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Nightmare Fuel: Skibidi Toilet and the Monstrous Digital
- xrd 11mo agoI went into Target yesterday with my daughters. There was a half wall of skibidi toilet merch. Right underneath the Mr. Beast merch. I've seen a video or two of skibidi toilet, and it looks like something a 14 year old boy would make at his first pass with blender. Is this the modern day "Adventures of Tom Sawyer", a masterpiece that no one over 19 is able to recognize? I feel like we have ai slop and then we have 14 year old boy slop, and it is a race to see which one will win. Henry Kissinger can rot in hell, but as he said: "It’s a pity they both can’t lose."
- noir_lord 11mo agoEh it's just another meme like Hamster Dance or All Your Base Are Belong To Us - not sure anyone needs a moral panic over it (though it won't stop some of them either).
- Hendrikto 11mo agoOr the annoying orange, which is about the same level of inane.
- Moomoomoo309 11mo agoThe article explains it pretty well. If you want to understand it better, watch the first video, then skip 20 videos, repeat, and you'll see the development over time as it morphs into what it's become now (I.E: watch episode 1, 21, 41, 61). I also dismissed it at first, but as the article points out, there's a lot more to it than it looks.
- nancyminusone 11mo agoIt's just something dumb to pass the time. When I was a kid we had Charlie the Unicorn, Potter Puppet Pals and YouTube Poops. If you feel morally panicked by Skibidi Toilet, you are old and out of touch (which is fine). It's the same as it's always been. Edit: Well, not /just/ something dumb. Completely forgot about the associated lore some of these had, which makes them even more like Skibidi Toilet. I guess there's a whole category of "dumb things with underlying narratives." Filthy Frank is another one that comes to mind.
- DuperPower 11mo agothe point is that Skibidi Toilet does have a narrative, the problem is the excess of narrative not the lack
- xrd 11mo agoI really, really, love the comments here and my mind has been expanded. Everyone calling out my uneducated moral panic is right.
- mallowdram 11mo agoNo, it's not a narrative at all, it's episodic-mimetic and it's fractal, the pieces can be recombined in other vids. A narrative has bells and whistles like backstory, cause and effect dichotomies.
- ryukoposting 11mo agoWow, you just unlocked an incredibly dusty memories. Maybe it's not the same as it's always been, but it's the same as it's been for 20-something years at a very minimum. I think the comparison with Charlie the Unicorn is spot-on. Yes, there's a narrative, but any attempt to analyze that narrative automatically misses the point.
- thijson 11mo agoMore recently it's the 6-7 meme. It feels like meaning is added after the video becomes viral.
- lunias 11mo ago> There was a half wall of skibidi toilet merch Pretty crazy... My hypothesis is that it's popular because it feels more authentic and grassroots than most things being foisted upon them. It has surreal comedy and doesn't take itself seriously; both traits that are in extremely low supply in the recent / current zeitgeist. It was not designed by a committee pre-conception to appeal to the most-profitable possible audience. It is now however, produced by a studio which has just partnered with the Creative Artists Agency (a major Hollywood agency). We'll see if they ruin the vibe or ride off into the sunset akin to Minecraft.
- vintermann 11mo agoThere was some scandal about rights. As I understand it, the guy who started this used Garry's mod assets (actually of characters belonging to Valve), then turned around and threatened the Garry's mod author for those same assets. So, I can think of more authentic and grassroots things. Maybe that's also why, as far as I can tell, this meme show has had its 5 minutes of fame already.
- asielen 11mo ago> feels more authentic and grassroots than most things being foisted upon them. And then corporations squeeze any last drop of authenticity from it through merchandising it to death.
- lunias 11mo agoYup. 100%. As soon as a big fish swallows the little fish you would do well to stop consuming.
- citizenkeen 11mo agoI’m 43. About six months ago I sat down and watched an hour of skibidi toilet. I get why it’s popular. I didn’t enjoy myself but I completely get why kids soaked in memes might love it.
