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Youtube Rewind 2018 dethrones Justin Bieber's 'Baby' as most disliked YouTube video

Relentlessly positive montage was labelled 'cringe' by commenters

Christopher Hooton
Friday 14 December 2018 10:09 GMT
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YouTube Rewind 2018 video features some of the streaming service's top personalities

A video about YouTube is officially the most disliked video on YouTube.

The 2018 edition of the brand’s annual recap has been slowly amassing thumbs down, and has now surpassed those given to Justin Bieber’s “Baby” music video.

At the time of writing, the eight-minute montage has 11 million dislikes, with top comments ranging from simply “Cringe” to “I recognised like only 5-6 people” and “If there’s one thing that will bring people together, it’s hating this video.”

The video takes a sugary, self-congratulatory look at the past year’s events, shoehorning in shout-outs to mental health destigmatisation, Asian representation and female empowerment, amid Fortnite spoofs and K-Pop dance routines.

It has been criticised for presenting a sanitised version of the YouTube experience, and many see the absence of huge YouTubers like PewDiePie and Logan Paul as a deliberate attempt to stay away from controversy.

A YouTube representative said in a statement to The Verge that “dethroning ‘Baby’ in dislikes wasn’t exactly our goal.”

“Honest feedback can suck, but we are listening and we appreciate how much people care,” the representative continued.

“Trying to capture the magic of YouTube in one single video is like trying to capture lightning in a bottle. We also learned that creating content can be really hard and this underscores our respect and admiration for YouTube creators doing it every day. Keep the feedback coming and maybe we’ll release a top 10 list of ‘Rewind dislike’ reaction videos.”

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