I wonder what they should do at this point like what can YouTube do to have a
successful rewind we'll sit down Felix let's talk about that actually you're
already saying down so let's just move on shall we
hello Internet welcome to game theory where we always talk about everything
two weeks after it's relevant because the show is so darn hard to produce
seriously no matter how many New Year's resolutions I make in the last eight
years of doing this show I've never been able to get like more than a week ahead
so today I really want to talk about the YouTube rewind the last time that I
talked about rewind was back in 2015 way back then in that theory I predicted
that 2015's YouTube rewind would be the final good one and okay I wasn't that
far off I missed it by like a year right at this point we all know the story 26
teams was good not great 2017 started the massive decline and then 2018 well
let's just cut to footage of 2018 shall we
Oh God there's a hot indeed YouTube and tic-tacs sensation Will Smith it was a
literal garbage fire and so this year they just kind of gave up threw up their
hands and said you know what we don't know what she likes so here's a bunch of
videos that objectively got a lot of likes instead - of course the ones that
didn't fit into the arbitrary rules that we listed out on our website at this
point rewind appears to have an unfixable
problem PewDiePie himself was called in to review this
year's rewind and even he couldn't fix the darn thing I actually got to see it
and I got to give feedback on it and they took some of my feedback but it
still bummed there probably wasn't a whole lot that he was in a position to
do but still the point is there overall the reaction to the watch mojo list that
was YouTube rewind 2019 was 12 best described as not as negative as 2018 but
outside of that the Creator community didn't have a whole lot to say about it
and I mean that literally when reacting to it that was just everyone's general
response okay it's like a bowl of rice not bad just a little plain that's
probably the greatest analogy I've ever heard and it's fine I guess but it's so
boring but you know what I think that there's actually a lot to unpack from
this year's rewind that's largely gone ignored in favor of people arguing over
whether there was either too much or too little kpop in it because when you stop
and analyze this year's rewind we get ourselves a preview of what the next 10
years on this platform are gonna look like and let me tell you it's gonna be a
very different looking platform first let me get something personal off my
chest I recently posted a full interview I did with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki
where the very first question I asked her was about YouTube gamers being
treated as second-class citizens her response was that we're not my answer
would be no I mean gaming is an incredibly important part of our
ecosystem it's why I'm here it's why we're having a gaming summit okay
fair enough but then less than a week after I post that video I see this
year's rewind which features lists of the year's top individual
sessions individual dance creators individual beauty creators and then this
holistic games not the gamers who play those games create with those games help
those games grow and sustain popularity the creators who are some of the
platform's most well-known and successful personalities know it's a
prime example of the problem that I level that Susan in that interview
gamers as second class you don't see beauty gurus being boiled down to the
list of the top pallets that were talked about this year we're not presented with
the lists of the top music genres on the platform this year but rather the top
musicians and yet gamers are only as good as the games that they play not
even worth being mentioned by name and that's not being salty on my own behalf
far from it there is no chance that I would ever be mentioned a list of like
top liked creators on the platform I just think that it's indicative of the
way that this platform continually treats creators who communicate through
the medium of games differently from those who communicate through other
mediums like vlogs or makeup or music and dance just it's inequality and you
don't notice it unless you're looking for it and it's there that's sad and I
wish it would change because gamers are pretty awesome and we do a lot for this
platform but ok that was just a minor nitpick I now want to talk about the big
picture stuff right let's start by attempting to fix the impossible problem
that is the YouTube rewind and a big problem requires itself a big screen so
if you'll excuse me I gotta get off the couch for this one that you don't know
what we like right that it's so hard to figure out but the thing is you managed
to do it for five years before this fairly successfully so it must be able
to be done and for all the talk around helping the platform has gotten and how
many creators there are and how global it is and how impossible it is to
satisfy everyone in a single video honestly I think that's just making a
lot of excuses that's not getting to the core problems that made 2017 and
18 so disliked when you look at those two rewinds relative to all the others
it becomes clear that rewinds problems all boil down to two core issues
the first one is dishonesty the thing is we first and foremost want YouTube
rewind to be what it promises it is to be a rewind of the previous year I'm
sorry but that's the brand that you created and now you're stuck with it and
believe me I feel your pain I do theories for a living and theories are
hard to write especially one a week but if I suddenly do something that isn't a
well-researched fully scripted out thoughtful essay and call it a game
theory well guess what people get mad at me and rightfully so
to be honest same with a rewind that doesn't actually rewind the events of
the year when multiple months feel of I don't know a worldwide movement
supporting an independent creator racing to cross the hundred million subscriber
mark before a large corporate channel that's something that I think you should
probably cover when a massive battle between two rival beauty gurus spills
out into the mainstream media and sets records for unsubscribes in a day
spawning live stream counter trends that follow the drama outright prompting you
to change your platform well that's probably something that you're gonna
want to cover when a Logan Paul versus ksi boxing match is one of the biggest
pay-per-view events on your platform that's something that you're gonna want
to cover now don't get me wrong I know you want to put on a good face for your
advertisers that you're ashamed of some of the more controversial or edgier
stories on your platform but YouTube was a platform that one the media wars by
being first and foremost a source for authentic content authentic doesn't mean
perfection and if you really do want to do a rewind like you say you do every
year you have to take the good with the bad you have to honor both sides of this
thing no real talk I understand why you'd be scared to slip in your
platforms edge your stories but just because something might have negative
connotations back when it happened doesn't mean it still has to be negative
when it appears in a YouTube rewind setting
take the three examples that I just brought up right the Tati versus James
Charles drama teasers vs. PewDiePie Logan Paul versus ksi boxing three huge
stories that any yearly recap should absolutely have included three stories
that you might be sensitive to I mean I would assume that you were since they
