Skibidi Toilet is a serious of SFM shorts that became popular with young kids. Think in the same vein as the weird flash videos or early SFM videos that were popular with young kids 10-15 years ago. “Skibidi” doesn’t mean anything and is just taken from that.
It’s literally just gibberish and jump scares.
I watched way the fuck too many of those shorts, trying to figure out what the appeal was.
I guess the appeal is the same as any dumb youthful “OMG SO RANDOM” humor.
CHARLIE THE UNICORN OMG SO RANDOM!!!
So, yeah, it’s just as fucking dumb as the dumb shit we laughed at when we were kids.
EDIT: u/lukmly013 adds some important context to the source of the word “Skibidi.”
Charlie the Unicorn had a coherent plot and humor structure. It wasn’t “lol random.” Maybe you’re thinking of Llamas in Hats.
I mean, to be fair, the same can be said for this, too. Skibidi Toilets actually has a coherent plot and characters if you’re paying attention.
I promise you, if you came across Charlie the Unicorn for the first time as an adult, you would describe it similarly.
Okay let’s take a look and see what’s going on here. youtube search for "skibidi toilet’ holy shit episode 73 okay here’s a bunch of them in order watches the first few then skips around to get a feel for what’s going on
No that’s nothing like Charlie the Unicorn. Charlie the Unicorn is pre-2008 cynicism from the same mold as The End of the World aka “H’okay, so”. It’s a Gen X joke that landed with Millennials. I think it’s closer to Jonti’s work, somewhere on the Weebl & Bob or Magical Trevor continuum, where you look at your friend and just say “badger badger badger” and they know to say “mushroom mushroom!” and everyone but the adults have a good laugh.
Looks like we’ve got some SFM goofiness at the beginning with heads popping out of toilets singing a nonsense song, no telling if it’s something pre-existing that has been re-used or if it’s composed for this, skipping ahead it looks like it goes into “these are invading creatures we must eradicate” SCP creepypasta direction be cause of fucking course it does, this is either made for or made by the FNAF generation. I don’t know how old Matpat’s audience is anymore man, I turned around twice and my newborn niece is in middle school.
Chaaaaarlieeeeeee…
Let’s go to candy mountain charlieeeeee
I mean it was a bit of both though amazingly the final episode explains everything, randomness included.
MUSHROOM MUSHROOM
I got that reference!
Take that back. How dare you besmirch the good name of Charlie the Unicorn like that.
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It’s why I barely watch YouTube at all and mostly read news and get frustrated if the only source is a fucking YouTube video.
You know what’s really easy to cite? A text document.
You know what’s not so easy to cite? A six-part 14 hours-of-video deep dive into Disnleyland queueing and ticketing systems or whatever.
No, stop, write it the fuck down. You definitely wrote a bunch down in service of making this fucking video so why not also just release that for fucks sake? Are people so unable to get involved in reading anymore?
Some things are more helpful as a YouTube video, like How-To videos where you can see more clearly what is happening when a written instruction can be unclear. It’s also useful for speaking truth to power by recording cops who are breaking the law and so forth. But those are specific use cases.
Are people so unable to get involved in reading anymore?
I don’t know know if this trait carrys over to Lemmy, but on reddit I would get my best upvotes on messages that were 1-2 sentences, usually with a quote or reference to something popular.
You know, thoughtless content where I’m just reminding them of a quote from the office, or a small joke. Anything more than a paragraph and people replied "Whoa! I’m not reading that mountain of text! Meanwhile it’s less text than would be on a pamphlet.
It reminds of something Bo Burnham said in a song from Youtube Live, which was planned as an annual celebration of youtubes biggest stars featuring live performances on stage. Bo Burnham had just broke out. He said:
“It’s youtube, it’s what this country’s been needing, an entire generation of kids who don’t waste their time reading!”
That was 2009. Which means at the youngest, those kids are now at least young adults. And the older ones are pushing 30 now.
Excuse me as I go cry looking in the mirror at my grey hairs, pondering how many more years until I need a cane.
Thankfully, the trait for the most part does not carry over. I still see (and get) a lot of upvotes on dumb, cheeky posts.
But honestly, the deep dives and thoughtful shit gets way way way more love, in my experience.
A lot of people are bad at reading. Sometimes it’s not their fault. Taught poorly, learning disabilities, whatever. Sometimes they’re just lazy and out of practice.
To be clear, I’m not against people who have trouble reading having a resource, like I said, it would be ideal to produce a video and a text/image document. This way you can reach the most people and not put off the people who would just like to be able to read it quietly.
I just dislike when the only source is a YouTube video.