- steve_adams_86 11mo agoI'm 39 and did the same. I found myself annoyed by the repetition and humour that brought me back to being 9 years old, but also curious about where it would progress and what the underlying story might be revealed to be, if anything. Without the grating components stemming from being an old person, I'd probably like it or see the appeal better. The humour is practically the raw embodiment of how little kids joke and play. If you're around little kids (especially boys often), you see skibidi toilet antics erupt from time to time whether they've seen it or not. Goofy facial expression, nonsensical voices and singing, over-exaggersted comical violence, constantly escalating battles, etc.
- walkabout 11mo agoI watched the first video a long time ago to see what the deal was, and reckoned it was just one of those silly, absurd videos that become well-known for whatever reason. The tradition of very stupid, absurd stuff taking off on the internet goes back to at least “Mr T Ate My Balls” and hell, I love the long-running, weird YouTube channel “How To Basic”, so, I didn’t mind it but thought that’s all there was to it. But no. I eventually learned it was an hours-long series and gave it another try. It’s a long, serialized silent film sci fi war epic told without intertitles. And damn, I was invested in it before long! [edit] I am not joking that I cared more about and paid more attention to the long battle and infiltration mission near the end (at the time—I understand there’s more now?) than I care about or pay attention to at least half of the 30-45 minute final battles in Marvel movies. I would defend the series as outright better than, certainly, something like Quantumania.
- troyvit 11mo agoSeriously this. I got some Firefox click-bait about it a few years ago and was hooked. My kids (13 and 16 at the time) were appalled. Now they call me Skibidi Troylet. But it's damn good! Passionate, tragic, funny as hell. There's back-stabbing and alliance-shifting and nested realities and all the things. Even though on the surface it's just nonsensical smashy smashy it was definitely better than Marvel.
- toast0 11mo ago> I am not joking that I cared more about and paid more attention [...] than I care about or pay attention to at least half of the 30-45 minute final battles in Marvel movies. That's probably because all the Marvel movies are professionals churning out the same green screen crap. Skibidi is not in my tastes, but it has the chance of being interesting because it's not an industry professional making it (afaik), at least until Michael Bay takes over.
- thinkingemote 11mo agoI sometimes dip my feet into this universe and read the fan theories. The theories are part of the story, like the TV show LOST, the lack of explanations keeps people watching and making up their own interpretations. The resulting theories are kind of simplistic or superficial which isn't at all surprising considering the audience who watches it. We shouldn't expect deep criticism from children but we should expect children to understand deep concepts. More grown up analyses of it are not that enlightening and overall the phenomena doesn't work (for me) as art as a kind of nutritious food for the soul or mind...
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoBut does it really matter if the theories are simplistic? They are thinking about it, forming a basis for, well, thinking. They're allowed to be wrong, because with time they will look back and think "haha I was wrong but man did I learn a lot from that".
- scns 11mo ago> More grown up analyses of it are not that enlightening and overall the phenomena doesn't work Have you seen the one fxwin linked?
- dangus 11mo agoThis is one of the most wild over-analysis pieces I’ve ever read in my life, to the point where I’m wondering if this paper itself is an elaborate prank.
- mallowdram 11mo agoCould be the prank began at causal-phenomenological explanations. How different is Skibidi from "lightning causes fire"?
- drdrek 11mo agoNever underestimate the ability of smart people to be overconfident in their understanding of the world, even in fields they know very little about. This is how you get a lot of very articulate nonsense, news papers are filled with this and so are many small blogs.
- mallowdram 11mo agoGen Alpha via Z doesn't see through the makeshift BS of civilization? Think again.
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoWe're through the looking glass. Post-ironic paper taking random memes seriously? I bet there's papers about Monty Python's animations too. Actually I don't need to bet, there's Google [0]: > The animated interludes in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail demonstrate director and animator Terry Gilliam's interest in and use of images in the margins of Gothic manuscripts. [1] [0] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_sdt=0%2C5&q=monthy+python+animations https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_sdt=0%2C5&q=monthy+pyt... [1] https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/91/article/424939/summary https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/91/article/424939/summary
- mallowdram 11mo agoThese aren't random, toilets vs cameras, and they're not even arbitrary. In neurobiological terms, they're references. Eyes and anuses.
