Game Theory: Why YouTube Will NEVER Fix Rewind (YouTube Rewind 2019)

I wonder what they should do at this point like what can YouTube do to have a successful rewind we'll sit down Felix let's talk about that actually you're already saying down so let's just move on shall we hello Internet welcome to game theory where we always talk about everything two weeks after it's relevant because the show is so darn hard to produce seriously no matter how many New Year's resolutions I make in the last eight years of doing this show I've never been able to get like more than a week ahead so today I really want to talk about the YouTube rewind the last time that I talked about rewind was back in 2015 way back then in that theory I predicted that 2015's YouTube rewind would be the final good one and okay I wasn't that far off I missed it by like a year right at this point we all know the story 26 teams was good not great 2017 started the massive decline and then 2018 well let's just cut to footage of 2018 shall we Oh God there's a hot indeed YouTube and tic-tacs sensation Will Smith it was a literal garbage fire and so this year they just kind of gave up threw up their hands and said you know what we don't know what she likes so here's a bunch of videos that objectively got a lot of likes instead - of course the ones that didn't fit into the arbitrary rules that we listed out on our website at this point rewind appears to have an unfixable problem PewDiePie himself was called in to review this year's rewind and even he couldn't fix the darn thing I actually got to see it and I got to give feedback on it and they took some of my feedback but it still bummed there probably wasn't a whole lot that he was in a position to do but still the point is there overall the reaction to the watch mojo list that was YouTube rewind 2019 was 12 best described as not as negative as 2018 but outside of that the Creator community didn't have a whole lot to say about it and I mean that literally when reacting to it that was just everyone's general response okay it's like a bowl of rice not bad just a little plain that's probably the greatest analogy I've ever heard and it's fine I guess but it's so boring but you know what I think that there's actually a lot to unpack from this year's rewind that's largely gone ignored in favor of people arguing over whether there was either too much or too little kpop in it because when you stop and analyze this year's rewind we get ourselves a preview of what the next 10 years on this platform are gonna look like and let me tell you it's gonna be a very different looking platform first let me get something personal off my chest I recently posted a full interview I did with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki where the very first question I asked her was about YouTube gamers being treated as second-class citizens her response was that we're not my answer would be no I mean gaming is an incredibly important part of our ecosystem it's why I'm here it's why we're having a gaming summit okay fair enough but then less than a week after I post that video I see this year's rewind which features lists of the year's top individual sessions individual dance creators individual beauty creators and then this holistic games not the gamers who play those games create with those games help those games grow and sustain popularity the creators who are some of the platform's most well-known and successful personalities know it's a prime example of the problem that I level that Susan in that interview gamers as second class you don't see beauty gurus being boiled down to the list of the top pallets that were talked about this year we're not presented with the lists of the top music genres on the platform this year but rather the top musicians and yet gamers are only as good as the games that they play not even worth being mentioned by name and that's not being salty on my own behalf far from it there is no chance that I would ever be mentioned a list of like top liked creators on the platform I just think that it's indicative of the way that this platform continually treats creators who communicate through the medium of games differently from those who communicate through other mediums like vlogs or makeup or music and dance just it's inequality and you don't notice it unless you're looking for it and it's there that's sad and I wish it would change because gamers are pretty awesome and we do a lot for this platform but ok that was just a minor nitpick I now want to talk about the big picture stuff right let's start by attempting to fix the impossible problem that is the YouTube rewind and a big problem requires itself a big screen so if you'll excuse me I gotta get off the couch for this one that you don't know what we like right that it's so hard to figure out but the thing is you managed to do it for five years before this fairly successfully so it must be able to be done and for all the talk around helping the platform has gotten and how many creators there are and how global it is and how impossible it is to satisfy everyone in a single video honestly I think that's just making a lot of excuses that's not getting to the core problems that made 2017 and 18 so disliked when you look at those two rewinds relative to all the others it becomes clear that rewinds problems all boil down to two core issues the first one is dishonesty