YouTube Cancels Annual 'Rewind' Video This Year Because 2020 Was Too Awful

YouTube has canceled its annual Rewind video, a yearly feature that celebrates the site's trends and creators of the previous year, due to 2020 being too awful to celebrate.

In a statement posted to the site's Twitter page, YouTube writes, "Rewind was always meant to be a celebration of you… But 2020 has been different. And it doesn't feel right to carry on as if it weren't."

The channel did note that its community has "found ways to lift people up, help them cope, and make them laugh. You made a hard year genuinely better."

The YouTube Rewind became infamous after its 2018 iteration, an opulent, self-congratulatory extravaganza which broke the record for the most disliked video on the site. In 2019, the site opted for a simple "listicle"-style Rewind video, though that also hardly impressed viewers, racking up over 9 million dislikes.

Online, news that the Rewind had been canceled prompted pondering about whether other creators should make a Rewind of their own. In particular, the Minecraft YouTube community around creator Dream felt he was the perfect candidate to make a Rewind celebrating the resurgence of the game that flourished in 2020.