As annoying as existing on YouTube seems to be in this day and age—when you’re halted ever three to five minutes by a State Farm ad—I still come back to the platform regularly.
I can’t help it. There are many different video platforms, but as agonizing as it is to notice the increasing number of ads or know how little your decisions impact the YouTube algorithm or how much malicious or misinformed content ends up on users’ feeds, I still return to watch 2-hour or more video essays about Warhammer 40K lore or inane videos about journaling exercises.
So it’s good to know that YouTube’s top videos for this year included some heartfelt standouts and, and only one real apology vid. None of the titles Google named as their top hits felt like obvious clickbait. They ran the gamut from one Minecraft streamer offering a message of thanks before their untimely death, to a popular animator explaining their aromantic asexuality to well over 17 million people.
Unfortunately, YouTube has also been pushing its Shorts short-form video hard over the last few years, helping it keep up with TikTok. Shorts has proved very popular with nearly 1.5 billion monthly viewers, so we can only expect it to become a bigger part of the video platform going forward. The top 10 shorts have proved completely inane, from cracking an egg 10 feet underwater to throwing a plunger on a Dave & Buster’s sign. There’s some novelty in these vids, but give me a long form explainer any other day of the week.
In addition, YouTube shared who have been the platform’s top creators. Led by MrBeast, they include the likes of NichLmao, Airrack, Jooj Natu ENG, and Shangerdanger. YouTube music also shared what was their topic-played songs of the year, featuring We Don’t Talk About Bruno from Disney’s Encanto as number one.
The rest are:
Kodak Black – Super Gremlin
Jessica Darrow –Surface Pressure
Bad Bunny – Tití me preguntó
Future – WAIT FOR U ft. Drake, Tems
Bad Bunny, Chencho Corleone – Me Porto Bonito
Karol G, Becky G – Mamiii
Imagine Dragons x JID – Enemy
Karol G – PROVENZA
Lil Baby – Right On (Official Video)
YouTube listed its videos by U.S. viewer count, but just as well we shared the top 10 videos by their counts listed on their pages.