the thing is we first and foremost want YouTube rewind to be what it promises it is to be a rewind of the previous year I'm sorry but that's the brand that you created and now you're stuck with it and believe me I feel your pain I do theories for a living and theories are hard to write especially one a week but if I suddenly do something that isn't a well-researched fully scripted out thoughtful essay and call it a game theory well guess what people get mad at me and rightfully so to be honest same with a rewind that doesn't actually rewind the events of the year when multiple months feel of I don't know a worldwide movement supporting an independent creator racing to cross the hundred million subscriber mark before a large corporate channel that's something that I think you should probably cover when a massive battle between two rival beauty gurus spills out into the mainstream media and sets records for unsubscribes in a day spawning live stream counter trends that follow the drama outright prompting you to change your platform well that's probably something that you're gonna want to cover when a Logan Paul versus ksi boxing match is one of the biggest pay-per-view events on your platform that's something that you're gonna want to cover now don't get me wrong I know you want to put on a good face for your advertisers that you're ashamed of some of the more controversial or edgier stories on your platform but YouTube was a platform that one the media wars by being first and foremost a source for authentic content authentic doesn't mean perfection and if you really do want to do a rewind like you say you do every year you have to take the good with the bad you have to honor both sides of this thing no real talk I understand why you'd be scared to slip in your platforms edge your stories but just because something might have negative connotations back when it happened doesn't mean it still has to be negative when it appears in a YouTube rewind setting take the three examples that I just brought up right the Tati versus James Charles drama teasers vs. PewDiePie Logan Paul versus ksi boxing three huge stories that any yearly recap should absolutely have included three stories that you might be sensitive to I mean I would assume that you were since they didn't really appear in their respective yearly recap but consider this set up a giant boxing match three rounds each round comedic ly riffing on one of these respective battles or you know what if you don't like the boxing metaphor use another youtuber trend example mister beast mister beasts youtuber paintball challenge with each duo who were fighting at a certain point now being recast as a team it keeps things fun light-hearted and group thematically well also and most importantly not sweeping those events under the rug massive trends that happened on a global scale that everyone who lives and breathes the YouTube expects to see here because it was such a massive cultural event for this platform because when you ignore stuff like that that is when people get mad at you that's when they hit the dislike button that is when it starts to feel dishonest which is like the antithesis of why people love this platform in the first place second major problem don't virtue signal or at least don't tell us that you're doing it what do we do it's the classic adage of showing not telling early real lines didn't have kumbaya circles of creators saying how proud they are of this community know instead that message that same message was communicated through the imagery of the rewind a rainbow backdrop riffing on the love has no labels viral video featuring creators of different backgrounds without feeling the need to explicitly call it out this is and has always been an inclusive platform of diversity but calling it out as explicitly as you did in those last two rewinds is not only cringy but it's self aggrandizing it feels gross and self-serving it takes a beautiful thing that happened organic on this platform and suddenly feels like it's being used to Pat a corporation on the back so again you say that you don't know what we like but clearly audiences of YouTube like a pretty diverse selection of things I can tell you two things that we seem to universally not like dishonesty and preach eNOS but you know what this whole conversation is pointless you know it I know it this time everyone at home watching knows it because I've read between the lines of your 20 19 rewind I see where your head's at YouTube I get that none of this matters and that the rewind is now and forever gone and it ain't coming back and the ain't interested in fixing it so all these conversations are just moot points but in order to fully have that conversation we need to sit back down on the couch last year that YouTube attempted to put together a rewind that actually felt like a human made it rather than YouTube's own AI systems like for all we know an AI could have actually edited this thing together because goodness knows like human cannot watch this there's so many awkward jump cuts like why would you put a cut there you put the cuts on the beats and the music guys 20 19 s rewind had more glitch effects gonna five nights at Freddy's theory but aesthetics of the whole thing aside what I actually mean by that is that this year YouTube gave up pretending to be something that it's not a person a person has a perspective a person makes