YouTube’s top trend of the year features long-necked heads that pop out of toilets. That’s the best description I can offer for Skibidi Toilet, which headlined 2023’s “Year On YouTube” recap.
Skibidi Toilet took YouTube and TikTok by storm over the summer, pulling in billions of views in the process. “2023’s Trending Topics in the US reflect fandom’s increasingly important role in transforming cultural moments into fully immersive phenomena that play out across Shorts, longform, livestreams, and podcasts,” reads YouTube’s recap. “From original series like Skibidi Toilet to the release of Barbie, fans came to YouTube to put their personal spins on memes, movies, and more.”
The Year On YouTube blog post continues an annual YouTube tradition. Each December, the leading video site compiles a list of the videos, creators, trends, and songs that defined its culture during the previous 12 months. In recent years, MrBeast — a.k.a. Jimmy Donaldson — has been a regular presence in that review. He was named YouTube’s top creator in 2021, and he repeated that feat in 2022.
In 2023, Donaldson made it a three-peat. The MrBeast channel once again topped YouTube’s ranking of its top hubs. North Carolina-based Donaldson outranked a number of YouTube Shorts stalwarts, including Pink Shirt Couple, Topper Guild, and Zhong.
The first of those channels also took the title of Breakout Creator. Pink Shirt Couple rocketed up our Tubefilter charts in 2023 thanks to its blend of family content, pranks, comedy, and short-form editing.
The #4 channel on the Breakout Creators list is the progenitor of the Skibidi Toilet meme. DaFuq!?Boom! became a chart-topper in its own right and a cultural icon among Generation Alpha. The cohort below Gen Z was a primary driver of Skibidi Toilet mania, much to the chagrin of their Zoomer elders.
Miley Cyrus’ ‘Flowers‘ was a ubiquitous presence on YouTube Shorts during the first few months of the year, but it only finished second on YouTube’s ranking of its top trending songs. The leader on that list was Toosii‘s ‘Favorite Song,’ which anchored a short-form fad of its own.
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