The Brief: YouTube Rewind 2019 recaps the year's top YouTube videos and creators with statistics and short clips.
DEEP DIVE
YouTube Rewind 2019 is nothing like last year’s. After YouTube Rewind, 2018 became the most disliked video on the platform with over 16 million dislikes, YouTube took a different approach with this year’s video.
Released on December 5, 2019, “YouTube Rewind 2019: For the Record | #YouTubeRewind” is five minutes and 36 seconds of straightforward year-in-review content. The video starts by acknowledging the massive failure of Rewind 2018 and stating YouTube’s intent to show what viewers “did like” in 2019 “because you’re better at this than we are.”
The rest of the video consists of lists of the top ten and top five most-liked and most-viewed content including creator videos, music videos, dance videos, makeup videos, new creators, and more. It’s set to Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings” Billie Eilish’s “bad guy”, “Tokyo Drifting” by Glass Animals and Denzel Curry, and “Don’t Start Now” by Dua Lipa.
Rewind 2018 was criticized for its cringeyness, failure to include fan-favorite creators like PewDiePie, and content that seemed forced and out-of-touch. This year, YouTube went in a much different direction with their Rewind video, creating a somewhat bland, but likely less uncontroversial recap.
YouTube Rewind 2019 Memes
Leading up to the release of this year’s rewind, many memes speculated about its potential to share the same infamy of the previous year’s rewind. Initial comments and meme reactions to the drop of Rewind 2019 note how it’s unexciting, but that at least it wasn’t as bad as last year’s. Reddit was a major source of criticism of Rewind 2018 and much of the discourse about this year’s video is taking place on the site as well.
We should do our own rewind! With hookers and casinos! from dankmemes
Rewind is upon us… from memes
Some Rewind haters are encouraging each other to avoid watching YT Rewind for 24 hours in order to negatively affect the video’s metrics based on the number of views it receives in the first 24 hours.
All yall should remember to not watch YT rewind for 24 hrs from dankmemes