the skibidi toilets get stronger throughout the
50 episode series,. While the cameramen develop new technology and techniques
to get the upper hand in the battles, the toilets instead repurposed. They remixed.
They reused the stuff that the cameramen leave behind. If that spirit of remixing
isn't just the pure essence of what is YouTube poop, I don't know what is.
And then look what you have on the flip side. You have the film,
music and television industry literally represented by audio visual equipment:
cameras, speakers, TVs. It does not get more direct than that. Who else would serve as the
perfect antagonist for the literal embodiment of YouTube poop than legacy media? Digital content
like YouTube poops are made from reusing and rehashing content from those three industries,
just like how the skibidi toilets get stronger by repurposing the tech that they find on the camera,
speaker and TV men. Need more proof? The camera, speaker, and TV men being
metaphors for the Big Three Media Industries has actually been teased
throughout the entirety of the series. Back in the beginning of Skibidi Toilet,
when we were just dealing with toilets and cameras, we could see a clear hierarchy among
the ranks of the cameras. So the grunts were all the small closed circuit TV style cameras.
The more advanced and the more movie like the camera became, the higher up it was.
The big movie studios were literally the most powerful entities. Also, take a look
at how the TV titan goes about destroying the toilets. It uses this sound.
*THX Style Sound*
Sounds an awful lot like the old THX intro sound.
*THX Intro Sound*
Furthermore, there's the main theme song that's used by the speaker men whenever they attack.
That sweet bop is the 1985 song Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears, who
apparently are still touring. Good for them. Not only is the song very on the
nose in terms of the theme for the series: two factions at war trying to rule the world.
But it's also just an old song from the eighties. It's dated just like the
media it's meant to represent in the series, media that in the real world is actively
fighting off the digital video threat. But there's something off about that,
right? It feels like the series wants us to be rooting for the cameraman. In fact,
there's this one scene in episode 49 that clearly establishes the toilet heads as the bad guys.
Occasionally, throughout the series, you'll have a character speak in some distorted voice. What's
actually going on there is that they're speaking in reverse. And in that particular episode,
the TV says to the toilet what sounds like "you are so bad" when the whole thing's
reversed and cleaned up.
But there's no world where we should be rooting
for traditional media, right? Especially when you're talking about a digital series.
I know the show's odd, but the idea that we're supposed to be sympathizing with some
of the least sympathetic industries on the planet seems like a step too far. Meanwhile,
we're supposed to dislike the Internet video side. I mean,
the series got popular because of Internet videos. Spoiler alert: singing meme face in a
toilet. Yeah, that's the kind of thing that would never happen in the world of TV or film.
We are clearly missing some sort of key point here. We have our two sides clearly established,
but who or what exactly are we supposed to be rooting for here? Well, that, my friends,
is where the most recent episodes come in. At the end of episode 47, we see a G-man toilet
destroy the P.O.V. cameraman, just like we've seen him do in many other episodes before.
But then through the lens of our fallen camera, we see someone coming into frame. And it's not just
anyone, it's a person. We haven't seen a human in the series for literally dozens of episodes,
and yet out of the blue, a person appears. And it's not just any person either. This
character looks an awful lot like the DaFuq's channel avatar, doesn't it?
Like I mentioned earlier, humans didn't really play much of a role
in this franchise prior to this very moment. In the beginning,
humans were just cannon fodder for the toilet overlords, but now we have one of these humans.
In fact, the human who's making the series, inserting himself back into the narrative.
Not just here. He's also hidden indoors during the opening seconds of episode 45.
But why? One does not simply self insert their avatar into a 2 billion view a month series so
lightly, when the story is so deep in its own narrative, unless you have a greater role to
play in the story you're about to tell. DaFuq clearly has a love and passion for this style
of video. Before Skibidi exploded, he had created dozens of videos in his SFM YouTube poop format.
In fact, his two most popular long form videos on his channel are still, to this day, SFM animations
that he made years ago. That being said, I also don't think he totally dislikes the world of TV,
movies and music either. Why would he make them the protagonists of his epic internet series if he
did? I think DaFuq, like many other creators, aspires to do this work on a professional level.
And you can tell that desire for a professional higher caliber of work
in the way that he's handled this Skibidi Toilet series. Each episode has seen an
escalation of the animation, the character work getting better, the ideas bigger and grander.
He has literally turned what started as a YouTube poop into an epic action movie
that hangs with some of the best content that I've seen this year. So what gives?
What is the story that he's trying to tell us through Skibidi Toilet? Well, to me,
it's clear from the story that's laid out in front of us that DaFuq sees himself
quite literally in the middle of these two loves of his that are currently at odds.
Notice what his character is doing throughout the series so far. He's picking up the broken remains
of the camera heads, the broken remains of traditional media. Creators like DaFuq
got into making this kind of content on the Internet, not just because it was fun and easy,
but deep down they wanted to emulate the TV, film and music that they enjoyed consuming.
DaFuq wants to take the elements that make the new and old media so great and fuse them
together. He is the merge point. He is the next step in the evolution of the medium. He's the
missing link here. I mean, look no further than Skibidi Toilet itself. The series starts off
as a simple gag that latched on to a viral internet meme in episode one. But by episode 50,
suddenly, we have cinematic camera changes, complex sound design, dazzling visuals
and special effects that feel like they belong more in the MCU than a YouTube poop. Skibidi
Toilet isn't an epic takedown of toxic Internet content or the corrupt industrial bigwigs at the
studios. Instead, it's evidence that these two things can co-mingle. These two titans
of entertainment can co-exist together and be stronger as a result. That the best
of both worlds can be brought together for the greater good of entertainment.
So where does this franchise end up going from here? Well,
we have ourselves our new protagonist in DaFuq, who will eventually take center stage,
taking it upon himself to save the world that he loves: the worlds of internet meme-dom and
mainstream media. He's going to turn out to be the Neo of this universe. He is the chosen one.
He'll be the one who'll be able to marry both sides of this war together and show that if the
two sides put aside their differences, they can create something truly magical. Or who knows,
maybe we'll get a movie deal out of it. And then truly, you've had the merging of the
worlds. But hey, speaking of blending ideas from multiple industries into one magical product,
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my friends remember, it's just a theory of film theory and yes, yes.