YouTube Rewind is canceled forever because nobody liked it

YouTube Rewind is no more. After canceling last year’s Rewind because nobody wanted to look back at 2020, the company has decided to cancel rewind for good (perhaps because 2020 never really ended, did it?).

The yearly round-up of popular creators and trends has been increasingly maligned through the years, peaking (or should I say, umm, valley-ing?) in 2018 with what is literally the most disliked video ever posted to YouTube, at over 19 million dislikes. You’ve got to screw up pretty big when you know, you are YouTube. And 2019‘s Rewind didn’t fare much better.

Thank you to all the creators involved in Rewind – we’ll be ? for your Rewinds as we refocus our energies on celebrating you and the trends that make YouTube ? with a different and updated kind of experience – stay tuned! → https://t.co/kI69C24eL0

— YouTube Creators (@YouTubeCreators) October 7, 2021

The company confirmed to Tubefilter that it would no longer be making the compendium videos, which is particularly notable because this would have been the 10th year of Rewind.

For its part, YouTube says it’s not ending the videos because of the criticism but, according to TubeFilter, because “because its platform has become so massive that it is impossible to encapsulate its vastness and diversity within a minutes-long compilation.” While that’s true, to me it seems like that has long been the case — it just used to be better at making Rewind videos.

Instead, YouTube is pointing people towards end-of-year videos made by creators with their own unique perspectives. I suppose that’s safer than having a corporate behemoth try to encapsulate everything its audience cares about.

That said, YouTube doesn’t appear to be giving up on recaps altogether. The company says it “will refocus [its] energies on celebrating you and the trends that make YouTube ? with a different and updated kind of experience.”Whatever it is, it can’t be worst than the last few rewinds, right?

Via The Verge