There's A War Brewing Between New Media And Old Media, And It's Happening On YouTube
If you are under the age of 10, you probably know all about "Skibidi Toilet," the animated YouTube series made by Georgian animator Alexey Gerasimov, better known to his fans as DaFuq!?Boom! If you are over the age of 10, /Film is here to unpack this bizarre — and unexpectedly massive — internet phenomenon.
And make no mistake, "Skibidi Toilet" is massive. The first short video in the series was posted on DaFuq!?Boom!'s YouTube channel in February 2023, and it already has 132 million hits. DaFuq!?Boom! has accrued 37.8 million subscribers, and he has expanded the series into (as of this writing) 69 episodes. His channel has surpassed 65 billion (with a "B") views in total. Those numbers may represent the fastest-growing video series in the history of YouTube. The series has already spawned its own subculture of memes and reaction videos, and one can already buy "Skibidi Toilet" costumes at Walmart.
The name "Skibidi Toilet" comes from the pervasive pop song that is featured in every episode of the series. It's a mashup between the 2007 Timbaland song "Give It To Me" and a Turkish pop song called "Dom Dom Yes Yes" by Biser King. As this music plays, the camera zooms in on a toilet. A human head pops out and, with exaggerated facial features, lip-syncs to "Dom Dom." The video ends when the head lunges toward the viewer, presumably attacking them.
What started as a winking, sarcastic bit of internet-ready absurdist potty humor, however, soon expanded into a bleak and outsize narrative that featured mechanical kaiju, destructive world wars, and the deaths of millions. It may also be, as some have pointed out, a deliberate deconstruction of the state of pop media in the modern age.
Skibidi Skibidi Dom Yes Yes
It's worth noting the homemade qualities of "Skibidi Toilet." The series was animated using Source Filmmaker, an animation/graphics program that was offered free by Valve Software, the makers of "Half-Life," "Portal," and "Left 4 Dead." The visual assets used in "Skibidi Toilet" are repurposed graphics from "Half-Life 2" and "Counter-Strike: Source," which DaFuq!?Boom! was clever enough to distort and turn into a nightmarish invasion force of toilet men. There's a D.I.Y. quality to "Skibidi Toilet" that many might find appealing; it lacks the safe corporate sheen of mainstream movies and television.
Which may be getting into the theme of the series. In early episodes, one can see an army of Skibidi Toilets infiltrating cities. As they sing their earworm ditty, they transform others into Skibidi Toilets, assimilating them into their fold. Soon, however, an organized opposition force appears. Creepy men in coats and ties begin fighting back against the Toilets, men with CRT TVs for heads. The TV heads are soon joined by people with other pieces of media equipment for heads, including speaker heads, closed circuit camera heads, and film camera heads. They push the Toilets back, but the Toilets regroup and counterattack. The TV/Camera/Speaker heads begin constructing larger and larger mechanical warriors, while the Skibidi Toilets construct flying machines and laser cannons out of the body parts of their fallen enemies. By the time one is rounding episode 40, the world has fallen apart, giving way to a now seemingly endless war that has laid waste to the cities.
As several pundits have noted, including the soon-to-retire Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, "Skibidi Toilet" seems to tell a story of media conflict. Online D.I.Y. online artists and animators — devoted to chaos and anarchy — become too popular for the Old Media establishment.
Old Media vs. New Media
One can see this interpretation plainly. What better way to represent the Old Media Establishment than with people who have film cameras and tube TVs for heads? The Media Heads also wear dark coats and gloves, giving them a twinge of the CIA or secret police. There is a vaguely fascistic aesthetic to the Media Heads. The Skibidi Toilets are terrifying, of course, but I sense that DaFuq!?Boom! sees them as the aggrieved party in the great Media War. Also, judging from the reaction from younger members of Generation Alpha, the Skibidi Toilets are more funny than scary. I describe the Toilets as terrifying, but that may be my own impression at work.
