- Dude, I did not know that PewDiePie did this much stuff for it.
- You'll notice they have nothing to say,
'cause there's nothing to say about it.
- Please don't show our part. - (both) No!
♪ (dramatic chord) ♪
- (FBE) So did you watch YouTube Rewind this year?
- I did.
That's my reaction as well.
- (FBE) As hard as it may be to believe,
YouTube Rewind has officially been around for an entire decade.
- Ooh!
Are we gonna look at past YouTube Rewinds?
- (FBE) So with it being the end of the decade,
we decided we're gonna show you some clips from every YouTube Rewind
since it began in 2010, until this year.
- Okay. - Okay, okay.
- So we're gonna see the good, the bad, the ugly.
- It's like a YouTube Rewind Rewind, and I'm into it.
(television beeps)
- Oh my God, I'm so excited. - Snap!
Wow, this is how it used to be so long ago, that's insane.
♪ (upbeat music) ♪
- Oh my gosh, Double Rainbow.
- 250 million views combined for the top 10 videos of the year.
Wrap your head around that.
PewDiePie alone had four billion views this year on his channel.
- ♪ Don't have to come and confess ♪ - (both) ♪ We lookin' for you ♪
♪ We gonna find you ♪
- Dude, schmoyoho right?
- Oh, it's all the classics!
- It's funny that everyone's like oh, this year's was a WatchMojo video,
but it started as a WatchMojo video.
It's unbelievable to see in 10 years,
how much this platform has grown and changed.
- (Rebecca) Hi, I'm Rebecca Black, and welcome to YouTube Rewind.
- Rebecca Black!
- In 2011. - (Rebecca) Hi, I'm Rebecca Black.
- What? Hold on!
Rebecca Black hosted YouTube Rewind?
- I forgot she hosted! Damn.
Epic Meal Time, Freddie W, Epic Rap Battles,
the last Harry Potter movie came out, Marcel the shell, Ellen,
Charlie Sheen, dude, I know all this stuff, this is nuts!
- Aw, the talking twin babies! That came out in 2011?
- ♪ It's Friday, Friday ♪ - That's a hot jam.
Everyone behind the camera
just started jamming out to Rebecca Black.
- I saw this new thing on Rebecca Black,
and how like, how heavily that impacted her life,
and now I just feel guilty.
She was the first internet, like, enemy, I feel like,
where everyone just kinda was like "this is so dumb."
- Found a person just to bash. - Yeah, and she just...
- And just like went in.
- (Psy) Rewind YouTube style.
- Oh, I forgot about Gangnam Style, dude.
- Oh yeah, these were... - Whoa.
- This is when they started getting really good.
- Yep, yep. I would fanboy so much,
when I'd see my favorite YouTuber in it,
I'd be like "oh my goodness, there they are in the back!"
- Yeah, yeah yeah.
- RocketJump. I miss them.
- Freddie Wong, that's my homie.
- Aw. - Aw, Smosh!
- ♪ Hey I just met you ♪ - Aw yeah!
- Oh, I love him! - You remember that?
- Jenna! - That whole hand thing.
- This was the first ever Rewind I saw.
I remember being so in love with the weird mishmash
of memes and trends and it's like a Where's Waldo puzzle.
- People could like criticize it for being cringy and stuff,
but it's like this is everything that happened this year,
and you did mash it all together.
- Oh, 2013. (plane engine roars)
Oh, Kid President. Jenna Marbles again.
- ♪ She's up all night for good fun ♪ - Rhett and Link, the boys.
- This is crazy, their production value just pfft.
The YouTube money, that AdSense money.
- Oh! - Oh, this song.
To this day, it gives me so much stress.
- ♪ What does the fox say ♪
- I think this is one of my favorites. Yeah, What Does The Fox Say.
- This is where YouTube Rewind was at its peak.
- Oh, that Jazzercise lady.
Dude, she did a John Mayer music video, actually.
- Oh, look, there you guys are! Oh!
♪ (upbeat electronic music) ♪
- I'm so glad that Harlem Shake isn't a trend any more.
- This was shot so beautifully.
- PewDiePie! (laughs) - Aw!
- I remember, everyone freaked out at that part.
- This is when he was, just became the biggest subscriber on YouTube.
- Oh, I remember this.
Oh yeah, 'cause this was the year after,
and he was the start.
- Dude, I did not know that PewDiePie did this much stuff for it.
- Back when the boys were together. - Yep.
- Love that. - This was a weird trend.
And I don't think you could get away with this trend anymore.