I think we agree. I get very frustrated when there’s only video. I’ll be like “Is power A or B better in game X?” and find a bunch of 10 minute videos that could be summed up in a paragraph that said like “A has higher burst DPS by a wide margin, but B does more damage overall in fights that last more than a few rounds”
Yeah, I think this problem is mostly solved if people were more willing to take their obviously highly produced and edited scripts and just make those publicly accessible with sources and whatnot, which they presumably need to basically do anyways in order to have good captioning on their video. The main problem isn’t so much that they use videos, to me, but that we have no way to sort through leagues of text documents and blogs now. Harder for me to subscribe to and read a blog in a dedicated fashion, I guess. I dunno, I guess ultimately I’m just saying that the two mediums need more connection, which would be mutually beneficial, I think.
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I actually smiled and laughed when I first saw that it was a huge trend, considering all the gary’s mod and SFM stuff, especially TF2 videos, I adored myself as a teen/young adult. Made me feel less old seeing that there’s still life in the meme format.
Glad I wasn’t the only one 😁
It was wild watching the next generation discover Half Life. There are Youtube essayists who were born after this happened making videos about their theories as to where the Combine came from and such and on the one hand it’s kind of fun seeing their takes on it, and how sometimes they’re missing the context of other stuff that was taking place around that time, the fan communities that are no longer live on the web like PlanetHalfLife.
It’s also weird that a lot of the Source stuff like Garrysmod and TF2 are still popular and being used to create stuff for teh youthz. When you come up with that one guy who did covers of linkin park songs and Gordon Frohman, to see that it’s still going and where it’s gone is just strange.
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Cat dog and Renn and Stimpy too. Silly comedy for the sake of being silly.
It does mean something.
The skibidi toilet “creatures” are considered the antagonists, and the word is associated with their traits.
- creepy
- gross
- scary
- weird
Its an insult to and pretty much interchangeably with “creepy” with a splash of “cringe”
Often paired with “ohio” which means “bland” / " boring" / “mid”
Example:
“Yo he got that skibidi Ohio rizz”
Translation:
“This dude has zero game, in fact he is creepy and weird and has negative charisma, people find him repulsive and boring”
Damn, skibidi ohio rizz has a much more devastating connotation than I expected
fr fr
Holy shit, I got three minutes in. Gonna smoke and then watch the rest, I am losing it
Damn, kids these days. Like, I knew that I shouldn’t disregard slang as meaningless just because I don’t understand it, but I’m realising how despite knowing this, I’ve probably been subconsciously dismissive. TIL, thank you.
I’ve never seen that association with my friends who use it. It’s always been more of a meme word, a meaningless adjective you throw into a sentence to make it “funnier.”
What is SFM
Source film maker. Kind of like Garry’s mod but specifically for making videos.
In Source
By Valve
Source Filmmaker - basically the tech used in Valve’s games (IE Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Gmod) but repurposed into an easy to use animation tool. Valve used it quite a bit for their content but it was also popular among amateur animators since it was easy to use and had bunch of ready-to-use resources from Valve’s games.
Source film maker
It is a digital software that people can use to make digitally animated films. It utilizes a video game engine developed by Valve called Source.
It’s also worth mentioning that Source filmmaker is also developed by Valve.
Honestly the entire thing evolved quickly from silly random humor to a full-blown story with recognizable characters and drama.
So the Skibidi Toilets seem to operate on being able to hurt “people” via jump-scares. These “people” I refer to could be called “Tech Heads” (don’t know if there is some skibidi-subculture which has consistent names for factions or characters).
The Tech Heads come in various flavors and keep upgrading their Heads to fight off the Skibidi Toilets.
The battles increasingly rely on both sides absurdly upgrading their arsenals in over-the-top and sometimes downright Cronenberg-esque ways. It makes heavy, heavy use of Half Life 2 GMod assets that are heavily modified to be these freaky creations.
The main endings of the shorts are either Skibidi’s winning and serving you up a jump-scare before a blackscreen, or the various Tech Heads winning and giving each other a thumbs up gesture. Over time, even these concepts are lampooned or used as misdirects.
Further, there has honestly been clever use of the different type of Tech Heads for storytelling and meta-storytelling devices.
It ends up in an all-out war that includes deep subterfuge on both sides. I won’t say it’s not creative, it’s actually incredibly creative and well-put-together.
I just wasn’t able to find the humor in it, personally.
Actually, it’s a statement on how shitposting is killing traditional media
damn that actually sounds like a great read, never heard of that one before
Yeah, I mean, I’m a grown ass man, and I find watching it kind of like a guilty pleasure. I’ll admit it.
