Honestly what was wrong with the 2018 one? I’m actually curious because
I see soo many YouTube comments about people complaining and I don’t get why people are so bothered about something that imo has no real value or relevance to anything lol.
Like it’s literally just a video..?
People hated the 2018 one because it omitted a lot of highlights throughout the year, as mentioned previously, KSI vs Logan Paul, the rise of Shane Dawson documentaries, T-Series vs Pewdiepie. And the reason why these events weren't included in 2018 Rewind is because these Youtubers aren's what traditional companies consider as "brand-safe". They're very controversial people and when Youtube is associated with extremely controversial people, they want to pull back ads, hence the ad-pocalypse. People hate this because not only are you completely ignoring the highlights but it's really showing that Youtube is no longer just a safe space for small creators but it's become more of a business and they only care about getting money by featuring more "brand-safe" creators (e.g. Casey Neistat, Lily Singh) and by satisfying the requirements of traditional companies (ironically, these companies don't even understand how social media works and have double standards in terms of where they want to show their ads). And also Youtube showing traditional celebrities such as Will Smith doesn't really help the situation because it kinda shows that Youtube cares more about traditional celebrities instead of smaller content creators.
Youtube may seem trivial to some people but it's become a lot more serious over the past few years with the ad-pocalypse, its crackdown on predator content and alienation of the gaming community, demonetisation issues and double standards in advertising. Even the Pewdiepie vs T-Series event last year - it may be a meme but to many creators, the reason why everyone wanted Pewdiepie to remain on top is because once a massive corporation like T-Series takes over, then it's symbolic of Youtube being taken over by big media companies instead of that homey aesthetic Youtube once had.
Yes, I like Youtube drama lol.
As for the 2019 Rewind, it felt very safe in terms of editing and production. I guess it's better to be safe with the production rather than spending a lot of money on production and then those efforts get trashed. Then again, I liked it when they went full out on production because it was actually creative (I think they did a good job with the 2016 Rewind).