didn't really appear in their respective yearly recap but consider this set up a
giant boxing match three rounds each round comedic ly riffing on one of these
respective battles or you know what if you don't like the boxing metaphor use
another youtuber trend example mister beast
mister beasts youtuber paintball challenge with each duo who were
fighting at a certain point now being recast as a team it keeps things fun
light-hearted and group thematically well also and most importantly not
sweeping those events under the rug massive trends that happened on a global
scale that everyone who lives and breathes the YouTube expects to see here
because it was such a massive cultural event for this platform because when you
ignore stuff like that that is when people get mad at you that's when they
hit the dislike button that is when it starts to feel dishonest which is like
the antithesis of why people love this platform in the first place second major
problem don't virtue signal or at least don't
tell us that you're doing it what do we do it's the classic adage of showing not
telling early real lines didn't have kumbaya circles of creators saying how
proud they are of this community know instead that message that same message
was communicated through the imagery of the rewind a rainbow backdrop riffing on
the love has no labels viral video featuring creators of different
backgrounds without feeling the need to explicitly call it out this is and has
always been an inclusive platform of diversity but calling it out as
explicitly as you did in those last two rewinds is not only cringy but it's self
aggrandizing it feels gross and self-serving it takes a beautiful thing
that happened organic on this platform and suddenly feels like
it's being used to Pat a corporation on the back so again you say that you don't
know what we like but clearly audiences of YouTube like a pretty diverse
selection of things I can tell you two things that we seem to universally not
like dishonesty and preach eNOS but you know what this whole conversation is
pointless you know it I know it this time everyone at home watching knows it
because I've read between the lines of your 20 19 rewind I see where your
head's at YouTube I get that none of this matters and that
the rewind is now and forever gone and it ain't coming back and the ain't
interested in fixing it so all these conversations are just moot points but
in order to fully have that conversation we need to sit back down on the couch
last year that YouTube attempted to put together a rewind that actually felt
like a human made it rather than YouTube's own AI systems like for all we
know an AI could have actually edited this thing together because goodness
knows like human cannot watch this there's so many awkward jump cuts like
why would you put a cut there you put the cuts on the beats and the music guys
20 19 s rewind had more glitch effects gonna five nights at Freddy's theory but
aesthetics of the whole thing aside what I actually mean by that is that this
year YouTube gave up pretending to be something that it's not a person a
person has a perspective a person makes judgment calls about what's relevant
what's cool and what is it this year YouTube started doing what it does best
being a machine that can read numbers you didn't like what you got last year
fair enough we'll stop deciding what we think you'll like and let the numbers
choose for us beep boop boop beep boop just like our
algorithms over and over throughout 2019 YouTube has had to assert that it is
nothing except a platform a flat surface where people build things YouTube is no
longer a part of the YouTube community it used to be that was the heyday of the
YouTube rewind but it's not anymore it's not a purse
it's a platform and this is just the latest in a whole slew of reactions that
YouTube has had recently back in 2018 we experience they had pocalypse
advertisers complained about their ads running against content that they didn't
deem his brand safe and so YouTube was forced to react by changing and policies
and along the way their response advertisers was we're just the platform
people can post anything here we're just a machine so you can't expect everything
to be perfectly brand safe all the time fast forward to article 13 / 17 when it
was being passed around Europe YouTube was again forced to react by working
with countries to set up copyright policies but along the way they
maintained what's called a safe harbor position basically a stance that says
hey we're just the platform we're not responsible for the content that gets
uploaded here if people upload copyrighted material well that's not
really our problem we shouldn't be held accountable we're just the platform
earlier this year when the FTC came a-knockin about Coppa complaining that
there were kids content running ads on the platform again YouTube was forced to
react by changing kids content policies but also reacting to us in the creator
community by not offering advice by not being able to help us in any way just
direct us to the guidelines because you know what if they were the help they'd
step beyond the lines of being just the platform they are neutral so YouTube's
2019 rewind happens to be the perfect distillation of where YouTube is in 2019
a neutral observer of what happens on the platform completely disconnected
from those things for its own self-preservation savings that happen
here the rewind is just the latest in a long series of two years worth of
YouTube saying we're just the platform we don't speak for the creators on that
platform instead of trying to interpret the culture that exists here the YouTube
rewind in 2019 shows that YouTube is essentially washing its hands of the
culture that exists here no judgment calls no deciding who's cool and who
should have 10 frames or who should be driving the YouTube battle bus just an
auto-generated mirror held back up to us this is numerically what you told the
platform that like data in data out YouTube is the
platform they play by the numbers they're not here to get involved with us
say what you will about YouTube rewind 2018 it was bad it was cringy it was
preachy it didn't represent the platform but guess what it did do got people to
care it has 20 million likes and dislikes most them dislikes and over 2
million comments this year's half that 10 million with
only a million comments almost exactly half any way you slice it the response
was lukewarm at best and that's the problem with being neutral you lose all
that passion that fervor the excitement about what's going on there you lose the
enthusiasm for being here as a part of the community but the thing is at least
from where I'm sitting the old rewinds are never coming back
YouTube still has a community a culture right we know this because if I say
t-series vs. PewDiePie pretty much everyone who watches this platform
recognizes right but YouTube itself is from this point forward opting out of
its own community I gotta say it feels kind of sad right feels like a bit of a
loss a changing era a tech company that is moving on from its first and hardest
core users which means that I guess now it's up to us to pick up that torch and
run with it creators like the ones that you see
cycling around screen right now the people who are working to create the
real rewind one that we feel really recaps the year in the way that we want
to see because we are still a part of this community we still believe that
there's a culture here and we're not ashamed of it and we're excited to be a
part of it sad that YouTube doesn't feel the same way but hey that's just a
theory a rewind theory thanks for watching