YouTube promises 2019 Rewind won’t be as bad as last year w/ unencouraging meme

Ben Schoon | Dec 3 2019 - 2:40 pm PT

YouTube Rewind is an annual way to highlight some of the platform’s biggest creators and trends, but sometimes it doesn’t go all that well. For its 2019 Rewind, YouTube says it’s taking a completely different direction compared to the year before in a brief teaser.

In case you’ve forgotten, 2018’s Rewind turned out to be the most hated YouTube video of all time. The video racked up over 10 million dislikes in just a week, dethroning the previous champion, Justin Bieber’s “Baby.” Many users took issue with YouTube’s “disconnect” from normal viewers as well as an excess of Fortnite references. More than anything, it really seemed like Rewind 2018 was an advertising opportunity rather than a celebration of the community.

To emphasize that YouTube Rewind 2019 will be different, YouTube posted a teaser on its Twitter. The tweet only says that “Rewind is coming,” but it then attaches a meme to drive home the point.

YouTube makes their point clear with this teaser, but this isn’t really a super encouraging example of the platform being in touch. While hilarious, this meme format is super outdated at this point.