- yunwal 11mo agoThis will end up inspiring thousands of kids to learn blender
- bgwalter 11mo agoStuff like this will be generated by Sora 2 in 10GW data centers while your electricity bills go up.
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoAlready is, but because everyone can do it and it takes barely any effort to make it, there's an oversupply. I mean granted, it's relatively easy to make stuff in the HL movie maker tool as well, but it's more work than AI.
- npteljes 11mo agoAlready happening, to the degree where it has its own Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_brainrot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_brainrot
- fxwin 11mo agoGerman newspaper "Die Zeit" has a few videos where they get art/cultural critics to watch and comment on modern meme culture which i find quite entertaining. Here is the video about Skibidi Toilet: https://youtu.be/z-oAtxjnDlQ?si=FjpcVJxMoLv537RZ https://youtu.be/z-oAtxjnDlQ?si=FjpcVJxMoLv537RZ (Audio is mostly german, but the subtitles are quite accurate from what i can tell). Also recommend this one with "German Brainrot": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mJENuEN_rs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mJENuEN_rs
- furyg3 11mo agoWow that's just excellent. German classes paying off already!
- xdfgh1112 11mo agoReally good video. I don't speak German but the subtitles were fine.
- CaptainOfCoit 11mo agoOff-topic, but how do you know the subtitles are fine if you don't speak German?
- Muvasa 11mo agoYou can go wrong in two axes. 1. The interpertation 2. The execution he means the second way, he didn't notice any english grammar mistakes or unnaturalness. It's like how good translators make Donald Trump sound smarter.
- CaptainOfCoit 11mo agoSo if someone says "I do know German and the translations were all wrong", parent should feel free to say "Actually, I just meant the English grammar of the subtitles, not the accuracy of the subtitles itself" and you'd be just fine with that?
- replete 11mo agoIs this a joke? Kids made this in the G-Mod sandbox for Half-Life 2. If it feels dystopian, it's because HL2 is set in a dystopian world. Honestly, it might literally be the toilet aspect that made this viral with 7 year olds
- jrm4 11mo agoI don't think you're wrong, but also don't think that the article's wildly wrong either.
- mallowdram 11mo agoResolution isn't the point, the semantic confusion is what generates clicks.
- JohnClark1337 11mo ago[dead]
- josefritzishere 11mo agoOver 20 years ago I saw this cable access TV show that was very absurd called Midget Master Blaster Television Spectacular. At the time it just had no context for me, and made no sense. But for every cultural movement there are always precedents like in this casae German dada movement, Russian absurdists like Daniil Kharms...
- TimedToasts 11mo agoConcrete TV also fits the bill: https://www.brooklynvegan.com/cable-access-sh/ https://www.brooklynvegan.com/cable-access-sh/
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Devasta 11mo agoIts completely destroying the minds of the youth. Back when I was a kid, we had proper narrative videos online like badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger MUSHROOM MUSHROOM...
- InspGadget4343 11mo agoASDF movie, look at my horse, llamas with hats.. it truly was the peak time of brainrot
- tizzy 11mo agoYou're a wizard Harry walked so Skibidi Toilet could run
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoI have a bag full of crabs here, I'm gonna put them in my mouth oh yes!
- guerrilla 11mo agoSallad Fingers and my absolute favorite: Charlie the Unicorn!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- MalbertKerman 11mo agoAnd quality educational content like "Hokay, so, here's the Earth, chilling. 'Wow, that's a sweet Earth,' you might say. ROUND!"
