YouTube’s rundown of the top trending videos of 2022 is an eclectic list. It includes a farewell video from a departed creator, a coming out story from a top animator, a slap heard ’round the world, and much more.
If three of YouTube’s foremost trend analysts are to be believed, 2023 will be another exciting year full of surprises and unexpected viral breakouts. Matthew “MatPat” Patrick, the host of the YouTube-branded podcast Like & Describe, invited Kevin Alocca and Maddy Buxton onto his show to recap 2022’s biggest hits and look ahead to the next 12 months.
Alocca is the Global Director of Culture & Trends at YouTube, while Buxton is the company’s Culture & Trends Manager. Those two trend gurus linked up with MatPat to make some sense of the varied trends that defined 2022 on YouTube.
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The widespread availability of YouTube Shorts and the supremacy of MrBeast have defined a lot of the platform-wide culture, but the analytical trio also noted the impact of smaller communities and fandoms during the last calendar year. They spent a good chunk of the podcast nerding out about The Backrooms, which MatPat and his wife Stephanie honored during the 2022 Streamy Awards.
Even with three of YouTube’s savviest prognosticators in one room, it’s nearly impossible to make accurate predictions about the upcoming year. “It’s hard enough to understand what’s happening today, let alone predict what’s happening tomorrow,” Alocca said.
After delivering that caveat, the Culture & Trends maven prompted MatPat to look into his 2023 crystal ball. The founder of the Theorist network — who recently sold his brainchild to the startup Lunar X — thinks big newsmakers of 2022 will continue generating headlines this year. AI creation services like DALL-E will stay relevant, MatPat says, and the continued abatement of COVID restrictions will trigger a resurgence in travel content.
That second guess is backed up by data. In a year-end recap, link-in-bio service Linktree noted that links to travel sites increased by 55% in 2022.
MatPat also believes that up-and-coming creators will continue to flip the MrBeast script, as Ryan Trahan did in 2022. “This year, you started to see the rise of creators who learned from MrBeast but took it in the complete opposite direction,” he said. He thinks those creators will find more ways to pair a “grand concept” with a “smaller scale.”
One prediction that is likely to come true: The Like & Describe podcast will be the best place to hear MatPat’s musings. You can follow the show on Spotify