It's also worth noting that when the Media Heads are triumphant in battle, they play a clip from the 1985 Tears for Fears song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." This ensures that the Media Heads are of an older generation, likely made up of Generation X. Generation X has long held sway over the media landscape, and capably take down any creative minds and artistic upstarts who dare threaten their chokehold on pop culture. The Skibidi Toilets, meanwhile, are assimilating people through their natural powers, and constructing warriors out of the bodies of their foes. They are D.I.Y. warriors, a scrappy rebellion standing up to corporate dominance.
It's also a notable detail that one of the biggest weapons in the Media Heads' arsenal is the noisy fanfare that accompanied the original THX logo, shown in theaters in the early 1990s. A piece of pop culture ephemera from the past is now being weaponized against the new kids. How is this different from the deluge of "Ghostbusters" remakes and TV rehashes of Gen-X entertainment that Millennials had to patiently suffer through?
When the internet was wild
MatPat also pointed out that in one episode of "Skibidi Toilet," a flying Toilet flees the Media Heads by flying past the World Trade Center, implying that the series takes place before 2001. And what were we all doing on the internet prior to 2001? Probably writing fan fiction or watching homemade animated videos on websites like Newgrounds. "Skibidi Toilet" recalls a time when D.I.Y. videos were what the internet was all about.
Those too young to remember Newgrounds are missing out on a generation of memes that arose before YouTube and social media allowed them to proliferate as widely as they do now. The was a time when the internet was the Wild West, and surreal, "random" art was de rigueur. Some of us recall "Gonads and Strife" with fondness, or "Candy Mountain." I could tell you stories of "Mr. T Ate My Balls" or "'Ze End of 'Ze World." This was all before the advent of streaming technology when one had to spend a great deal of time downloading videos via a dial-up modem. Sometime around 1998. MatPat also pointed out that there was also once a YouTube phenomenon called the YouTubePoop in the early days of the website. YouTubePoops were what Gen-Xers used to call "culture jamming," alluding to clever media remixes made to humorous and psychedelic effect. Poop? Toilet? I see the connection.
Incidentally, 1998 was perhaps the year DaFuq!?Boom! was born.
The Skibidi Toilets, then, are remnants of that early internet time. They are New Media, scatological, nonsensical, and difficult to control. They are glorious, human-controlled anarchy. The Old Media establishment, stern, faceless, reliant on old tech, is terrified of what the democratization of media represented, and formed a military counterstrike in response.
DaFuq!?Boom! on the record
Alexey Gerasimov is not a wholly obscure character, and he spoke to Dexerto in June 2023 about the phenomenon. He cited a TikTok user named Paryss Bryanne for inspiring his animation style. "I did a parody of her take on the 'skibidi dop dop yes yes' meme," he said. "Skibidi Toilet video was a random thing, just based on [an unexpected] head popping out of the toilet."
Naturally, as with any viral success, there are plenty of "Skibidi Toilet" imitators, and one can find no shortage of remixes from random animators. "I tried to take them down," Gerasimov said, "but TikTok support doesn't care, even after all the proof I've given to them. They're unable to verify me." It's likely that Gerasimov did not license "Skibidi Toilet" iconography for use in Walmart costumes. The phone app "Skibidi War: Toilets Attack," however, was indeed developed by Gerasimov. The game currently has over one million downloads, so one might presume that Gerasimov is actually making money from his self-made internet phenomenon.
He also claims that the end is in sight, and he does know what the conclusion of the Great Media War will be. Who wins, of course, will alter the meaning of the above interpretation. Are Skibidi Toilets meant to be defeated? Is Old World Media morally correct for holding out?
More than anything, the popularity of "Skibidi Toilet" indicates where Generation Alpha is currently standing. They want internet nonsense and have little interest in the Old World media conversations most of us have been weaned on. "Skibidi Toilet" may be the most significant piece of media of 2023, and DaFuq!?Boom! could very well be one of the decade's most important artists.
Time will bear this out.