- rufius 11mo agoWell my trip to Costco make infinitely more sense. I saw these 3 foot tall dolls for sale of the camera head characters. They were titled “skibidi toilet titans” but I was only familiar with the song mashups, not the web series. Kids are always gonna love stuff that pisses off their parents. It’s just part of parenting and being a kid. My parents hated my love for the weird shows on Adult Swim like metalocalypse and squidbillies. Big shrug - no one should be surprised this portrays a non-narrative future. The future feels pretty chaotic and undirected to me as an adult. I can’t imagine how it feels to a 12 year old.
- candiddevmike 11mo agoIdk, I wouldn't consider adult swim and friends brain rot. Whereas kids these days celebrate brain rot ("Italian brain rot", specifically). I see this as part of the larger anti-intellectualism gripping our species and really dislike it. A lot of these kids are glued to screens and are fed just a constant stream of ads and algorithmic shit while forming parasocial relationships with fake personalities.
- andai 11mo agoI was at the bookstore and they Italian Brainrot keychains.
- epiccoleman 11mo ago> Idk, I wouldn't consider adult swim and friends brain rot. I tend to agree, there's a pretty big difference between writing and animating a full-on show and the weird tiktok/roblox/youtube slop I see. Then again - Skibidi Toilet is like a whole saga, and there was some pretty stupid stuff airing on Adult Swim. maybe i'm just getting old.
- ChrisGermano 11mo agoOn a similar note my parents didn't love the [AS] shows with more narrative but always sat down to watch stuff like 12oz Mouse with me. I still enjoy that kind of loose narrative content but I really don't get a lot of stuff these days, Skibidi included.
- karel-3d 11mo agoMaybe I'm too old, but... I thought Skibidi Toilet was kind-of funny 2 years ago, when it spiraled from a fun memey Gary's Mod shitpost into a full-on story, but then... it's kind of stuck there for 2 years? It's kind of same-y, when I look into the latest episode. (Yes I am not at all caught up to the lore, and I don't want to.) But hey it kind of fits Michael Bay storytelling style.
- svantana 11mo agoGoogle trends supports your experience. According to it, interest peaked about two years ago [1] [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=skibidi%20toilet&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoBut as with a lot of trends, it takes a long time for people / organizations to catch up. Including a film or whatever; I thought the majority hype for Minecraft had passed already but they still made a film.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- d0100 11mo agoThe new skibidi toilet are the italian brainrot
- gjsman-1000 11mo agoOlder generations: “Skibidi Toilet? You like this trash?” Newer generations: “Modern art? Brutalism? You like this trash?” Nothing new under the sun.
- Nursie 11mo agoGen X - those all suck.
- cosmicgadget 11mo ago... Draws the cool S in sharpie.
- Podrod 11mo agoMillennial - everything sucks and I wish I was dead.
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoBeavis & Butthead? You like this trash? South Park? You like this trash? Salad Fingers? You like this trash? Monty Python? You like this trash? Rick and Morty? You like this trash? Elvis? You like this trash? It's tiring; people should let people have things. And get over themselves because not everything is or has to be for them or for everyone's liking. That's art.
- Der_Einzige 11mo agoThe “actually gatekeeping is bad mmkay” crowd is exactly why so many good things decay and degrade to become bad things later. Gatekeeping is good and please do it more aggressively in the future.
- bigyabai 11mo agoDo you genuinely believe that a lack of gatekeeping is what ruins multimedia franchises, and not the desperate lowest-common-denominator marketing ploys designed by the rightsholders?
- jrm4 11mo agoI'm most reminded of not the movies as much but -- Monty Python's Flying Circus? Same kind of ... "uh what?" vibe.
- ipnon 11mo ago“It’s certainly uncontaminated by cheese.”
- josefx 11mo agoWe also have SPAM, SPAM SPAM SPAM, eggs bacon sausage and SPAM. wikings: SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM ... Funny, complete and utter nonsense and probably a lot older than most of the people complaining about "modern" brainrot.
- xnx 11mo agoYes. The only thing new about the modern variety is the velocity. As memes get explained and even used (shudder) by he olds, they must be discarded.