- Wow!
- Oh yeah, the ice bucket challenge. - Such a throwback.
- (laughs) Benny and Rafi!
Michelle, oh my gosh, I love her.
- So, I personally asked, I don't wanna get wet,
give me an umbrella for this.
- Oh, now you start seeing, like oh, I'm seeing late night hosts in there.
- Yeah, I feel like 2014 was a good year.
This one felt kind of like it was using,
like genuine people who were like running the platform.
- Lilly, this is the barge where the friendship started!
I'm gonna start crying!
That's the ball pit! We hung out in it all day!
- This song was iconic. - Yeah, I still like it.
- There's Rosanna, okay.
God, this looks so expensive.
- I feel like this might have been the sort of the decline.
- 2015, this is my first year!
I sat on a dirty warehouse floor eating cold pizza,
alongside Pizza Rat. It was awesome.
'Cause it was like I made it, I'm legit,
I am represented in here.
- (man) Rewind, hit it!
- Is 2014-2015 the start of when talk show hosts
became number one YouTubers on the platform?
- Oh.
Oh, what?
What in the world? It's the Rock!
- (Rock) Bring it. - Like, that's the thing, right?
2016 does it, 2017 and 2018, I think they all start
with this kind of awkward, beginning with like
here's a celebrity first and foremost. And I get why.
I get that YouTube wants to be like look at the connections
to celebrities that we have!
I do think it sends a confusing and disappointing message
to the rest of the creator community and the culture on here
for that to be the first face that you see.
- I think I was in this one. Yeah, I was in this one.
There I am! There I am! (laughs)
That was the day after I moved to L.A.
- Oh my gosh. - I remember learning that.
- That was 2016?
- JC! (gasps) Gigi!
Oh my gosh, I remember filming this! The Kanye scene!
- Okay, so every year, I'm noticing less and less people.
Like, I feel like an alumni now.
- (both) Bottle flipping. - Oh my gosh.
There's still so much bottle flipping in our office, it's so annoying.
- (man) YouTube Rewind. - (man) Done.
- (woman) Done. - (man) Killed it.
- Yeah. - Yeah 2016, it just started...
- Started going... - Down.
- This is when people started disliking it.
- Well 'cause cancel culture started in like 2016.
- And that's the tea.
- Now it's getting a bit too much, and a bit separate
and vague or whatever.
And then 2017, well, we'll see here in a second.
- (Stephen) We've got two special guests with us.
- Stephen Colbert, my other favorite YouTuber.
- (Stephen) Tell me about 2017.
- Oh snap.
- I don't know, I don't wanna go back to 2017.
- I don't either. (laughs)
- Okay, the shooting star stuff is good though,
like that was a great meme.
- Okay, Slo Mo Guys, that's a pretty creative little twist
of putting in there. - Mm-hmm.
- Is that Tila, I think I didn't even notice that 'til just now.
I see Wengie, I see, the think I like about this
is it's so action packed, and there's so many people in here
that you can watch this about 100 times
and I'm still seeing new things.
- Oh, like the zombies and stuff.
People got mad at this one, because you couldn't tell
which YouTubers were the zombies! (laughs)
- I feel like you also got for many years,
a lot of the same people.
- ♪ Somebody once told me ♪ - All Star.
I mean, okay, parts of that were not bad.
I remember the Colbert intro was like this is so fake
and manufactured, I hated that.
But like parts of that weren't bad.
They had the meme element to it.
- I remember the 2012 to like 2015 ones.
I don't remember these.
I know I watched them, but I don't remember them as much.
- It starts to get jumbled up. - Don't, are you gonna make?
- I hope our part does not play.
Please don't show our part. - (both) No!
- We originally pitched that it would only be Casey who says it.
We stand up and say "we have an idea,"
and then Casey slowly pops up and he's like...
- (both) K-Pop!
- 'Cause that would've come off a lot better.
- C'mon Casey, give it to us. - (group) K-Pop!
- Ugh. (laughs)
- Molly Burke!
Oh yeah, I'll bring Gallop his treats.
- 2018 just... - Not a fan.
- It's the year we all turned to lame, except for Mason Ramsey.
- Why? - They're still doing Gangnam?
Aw! - Oh, the mega floss, ugh!
- This is when all the Fortnite dances...
- This should be a can't look away challenge.
- I hated it.
- What, Will Smith?
- (Will) Ah, that's hot! - Aw, it's hot!
- (Will) That's hot. - YouTube and TikTok star, Will Smith!
You'll notice that 2018's was really the first time
that was very dialogue heavy.
