Nightmare Fuel: Skibidi Toilet and the Monstrous Digital

https://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/3108

by mallowdram • 9 months ago

107 151 9 months ago

journal.media-culture.org.au

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...

Cthulhu_10• 9 months ago

But 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• 9 months 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?

xrd2• 9 months ago

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."

noir_lord• 9 months ago

Eh 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• 9 months ago

Or the annoying orange, which is about the same level of inane.

Moomoomoo309• 9 months ago

The 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• 9 months ago

It'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• 9 months ago

the point is that Skibidi Toilet does have a narrative, the problem is the excess of narrative not the lack

ryukoposting• 9 months ago

Wow, 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• 9 months ago

More recently it's the 6-7 meme. It feels like meaning is added after the video becomes viral.

lunias2• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

There 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• 9 months 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.

citizenkeen• 9 months ago

I’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• 9 months ago

I'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.

walkabout2• 9 months ago

I 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• 9 months ago

Seriously 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• 9 months 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.

dangus2• 9 months ago

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.

mallowdram9• 9 months ago

Could be the prank began at causal-phenomenological explanations. How different is Skibidi from "lightning causes fire"?

drdrek• 9 months ago

Never 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.

mallowdram9• 9 months ago

Gen Alpha via Z doesn't see through the makeshift BS of civilization? Think again.

Cthulhu_10• 9 months ago

We'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+pyt...

[1] https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/91/article/424939/summary

mallowdram9• 9 months ago

These aren't random, toilets vs cameras, and they're not even arbitrary. In neurobiological terms, they're references. Eyes and anuses.

sedawkgrep• 9 months ago

I tend to view the world through a psychoanalytical lens. I'm always curious about the unconscious drives of individuals and the collective, and how we interpret and interact with the world we live in.

I thought the article was interesting and thoughtful. It did a marvelous job of making sense of something that, at first blush, is seemingly senseless, and I do not think for a moment the paper is a prank.

Quite the contrary. One of the main characteristics of today's world is the devaluation (or utter disregard) of meaning. Even in this thread the term "brain rot" implies that it's not only valueless, but harmful. The article is not only about finding meaning in the content, but that its ambiguous narrative can be a good thing, as it opens the mind up to multiple possibilities and perspectives.

I find that to be quite hopeful.

dangus2• 9 months ago

I think in doing all this analysis it prescribes too much to the art.

One interview with the artist could essentially throw a giant wrench into the ideas presented here. If the author comes out and says “I was 12 and thought that toilets were funny” massive paragraphs of this paper become pointless.

Gen Alpha may be "born into video games", but they have also been born into a disintegrating climate system, post-9/11 politics (such as the global austerity crisis, perpetual war, and the rise of right-wing populism), surveillance capitalism, and pandemic risk—much of which can be read in the landscapes and metaphors of Skibidi Toilet, serving to problematise notions of the ‘natural’ and the limits of the human in the context of climate catastrophe and technological transformation.

I’m sorry, this is a load of horse shit. This is someone with an advanced literature/journalism degree getting stoned and writing a paper. I don’t think any of this has to do with a series of toilet animations.

Sometimes it’s as simple as “little kids think that absurd toilet humor is funny.”

yunwal• 9 months ago

This will end up inspiring thousands of kids to learn blender

teekert2• 9 months ago

That would be nice, but I fear it will teach them prompting Sora.

webdevver• 9 months ago

prompting is also something of a skill tbh

kranke155• 9 months ago

They are already doing it, blender is enormously successful and only growing by the day

bgwalter• 9 months ago

Stuff like this will be generated by Sora 2 in 10GW data centers while your electricity bills go up.

Cthulhu_10• 9 months ago

Already 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.

npteljes4• 9 months ago

Already happening, to the degree where it has its own Wiki article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_brainrot

fxwin• 9 months ago

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).

Also recommend this one with "German Brainrot": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mJENuEN_rs

xdfgh11122• 9 months ago

Really good video. I don't speak German but the subtitles were fine.

CaptainOfCoit3• 9 months ago

Off-topic, but how do you know the subtitles are fine if you don't speak German?

the_gipsy2• 9 months ago

It would be more entertaining of they had the slightest clue of any of the meanings.

IMO the interesting part of "memes" is the information density not in the meme "data" itself but in the collective mind.

mallowdram9• 9 months ago

We don't need static, low-res semantics in media anymore, that's how Hollywood is already DOA. Their concern is carefully curating the meaning, when the density range is far too massive out there.

