YouTube may be one of the most popular video channels of all time, but a video of their own is now officially the second-most disliked video in the history of the website. Officially titled “YouTube Rewind 2018: Everyone Controls Rewind | #YouTubeRewind” has, at the time of writing, been disliked almost 7.6 million times.

The eight-minute clip is gradually catching up to the current “winner,” “Baby” by Justin Bieber, and now it’s hit the headlines it will likely get there soon.

YouTube heads for No. 1 spot for most-disliked video

“YouTube Rewind 2018” looks back over the last year and since they uploaded the video on 6 December, it has received – to be exact – 7,564,418 thumbs down.

YouTube’s video is slowly creeping up on Justin Bieber’s music video “Baby,” which currently “boasts” almost 9.8 million dislikes. Bieber has won the dubious honour of having the most disliked video on YouTube for a number of years, but it looks like YouTube might finally overtake him. How embarrassing is that for a video website? Especially when the BBC notes that Justin’s dislikes took eight years to add up, while YouTube’s only took four days.

The video platform did have good intentions when it created “YouTube Rewind 2018,” as the video clip acknowledges a number of its most popular channel holders, including Hollywood actor and musician Will Smith and Olympian Adam Rippon. It covers a variety of the most popular content on the platform, including K-Pop, Social media dance challenges and “mukbangs” – something I just found out about – which is when a vlogger eats a large amount of food in front of the camera.

Even John Oliver and Trevor Noah feature, along with many vloggers from all over the world.

‘Self-congratulation’ on video platform’s clip

In what the Independent newspaper calls the video clip a “self-congratulatory segment,” several YouTubers give credit to the video platform for helping them to advance important causes, like Asian representation in entertainment, mental health awareness and female empowerment.

What YouTube forgot to mention was the number of high-profile scandals relating to videos posted to their website, especially popular vlogger Logan Paul’s visit to the Aokigahara forest in Japan, known as the suicide forest, where he made light of a dead body he and his crew came across. While Paul lost his ad income for a while following the controversy, he is now fully back in action.

One of their top YouTubers didn’t get a mention in the video either, and that is PewDiePie, who currently has some 75 million subscribers and was at the top on YouTube for some years, but who previously got hit with criticism over anti-Semitic and racist messages in his video clips. He has, however, slipped down to number two after T Series, an Indian music production company and label that has become the reigning champion on YouTube.

Readers are welcome to give their own thumbs up or down on YouTube's video, which is included below.
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