Unless they're talking to the camera, off script, or kind of saying things
in their own voice, it comes across as scripted
and cringy and awkward.
- I think it's worse than others because it seemed so disingenuous.
It's very clear that they were trying to showcase
very brand-friendly stuff,
and it's obvious that that's the direction that Rewind is going.
- (man) YouTube Rewind 2018. - Ugh.
- Again? - Not again.
- Not again, not again.
- Smart. It's smart that they addressed this.
- Yeah.
- So in 2019, let's see what you did like,
'cause you're better than this than we are.
- Eugene.
Oh my gosh, I love this gymnast.
- See, this is super interesting, like I see oh, Shane Dawson
is this amount of number, like PewDiePie,
and his wedding is like the number two most liked.
That gets me excited.
- This was MrBeast's year.
- You'll notice they have nothing to say,
'cause there's nothing to say about it.
That's the whole point.
- It went from like over produced, a lot of effort,
to we're just not gonna even try.
- Oh, pause it here, 'cause I have a lot to say about this.
It's like hey, here are the top individual dance creators.
Hey, here are the top individual musical acts,
and then you get to gaming, and it's like, oh, here are the games.
Not here are the gamers.
It's just frustrating that gamers are always treated differently.
- Alright. Some James.
See, it's like good, it is a step in a better direction
at the very least. - (MrBeast) Run past the trees.
- I'm glad that they had team trees in there.
- And then Felix, you know,
YouTube's like oh, we didn't have Felix
over the last couple of years, let's double it back
and make sure that he's all over the place,
and rightfully so. It was an amazing year for him.
- See, I don't know why, but that one gave me chills,
and I don't know why people hate it.
- That made me like a little excited. - For what?
- Just to like, go make more content. - Just to be alive.
- Yeah, you know?
- I do not give YouTube a pass for the 2019 one.
I think it's, even arguably it might be worse than the 2018 one,
just because of them trying to distance themselves from it.
- I don't think that you're getting that like sweet spot
of five, six years there in the middle.
I don't think you're seeing that again.
I think you might see it again in the context of independent creators
who make their own YouTube Rewinds.
Like this year, I saw a lot of creators
doing their own version of YouTube Rewind.
That is the extent of what YouTube Rewind
will be moving forward.
I think 2019's is kind of the format that's gonna persist
from now, for the foreseeable future, if they even decide to continue it.
- (FBE) We all know 2018's Rewind
became the most disliked video on YouTube of all time.
- (laughs) We made history! - We made history!
- We're part of history! - We're the most disliked video!
- (FBE) How do you think it got to this point?
- I don't know, 'cause I'm not personally,
I'm not part of the production company.
But if I were to put myself in their shoes,
I would feel this immense pressure.
It's a video that everyone's looking forward to,
and you just can't please everyone.
- There was already a lot of unrest amongst the creator community,
but also just the tone of the whole thing
struck a really awkward cord.
It was very much this idea of scripted fun,
scripted self-congratulatory, self-aggrandizing,
look at how great we are as a platform,
when all the previous YouTube Rewinds did the exact same thing,
but didn't need to explicitly call it out.
- In the past few years, YouTube has really started
to like neglect its community,
and so it became a thing of people just sort of hating on YouTube,
because they're not listening to us.
Once the dislikes started rolling in, it just snowballed,
because people are like "guys, we could do it."
We could make YouTube Rewind the most disliked video,
and wouldn't that be funny?
- The community kinda like jumped in and was like really hard on 'em.
Maybe a little bit too hard. - Mm-hmm.
- But really, really, hard on YouTube.
It kinda just like snowballs it to this point where it's like,
it becomes cool to not like something.
- (FBE) Michelle, you actually recently just returned to YouTube,
after a little bit of a break.
- A little bit? It was two years! (laughs)
- (FBE) How does it make you feel when you see the evolution
of the platform and these Rewinds?
- Hmm. I feel...
I honestly feel like an alumni.
And older alumni, and I came back to see my school,
and I don't recognize anyone, I don't recognize the staff.
If you're not enjoying it, then it's probably not gonna be really great.
So I'm taking this time to enjoy making YouTube content again.
- (FBE) During the early years of Rewind,
it was something creators often said they wanted to do.
But now if you were asked, would you be a part of YouTube Rewind?
- Absolutely! Yes, I love YouTube Rewind.
I think it's wonderful.
- 100%. - Oh absolutely, absolutely.
Absolutely, dude.
I've wanted to since I was a little kid, yeah?
