231,699,854 views
Rating:Not Explicit

The Brief: The 2018 YouTube Rewind is a video conglomeration of some of the top moments and creators on YouTube in the past year.

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DEEP DIVE

The YouTube 2018 rewind video, which is produced by YouTube features dozens of international creators, memes, and pop-culture references rolled into one eight-minute video. YouTubers featured in the video included Will Smith, NinjaLele Pons, The Dolan Twins, James Charles, Liza Koshy, Emma Chamberlain, The Try Guys, Casey Neistat, and Gabbie Hanna. The video references Fortnite, Kpop, Mukbangs, ASMR, the royal wedding, emotes, flossing, and the Shiggy Challenge.

Notably absent from the video were popular creators such as PewDiePie, Shane Dawson, Logan Paul, Jake Paul, David Dobrick, and KSI. The video was also devoid of any cursing, sexual, controversial or inappropriate content or creators.

Although the YouTube Rewind video received over 100 million views and is generally positive and inclusive, it has faced a significant backlash in the form of reaction videos, memes, and dislikes. At the time this was written, the video has 7.6 million dislikes and only two million likes, making it the second most disliked YouTube video of all time.

It seems that the 2018 YouTube Rewind was more of a promotional video meant to appeal to advertisers than anything else. The video itself, and the backlash it received highlight discrepancies between the culture of YouTube’s creator community, and the image that the platform is trying to publicly present

Memes

Some YouTube Rewind memes directly reference and critique the video while others use exploitable formats from the video for other purposes.

Always invest in meta memes from r/MemeEconomy

Why is it so true from r/DeepFriedMemes

Okay, this is epic from r/memes

Relatable unfortunately from r/memes

Down + B from r/memes

Not even a thank you? from r/memes