- SideburnsOfDoom 11mo ago> complete and utter nonsense I don't think that it's complete nonsense. Or, it is deliberately absurd, but it doesn't come from nowhere. Monty Python debuted in 1969. They often took the mick out of the generation before them, who on the one hand Won the War and saved the country, etc. But who on the other hand by 1969 could also be mocked as aging, uptight, officious, stuck in the past, "we had it tough, you kids have no idea", etc. So: Spam. It's processed meat in a can, more like a wartime emergency ration than anything else. Fresher foods were in short supply in the UK during and immediately after the war. The sketch is elements of the Zeitgeist around them then. Which would have also included funny, costumed college musical numbers, from their time in the Cambridge Footlights.
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoEspecially the stop motion animations, they were just absurdist / surreal, not unlike skibidi toilet and italian brainrot content. If people were a bit more media savvy and less kneejerk or pearl clutching about it, they'd realize that it's nothing new. I don't actually know anyone clutching pearls about skibidi toilet, the worst is a somewhat indifferent "I don't get it". And not getting it is fine.
- iamleppert 11mo agoHow is it slop? If you look closely and get over yourself for a moment, it has a powerful political message. The conflict between the Skibidi Toilets (with human heads sticking out of toilets) and the Camera/TV/Speaker-headed humans can be seen as a metaphor for how people consume and spread media. The toilets constantly repeat a hypnotic song ("Skibidi dop dop yes yes"), representing mindless media repetition and viral trends. The Camera Men symbolize those who "watch" or document reality —- observers trying to preserve truth amid absurdity. It has themes of media control, surveillance, and propaganda, a battle over who shapes what people see and believe.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- walkabout 11mo agoThe choice of making the “good guys” camera heads and such does give one pause about wholeheartedly rooting for them. Intended or not, it really did have that effect in me. And one does wonder whether that has anything to do with their enemies being, basically, clever, organized zombies…
- guerrilla 11mo agoThe symmetry of the heads without bodies being on one side, and the bodies without heads on the other side is nice too.
- npteljes 11mo agoI think this is retcon. The thing started as dumb fun, and people tacked on episodes and meaning after the fact. Just pareidolia, but with symbolism instead of faces, and also the meta-game of explaining the deep meaning of things that are not that deep.
- greesil 11mo agoIt makes as much sense as All Your Base, no one predicted a non-narrative future based on that.
- egypturnash 11mo agoAll Your Base didn’t sprawl into a hundred episodes of vaguely continuing story, with toy deals and a major Hollywood director involved in a film, though.
- greesil 11mo agoMarketing dollars were focused in other cultural areas at the time.
- iceyest 11mo agoAll your base is in no way comparable to skibidi and is simply a parody making fun of how bad Japanese are at English.
- ChrisArchitect 11mo agoThe only nightmare is the scale at which these meme trends move now. 6-7 anyone? I haven't seen a teacher of a certain year that hasn't been dealing with mass disruption from it in only the first few months of the school year.
- edd25 11mo agoInitially I was irked by Skibidi Toilet and considered it to be peak of brainrot content. Though at one party we decided to do an ironic Skibidi marathon and I genuinely had a fun time watching the shorts, it was quite fun trying to piece together was was going on in the series, we even started to root for some of the characters. When GMod/TF2 videos were just starting to appear on YT, I recall watching/making a lot of very similar videos, I'd say it was even worse and with more brainrot. Skibidi Toilet is exactly the same, except with higher production quality, and I no longer think it's a bad thing after the marathon, just more of the same.
- Balinares 11mo agoI find Skibidi Toilet fascinating because it's one of those things that looks like random garbage but is probably anything but. It takes a special kind of skill to achieve that. Just the right comedic timing, exaggeration of facial animations, instant narrative cues that make immediate sense even if the story itself is nonsense, all distilled into a few seconds of video. I gotta respect that. It's garbage, but it's high quality garbage, and I tip my hat off to the author.