- Yeah, absolutely, and we've never been in one,
so that would be like a huge deal for us.
- I think I would be willing to say yes,
but I would want to see the script, or a general outline
of what the whole thing looked like first.
- It would depend on
what the segment is. - What it is.
- They would have to tell us ahead of time.
I don't know if other YouTubers got a lot of backlash.
We got a lot of backlash for the K-Pop part.
- But we love K-Pop, and you know, because of that,
we've like slowly just backed away from it,
'cause we're like "I'm scared!" - Yeah, we kinda said...
- I don't wanna be in it right now with how it is.
I would want to be in it if I knew that I had control
over, at least, even my part of the production,
but that's just not feasible.
And that's just a selfish request on my part,
but I think that's where a lot of other creators are right now,
where they're like "hey, I'm not jumping in to
this trash fire," like, I don't wanna see
memes of myself for months because I showed up to a day shoot,
and you guys just flopped this whole production.
- (FBE) So it isn't just Rewind that gets YouTube a lot of negativity
over the years.
Why do you think that YouTube gets so much hate from its creators,
and then in turn, viewers as well?
- Well, I mean it's hard, it's not that black and white.
It's very expensive to run YouTube.
So on one side, I can see YouTube's struggle
with you know, finding ways to profit,
and then on the other side, I could also understand,
'cause I'm a creator myself,
the creators feel like YouTube is not helping,
just helping them, protecting them.
- People just get upset.
They find something to get upset about
and then everyone jumps on the bandwagon.
So like if some YouTuber's like... - One nitpicky thing.
- Yeah, like if your favorite YouTuber disagrees about someone,
then everyone will go and disagree about it.
- YouTube leaves its creators in the dark.
They tell us after the fact, when people start complaining
like hey, why is this happening, why is that happening?
Then they're like "oh yeah, we made these changes."
And it's like okay, can you tell us, please?
- YouTube has to satisfy the viewers, the creators, and the brands.
Creators want to be able to create whatever they want to,
but also still get paid for it and monetized for it.
Brands have very specific things that they're comfortable
monetizing in front of, and oh, and then there's also
the government now, and YouTube's in the middle,
and it has to satisfy everyone.
It's easy to point the finger at YouTube and be like
they're the ones to blame, because they're the ones
that put up demonetization policies, they're the ones
who aren't responding to COPPA.
They're the ones who made a crappy Rewind,
but in actuality, they're the ones trying to juggle
all the demands placed on 'em from everyone,
and I, it's a very difficult,
and a very unsympathetic position to be in.
- (FBE) What are some changes that you hope to see
YouTube make to help creators and their communities
as we head into the new decade?
- Ugh, there's... - I think...
I think what YouTube could do better, and the creators can do better,
is we all try to understand each other.
As a creator, we need to understand that YouTube is this crazy platform
with these people that are trying to figure it out too,
but YouTube needs to realize that their creators do have
good opinions, and they do have a voice,
and that we need to be heard as well.
- Oh snap. How much time you got? (laughs)
Just be completely straightforward
and honest with what you're intending to do on the platform,
what you want the platform to be.
- There's a lot of YouTubers where they worked so hard
and they've accumulated
like millions and millions of subscribers,
but one shift in the algorithm, their videos are not being seen.
If there's a better way for the subscribers to see
content from the people they're actually subscribed to.
- There are massive site-wide changes that are negatively impacting
tons of creators and viewers. There's no communication.
It's also unreasonable from a creator perspective
to assume that YouTube owes us
full transparency with all this stuff. They're a business, I get it.
Let's look at what moves YouTube.
It's money.
I want there to be better communication
to creators about what kind of terms, keyword stuff,
will demonetize your video. At least tell us.
Honestly, I love YouTube, I really can't see anything
that will make me jump ship off the platform.
I would love to see more competition.
I would love to see that being an incentive
for YouTube to improve their communication,
their platform as a whole.
A lot of creators feel this ever-looming presence
of like oh, we need to keep making stuff.
It doesn't ever stop, you know, and I just think
that surrounding yourself with good people
and working at the good sense of pacing and schedule
has helped me personally, and hopefully other people.
- Thank you so much for watching this episode of YouTubers React.
- Subscribe to all the creators that are featured in this episode.
- Links are in the description below. - Bye everyone!
- Hey everyone, Lauren, Producer here at FBE.
Thank you so much for watching this episode, and thank you
to all the creators who came in and shot this with us today.
Make sure you go check 'em out,
Links are gonna be down in the description.
Bye everyone!