YouTube Rewind — a compendium of the year’s most popular videos, creators, and online trends — is one of the platform’s buzziest undertakings each December. And the 2016 iteration has become the most-viewed Rewind video of all time in a 24-hour period.
In the day following its release last Wednesday, the video — which featured 200 creators and was shot in 18 countries — had been viewed 73 million times and counting, shared YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. By Saturday, it had clocked 90 million views, and, as of today, the clip counts a total of roughly 121 million views. This is millions more than any other Rewind video since 2012, when YouTube began producing the year-end collages alongside burgeoning digital studio Portal A.
The 2012 version still has the most views to date at 182 million views and counting — though the 2016 version (below) has quickly ascended to second place, followed by 2013’s Rewind
(119 million views), 2014’s Rewind (112 million views), and 2015’s Rewind (107 million views). At the same time, however, YouTube Rewind 2016 is also by far the most disliked installment yet, with a whopping 350,000 thumbs down. Dislikes in 2012, 2013, and 2014 all remained below 75,000 — though 2015 saw a significant uptick to 168,000 dislikes.In order to help viewers parse through the litany of viral references, YouTube for the first time this year offered both a Rewind quiz to test takers’ Internet knowledge, as well as an interactive guide detailing the data, trends, and backstories behind each scene.
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