- epiccoleman 11mo agoThe first thing that came to mind the first time I saw Skibidi Toilet was this kind of TF2 SFM memery, which I love. The expressions in the second verse and the Spy's slow turn to look to heaven still really amuse me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTUH_wRrZZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTUH_wRrZZo
- krapp 11mo agoSkibidi toilet, whatever one thinks about it, is actually just outsider art. The real brainrot is AI generated (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_brainrot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_brainrot)
- analog8374 11mo agoI am a fan of chaotic cartoons, where the narrative is thin to non-existent. Like Smiling Friends.
- socrateswasone 11mo ago[dead]
- dkarl 11mo ago> The series follows an increasingly epic war between two factions: the antagonists who take the form of human-headed singing toilets, led by G-man—or G-Toilet—and a group of mechanical humanoids with cameras, TVs, and speakers for heads, called The Alliance (or informally, Cameraheads) I wonder... how many people decide they need to know names for these characters, and go online to find the names other people are using? Versus just watching, vibing, and referencing the explicit content with their friends? The existence of lore doesn't mean the lore plays a significant part in the cultural phenomenon. For the purposes of the article, it's convenient to have terminology, and it takes terminology from the lore, but I wonder how many people consuming the skibidi toilet videos know and use the lore terminology, or invent their own, or are happy to accept the ambiguity and lack of terminology in the videos. The appeal of skibidi seems to be inseparable from the chaotic, absurd, unexplained nature of it. People revel in the nonsensicalness of it and how it enrages others who demand that it make sense. Lore, which is a sense-making exercise, goes against the grain of why people love it.
- mallowdram 11mo agoOr, lore is a dinosaur, and the fractal, chaotic idea of reality becomes clearer by the day in our dystopia. These are clearly toilets vs cameras, or out vs in. Resonant media doesn't have to explain itself. But simpler minds need the illusion of backstory, or the idea of good/bad, etc.
- guerrilla 11mo ago> Skibidi Toilet began as an animated YouTube Web series early in 2023 that quickly spiralled into a wildly popular cultural phenomenon sprouting fandoms, wikis, threads, merchandise, and its very own moral panic (McKinnon and Harmon). It has recently grabbed the attention of Hollywood, and there are rumours that it is on its way to TV and a possible film treatment by Michael Bay (Wallenstein and Steiner). That last part there sounds like a joke. Weirdest timeline.
- Jordan-117 11mo agoIt was better when it has less narrative, tbh. Just surreal unsettling videos of manic toilet-heads busting into a restaurant or rolling down the street with Gmod characters doing weird shit in the background. Last I checked, each new entry was just another boring "epic" clash between giant titans with ever-larger explosions that never fully resolve or go anywhere interesting.
- npteljes 11mo agoSame for me. Of course, I'm much older than the target audience, so I have seen many of the tricks already. The series was entertaining for the first very episodes, but then it would have required actual storytelling talent to properly handle the universe that was created, but lacking that, the series fell flat. I still appreciate that the videos serve their purpose, entertaining millions, and that I could have also been part of it, even though for just a little.
- ElijahLynn 11mo agoMy 11yo son was totally into this, and I was shocked his mother had let him watch the whole series. So, since he already already watched it, I watched a bunch of it too just to know what he actually watched. And it was so, Yuck for me. But he was super into it so I met him where he was at and even made him a custom Skibidi Speakerman Halloween costume. He wore it for Halloween and only one kid recognized his costume. And unfortunately the kid was like seven. And he quickly lost interest in it after that. So many interesting cultural things that we have to witness the younger generation go through. And then we remember that our older generations had the same level of disgust about things that we are/were doing. And we think we turned out fine. And our younger generations will probably turn out fine too. Tons of mental health issues of course, but maybe we can all learn together.
- mallowdram 11mo agoThe title of this piece is "Nightmare Fuel" and mods removing it are editing out the central thrust of the article. Please reply here why this was done, thanks.
- dusted 11mo agoThat article made as much sense as its subject matter.
- npteljes 11mo agoFor the connoisseurs who enjoy such content, I also recommend The FlexAir series (on YouTube). Similarly absurd, similarly "terminally online", but the audience, and the culture it references is older.