I 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...
I 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."
This 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.
German 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 (Audio is mostly german, but the subtitles are quite accurate from what i can tell).
Over 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...
Its 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...
Well 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.
Maybe 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.
How 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.
I 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.
The 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.
Initially 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.
> 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.
> 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.
It 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.
Same 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.
My 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.
The 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.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 53.2 ms ] threadMore 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...
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."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_brainrot
Also recommend this one with "German Brainrot": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mJENuEN_rs
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
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.
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.
Newer generations: “Modern art? Brutalism? You like this trash?”
Nothing new under the sun.
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.
Like Smiling Friends.
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.
That last part there sounds like a joke. Weirdest timeline.
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.
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.