judgment calls about what's relevant what's cool and what is it this year YouTube started doing what it does best being a machine that can read numbers you didn't like what you got last year fair enough we'll stop deciding what we think you'll like and let the numbers choose for us beep boop boop beep boop just like our algorithms over and over throughout 2019 YouTube has had to assert that it is nothing except a platform a flat surface where people build things YouTube is no longer a part of the YouTube community it used to be that was the heyday of the YouTube rewind but it's not anymore it's not a purse it's a platform and this is just the latest in a whole slew of reactions that YouTube has had recently back in 2018 we experience they had pocalypse advertisers complained about their ads running against content that they didn't deem his brand safe and so YouTube was forced to react by changing and policies and along the way their response advertisers was we're just the platform people can post anything here we're just a machine so you can't expect everything to be perfectly brand safe all the time fast forward to article 13 / 17 when it was being passed around Europe YouTube was again forced to react by working with countries to set up copyright policies but along the way they maintained what's called a safe harbor position basically a stance that says hey we're just the platform we're not responsible for the content that gets uploaded here if people upload copyrighted material well that's not really our problem we shouldn't be held accountable we're just the platform earlier this year when the FTC came a-knockin about Coppa complaining that there were kids content running ads on the platform again YouTube was forced to react by changing kids content policies but also reacting to us in the creator community by not offering advice by not being able to help us in any way just direct us to the guidelines because you know what if they were the help they'd step beyond the lines of being just the platform they are neutral so YouTube's 2019 rewind happens to be the perfect distillation of where YouTube is in 2019 a neutral observer of what happens on the platform completely disconnected from those things for its own self-preservation savings that happen here the rewind is just the latest in a long series of two years worth of YouTube saying we're just the platform we don't speak for the creators on that platform instead of trying to interpret the culture that exists here the YouTube rewind in 2019 shows that YouTube is essentially washing its hands of the culture that exists here no judgment calls no deciding who's cool and who should have 10 frames or who should be driving the YouTube battle bus just an auto-generated mirror held back up to us this is numerically what you told the platform that like data in data out YouTube is the platform they play by the numbers they're not here to get involved with us say what you will about YouTube rewind 2018 it was bad it was cringy it was preachy it didn't represent the platform but guess what it did do got people to care it has 20 million likes and dislikes most them dislikes and over 2 million comments this year's half that 10 million with only a million comments almost exactly half any way you slice it the response was lukewarm at best and that's the problem with being neutral you lose all that passion that fervor the excitement about what's going on there you lose the enthusiasm for being here as a part of the community but the thing is at least from where I'm sitting the old rewinds are never coming back YouTube still has a community a culture right we know this because if I say t-series vs. PewDiePie pretty much everyone who watches this platform recognizes right but YouTube itself is from this point forward opting out of its own community I gotta say it feels kind of sad right feels like a bit of a loss a changing era a tech company that is moving on from its first and hardest core users which means that I guess now it's up to us to pick up that torch and run with it creators like the ones that you see cycling around screen right now the people who are working to create the real rewind one that we feel really recaps the year in the way that we want to see because we are still a part of this community we still believe that there's a culture here and we're not ashamed of it and we're excited to be a part of it sad that YouTube doesn't feel the same way but hey that's just a theory a rewind theory thanks for watching

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 3,149,625

Rating: 4.9589367 out of 5

Keywords: youtube rewind, youtube rewind 2019, youtube rewind 2018, rewind, rewind 2019, ftc, coppa, reaction, youtube rewind reaction, youtube rewind 2019 reaction, matpat reacts, game theorists, the game theorists, game theory, matpat, game theory meta, matpat youtube rewind, game theory youtube rewind

Id: yeIEh6YiXAM

Length: 16min 45sec (1005 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 17 2019

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[u/QC8472]

Say, does anyone know where Matpat gets his jackets from? I'd really like to find the one he's wearing on that latest video!

[u/SpiderMew]

clearly i have missed something, what the hell is with MattPatt's hair? Its like he ran out of the barber shop before they finished. Or like he lost a bet. I find it disturbing.