DocTomoe2• 9 months ago

In all fairness, as someone who never 'understood' the 'collective mind' behind skibidi toilet (and would argue there is none, he absurdity itself is the 'meme' - a term used very loosely here, considering memes of yesteryear did in fact transport messages), the Zeit critic sounds like he 'got' the cultural references pretty spot on (and he himself points out that the references themselves do not have to be understood to be there.

thesz• 9 months ago

And the (possible) origin of Skibidi (by Little Big): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDFBTdToRmw

RGamma• 9 months ago

Also notable is Gmod Idiot Box by DasBoSchitt, which is arguably a spiritual predecessor: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF41B4E15D5443537

furyg3• 9 months ago

Wow that's just excellent. German classes paying off already!

replete• 9 months ago

Is 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

jrm43• 9 months ago

I don't think you're wrong, but also don't think that the article's wildly wrong either.

mallowdram9• 9 months ago

Resolution isn't the point, the semantic confusion is what generates clicks.

josefritzishere• 9 months ago

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...

TimedToasts• 9 months ago

Concrete TV also fits the bill: https://www.brooklynvegan.com/cable-access-sh/

Devasta• 9 months ago

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...

InspGadget4343• 9 months ago

ASDF movie, look at my horse, llamas with hats.. it truly was the peak time of brainrot

Cthulhu_10• 9 months ago

Hello boom

teekert2• 9 months ago

In Netherlands we had "master movies": "You know sheep cause cancer right?"

krapp2• 9 months ago

Honestly, some of the stuff Weebl did as Savlonic was pretty decent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WPj3VxDsMk

tizzy• 9 months ago

You're a wizard Harry walked so Skibidi Toilet could run

Cthulhu_10• 9 months ago

I have a bag full of crabs here, I'm gonna put them in my mouth oh yes!

guerrilla3• 9 months ago

Sallad Fingers

and my absolute favorite: Charlie the Unicorn!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MalbertKerman• 9 months ago

And quality educational content like "Hokay, so, here's the Earth, chilling. 'Wow, that's a sweet Earth,' you might say. ROUND!"

jandrese2• 9 months ago

You're the man now, dog.

_9ptr• 9 months ago

SNAKE SNAKE OH GOD IT'S A SNAKE

rufius3• 9 months ago

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.

candiddevmike• 9 months ago

Idk, 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• 9 months ago

I was at the bookstore and they Italian Brainrot keychains.

epiccoleman4• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

On 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.

hirvi74• 9 months ago

weird shows on Adult Swim like metalocalypse and squidbillies

Those masterpieces belong in the Louvre.

Cthulhu_10• 9 months ago

Maybe in 20 years people will say the same about Skibidi Toilet, if it isn't already in there. Corporations are embracing it already, a local chain had a campaign titled "skibidi school".

Der_Einzige3• 9 months ago

Most of adult swim is trash. Metalocalypse is definitely better than average but squidbillies is slop, so is a lot of stuff people here might claim to like including and especially robot chicken.

Cthulhu_10• 9 months ago

Kids are always gonna love stuff that pisses off their parents.

Thing is, gen alpha's parents grew up with weird shit themselves, edgy stuff that pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable. MTV and Comedy Central productions for a lot of people, stuff like Beavis & Butthead, Jackass, South Park, and then the 2000's internet of Newgrounds productions. Especially South Park I think desensitized the millennial generation, to the point where there's nothing that really weirds us (well, me) out.

I never watched skibidi toilet or much gen alpha stuff, but I'm not shocked by it or anything. I just think it's weird and surreal, but nothing worse than e.g. Salad Fingers.

aftbit• 9 months ago

Salad Fingers! That lives rent free in my brain, near Magical Trevor and Schfifty Five, and a bunch of 90s TV ads. It's my money and I want it now!

CaptainOfCoit3• 9 months ago

I think desensitized the millennial generation, to the point where there's nothing that really weirds us (well, me) out.

You know, I used to think the same way, that so many of us got desensitized that none of this newfangled stuff should really be surprising, even less appear bizarre.

Yet out in the real world, I think you, me and the others are maybe a 5% slice of all the people out there, as many people get borderline offended by "weird stuff" and doesn't seem like they got desensitized like you and me when we were younger.

marcuskane2• 9 months ago

Especially South Park I think desensitized the millennial generation

Desensitized some people, who understood and appreciated the irony, absurdity and inversion of norms.

It hyper-sensitized others, who often doubled-down on the type of authoritarian political correctness that South Park satirized.

There is clearly a huge segment of the millennial generation who don't agree with the South Park "make jokes about everyone and everything" ethos, and instead believe there are numerous individuals, groups, topics and issues which should never be joked about, and feel very offended when someone does.

rufius3• 9 months ago

For sure. Im the parent of a couple Gen Alpha kids on the younger side. I showed the skibidi toilet videos to my wife and her response was a shrug and “looks like dumb videos we watched in college”.

But as other posters say, not everyone was into that corner of internet culture as millennials. Especially the weirder offshoots.

dfxm122• 9 months ago

What is or isn't edgy is defined by the dominant culture of the time and place. It changes over time. Stuff probably does weird you out, but maybe it's on a different axis than Cartman accidentally joining NAMBLA. I mean, if you think South Park is mainstream, what do you think about Paramount pulling a handful of episodes from their streaming platform? Surely if your peers, your kids, etc., stopped treating pedophiles as distasteful butts of jokes and started fighting for the censorship of media, that would weird you out, no?

m_fayer• 9 months ago

The difference between these generations is that millennials would consume the stranger or more “offensive” stuff sporadically, as a thrill or pleasant provocation. Even among those who wanted this thrill, I think the majority of the media diet was more traditional narrative stuff.

