Skibidi Toilet: Flushing Out Audience Data on an Internet Phenomenon
If the newly revealed ambitions to make “Skibidi Toilet” the next big thing in Hollywood are ever realized, YouTube will be the foundation on which that success was built.
A new VIP+ data analysis makes clear the rise of the YouTube channel DaFuq!?Boom! has been nothing short of astonishing since Feb. 7, 2023, when Alexey Gerasimov uploaded an 11-second video titled “skibidi toilet.”
As of this writing, that original video has garnered some 188 million views, and DaFuq!?Boom!’s subscriber base has grown from 1 million in 2021 — modest by modern YouTube standards — to around 43 million today.
Gerasimov had been uploading original animations since 2016, but his crude clip of a head popping out of a toilet singing a catchy yet incomprehensible song launched a veritable cultural phenomenon.
The 76-part-and-counting “Skibidi Toilet” video series — yes, it’s a series — has generated the bulk of the 17 billion total views DaFuq!?Boom! has amassed to date. Data on monthly YouTube views shows that around 16.3 of those billions occurred from February 2023 to June 2024. In other words, that’s close to a billion views per month in just shy of a year and a half.
Springtime 2023 was when “Skibidi Toilet” went stratospheric: DaFuq!?Boom! skyrocketed to 2.9 billion views that April and hit it again in May. For almost all of the following summer, “Skibidi Toilet” earned more views than MrBeast, currently the most subscribed YouTuber in the world.
On top of DaFuq!?Boom!'s massive success, there’s the cottage industry of Skibidi content that emerged in its wake. Like any trend or property that achieves rapid online virality, inspired fans and opportunistic content creators alike emerge from the woodwork to capitalize on the hype.
A YouTube search for Skibidi videos will bring up detailed episode breakdowns, playthroughs of Skibidi Roblox games, Lego and figurine builds and even original animations set in the Skibidi universe. The Washington Post reported that Skibidi-related videos brought in over 65 billion views just in 2023.
Of course, copyrighted content in unofficial online videos often leads to murky legal waters that YouTube still struggles to navigate. While the argument of fair use can be applied to most fan videos, that often doesn’t stop entertainment companies from flagging them for copyright infringement anyway — resulting in said videos being either demonetized or deleted outright — and giving creators the burden of defending their work.
“Skibidi Toilet’ is still Gerasimov’s baby, but he now has a blooming partnership with Invisible Narratives, the “Tra-digital” studio co-founded by Hollywood veteran Adam Goodman and master of explosive cinematic mayhem (aka “Bayhem”) Michael Bay.
But instead of playing a fruitless game of whack-a-mole with takedown requests, the company has opted to bring some of the bigger Skibidi fan channels into the fold.
In exchange for proper credit to DaFuq!?Boom!, these “Alliance channels” — some of which are run by kids, according to Goodman — can continue making Skibidi content without fear of legal repercussions. But the biggest perk is being able to work directly with Gerasimov, who helps keep the tone and vision for “Skibidi Toilet” consistent across channels.
So far, the Skibidi Alliance is 28 channels and counting, featuring an eclectic slate of creators with their own sizable fan bases. Currently, the biggest active channel is DOM Studio (with 10.1 million subscribers), whose “Skibidi Toilet Multiverse” series regularly brings in views comparable to the original series.
Even the smaller and younger channels sport impressive total views — Skibidi gameplay channel Garzilla (218K subscribers), for instance, has over 66 million total views despite only joining YouTube in 2023.
In total, the budding Skibidi Alliance has racked up a grand total of 11.94 billion views. Add that to DaFuq!?Boom!’s own 17 billion, and that’s a level of online engagement most major franchises can only dream of achieving.
As for why “Skibidi Toilet” hit such heights in such little time, even those well versed in the world of internet virality say there hasn’t been anything like it. There were some identifiable potential factors at play, namely that YouTube’s algorithm tends to favor channels that upload frequently.
Gerasimov churning out two or more videos a week around the time of the spike may have helped “Skibidi Toilet” catch a big algorithm wave.
There’s also the fact that the short lengths of “Skibidi Toilet” videos, along with their absurdist and sensory-overload style, made them prime for sharing on other social media platforms. Even as Gerasimov’s focus continues to be on YouTube, TikTok videos that have used the hashtag “#skibiditoilet” have reeled in almost 23 billion views to date.
While DaFuq!?Boom!’s views have declined since that massive peak, the channel is still pulling numbers in the realm of YouTube’s most popular and longstanding creators. It landed 378.2 million views in June, still a roughly 480% increase compared with February 2023.
DaFuq!?Boom! is also easily outperforming the official YouTube channels of some of the biggest entertainment properties in the world. The competition isn’t even close — the NBA and the NFL each brought in around 150 million views a month in their respective seasons, but DaFuq!?Boom!'s slowest month in 2024 thus far was in May, when it hit 374.1 million views.
Despite these staggering numbers, “Skibidi Toilet” makes absolutely no sense to most people not part of Generation Alpha. Even the most chronically online of Gen Z can’t make heads or tails of what their Gen Alpha siblings are now watching in droves.
It’s hard to say definitively why something goes viral. The elusive formula of timing, appeal, algorithmic favoritism and luck has yet to be cracked. “Skibidi Toilet” has some notable advantages, namely the universal humor of toilets, a genuinely compelling narrative underneath a deliciously ridiculous aesthetic and dialogue-free storytelling that allows kids from all over the world to invest.
A wonder like “Skibidi Toilet” arguably makes perfect sense in the context of the rest of the internet. For most of the web’s existence, internet meme culture has been weird, homegrown and anti-mainstream. And those qualities have just intensified with every increasingly online generation.
Millennials were the first to grow up online, and early internet memes reflect that more simplistic time. Gen Z’s memes morphed into something darker and more absurdist, irony-soaked inside jokes found on individual social media platforms such as TikTok, Twitter/X or (RIP) Vine.
“Skibidi Toilet,” Gen Alpha’s first foray into internet culture, has all the hallmarks of what came before turned to 11. The lineage isn’t even that hard to find if you know what to look for: Gerasimov animates every “Skibidi Toilet” episode in Source Filmmaker, 3D video creation software that’s been an internet meme staple for well over a decade. The curious Millennial or Zoomer might even feel a tinge of nostalgia when seeing the rough-and-ready animations of exploding toilets and cyborgs.
Ultimately, internet culture is primarily shaped by kids searching for something — jokes, phrases, images, references, videos — that feels uniquely their own. Freaking out and confusing adults is essentially a prerequisite.
But whether you get “Skibidi Toilet” or not, the numbers don’t lie: A whole lot of kids get it, and they can’t get enough.
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