Gen alpha, on the other hand, seems content to consume the absurdity non-stop. I think this is another angle on what “brain rot” actually is - briefly shattering a reality that made sense was a thrill, while immersing yourself in sense-shattering media starts to actually sever the connection to reality.

pavel_lishin• 9 months ago

Kids are always gonna love stuff that pisses off their parents.

Does this stuff piss off parents? Some of what my child is into is incomprehensible to me, but a lot of it is absolutely recognizable as the kind of things I was into as a kid, it's just their version of it in 2025.

I'm actually rather enjoying watching her go through this, trying to understand what some of it means, and just going along with the ride of some stuff.

Yesterday, my kid very excitedly told me about something funny that the whole class did with 6 7. The 6 7 meme is completely opaque to me, but it was still an amusing story, and while I don't understand the specifics, I love that all of it is happening.

epiccoleman4• 9 months ago

the 6-7 thing has been a source of constant amusement for me. my kid told me that one of their teachers had (with good humor) banned saying "6 7" and we immediately went down a rabbit hole of how he could "side-channel" 6 7s into conversation - like "hey, $teacher, what's the next prime number after 61?"

he told me there's a small bustling trade in learning numbers in other languages - "seis siete" for example.

seems like harmless fun to me.

rufius3• 9 months ago

I think it does for a substantial portion, especially those with more traditionally aligned values. We know families, through our extended social groups, that would cringe at the Skibidi Toilet stuff.

I'm not sure why? At least some part of it, I suspect, is related to the "outrage economy". That is, outrage that can drive social media engagement. You don't do it because you're, in good faith, bothered by it. You do it because you can raise a stink and rally others to engage and make yourself popular.

That last bit is just a theory of mine. It seems anecdotally supported though from my own observation, but I am not a sociologist so I'm not going to claim any expertise here.

jandrese2• 9 months ago

I don't think it is even so much about angering their parents as just having something they know that their parents don't.

Skibidi Toilet is pretty old hat at this point. It is well off of the radar. Current trends include stuff like 6-7.

karel-3d• 9 months ago

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.

svantana• 9 months ago

Google 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=...

Cthulhu_10• 9 months ago

But 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.

d0100• 9 months ago

The new skibidi toilet are the italian brainrot

gjsman-1000• 9 months ago

Older generations: “Skibidi Toilet? You like this trash?”

Newer generations: “Modern art? Brutalism? You like this trash?”

Nothing new under the sun.

Nursie• 9 months ago

Gen X - those all suck.

cosmicgadget• 9 months ago

... Draws the cool S in sharpie.

Podrod• 9 months ago

Millennial - everything sucks and I wish I was dead.

Cthulhu_10• 9 months ago

Beavis & 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_Einzige3• 9 months ago

The “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.

jrm43• 9 months ago

I'm most reminded of not the movies as much but -- Monty Python's Flying Circus? Same kind of ... "uh what?" vibe.

ipnon• 9 months ago

“It’s certainly uncontaminated by cheese.”

josefx• 9 months ago

We 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.

xnx2• 9 months ago

Yes. 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• 9 months 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_10• 9 months ago

Especially 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.

jrm43• 9 months ago

YUP, that's the specific bit(s) I was thinking of.

iamleppert• 9 months ago

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.

walkabout2• 9 months ago

The 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…

guerrilla3• 9 months ago

The symmetry of the heads without bodies being on one side, and the bodies without heads on the other side is nice too.

npteljes4• 9 months ago

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.

greesil2• 9 months ago

It makes as much sense as All Your Base, no one predicted a non-narrative future based on that.

egypturnash• 9 months ago

All 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.

greesil2• 9 months ago

Marketing dollars were focused in other cultural areas at the time.

iceyest• 9 months ago

All your base is in no way comparable to skibidi and is simply a parody making fun of how bad Japanese are at English.

ChrisArchitect• 9 months ago

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.

edd25• 9 months ago

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.

Balinares• 9 months ago

I 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.

epiccoleman4• 9 months ago

The 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

krapp2• 9 months ago

Skibidi 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)

analog8374• 9 months ago

I am a fan of chaotic cartoons, where the narrative is thin to non-existent.

Like Smiling Friends.

dkarl• 9 months 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.

mallowdram9• 9 months ago

Or, 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.

guerrilla3• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

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.

npteljes4• 9 months ago

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.

ElijahLynn• 9 months ago

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.

mallowdram9• 9 months ago

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.

dusted2• 9 months ago

That article made as much sense as its subject matter.

npteljes4• 9 months ago

For 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.

Nightmare Fuel: Skibidi Toilet and the Monstrous Digital

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