I think it initially started off silly, but as the story started to unfold it just got less sillier and more darker because the story didn’t need to be overtly silly.
Now, what’s SFM?
Source Film Maker, 3D animation software based on source engine which was used for games like Portal and Team Fortress 2.
Thank you! That’s a name I haven’t heard in a decade or so!
I watched an episode or two, and it’s basically the current generation’s version of GMod Idiot Box.
Skibidi Toilet is this generation’s War and Peace
…and it’s all subconscious representations of feelings about the internet.
It makes some users into toilet brained idiots. Perverts looking to gorge themselves on internet filth.
It reveals people as political agents if governments.
It shows some are just “camera men” viewers, recorders, uploaders, and others are speakers trying to say something.
It questions what can be ridiculous in this new arena - if anything in an age defined by the scale of your “influence”… And how that causes our drama chips to go haywire.
The art style is known as Machinima, and dates back to the early 90s.
Humans actually have trouble saying things that aren’t meaningful - our subconscious tends to always have something to say due to always having to hold things back. It’s just who we are.
I love the last paragraph.
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Wanna be more confused by Skibidi? Check out the video for Skibidi by Little Big
I came to write that: it’s a masterpiece, and Little Big has more!
I’ll never forgive Covid for the Eurovision it took from us. Little Big was supposed to represent Russia in 2020
well, covid and putin are the main reason for them not to be even bigger worldwide
Tacostacostacostacos
Probably since the author is russian (?) that’s where they took it from. But it was interesting to learn that it’s a common phrase for a range of artists.
Russian didn’t have this word before Little Big either, for all I know.
It doesn’t actually mean anything, just a cool set of sounds
Gen X guy here. This is literally the first time I have come across the word “skibidi”. I simultaneously wish I could help you, and glad I don’t know what that asinine word means.
Gen X really are just boomers in waiting.
So is EVERY generation.
Edit: apparently some people refuse to accept the concept of linear time. Seems a bit quixotic to me, but okay.
Millennials are in the “Oh fuck I’m ‘the Man’ now” phase.
Are we? Still too poor to own stuff because generations before us are hoarding riches like they could take them to the grave.
Most of us have sold our souls to corporate overlords to put scraps on the table and keep leaking rooves above our heads. We’re not the ruling class but we’re the drones who aren’t allowed to be fun anymore.
That, and to the youth of today, we’re now supposed to be the old people who don’t get them, like how our parents had no clue what was up with the Pokemans.
I used to teach in public schools in the area, but even outside of that environment I know enough about what the students are into and how they talk, because yeah, I spend a lot of time online and play video games and live and breathe memes. But you can never let kids think you’re trying to be hip by letting them know you like the same things they like, because in most cases that just ruins it for them. They obviously want their own circles, and we are by necessity outside of it.
Yeah it’s like “Oh fuck I should be The Man by now what the fuck is going on?”
I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. And it’ll happen to you too!
Try living in the shadow of boomers with no support. We were helpless (okokok; also apathetic). I for one am glad to have the backup of the following generations. Even if each successive generation is more inscrutable to me than the previous.
Waiting for those fuckers to retire? You bet.
Every generation has slang.
Yup. They have every right to call the slang I grew up with asinine, too. In fact, it would be weird if they didn’t.
It kind of amazes me that a few words, like “cool”, have stood the test of time. They’re outliers, though.
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While others did explain skibidi toilet, I think it would be good to step back a little to what popularised the… sound? “skibidi”.
Some Turkish dude used this part of a song in his belly dance video. I am talking about a bouncy belly. This is a repost of that: https://youtube.com/shorts/3-RlRmYshCQ
He then later posted more similar videos, becoming a meme.As for the song, this is it: https://youtu.be/0U7SBGBCoGs
“Skibidy” predates this song by a long shot. It’s a common vocalization used in a lot of scat singing, so it’s possibly a century old at this point.
Ha, true.
Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub
Hadn’t thought about this in years but you mentioning it had my mind mainlining the song.
Sup. But I was referring specifically to this instance of it as these memes use that sound specifically from this song or remixes of it.
Ohhh, I gotcha, I think I misread your earlier comment at first, my bad!
There was a now passed MC who was a prominent figure in 00s jungle called MC Skibadee.
Oooh neat, I’d never come across this. Important context!
My tween will try to be edgy by saying “you’re so skibidi” to siblings.
I’m a millennial who doesn’t really know.
But. It seems like the duck billed platypus of zoomer humor. YouTube pays for views. And people just make million of videos. And this one happened to catch on. And it’s so bizarre people show it to their friends. Hilarity ensues. 🤷
Its what the blind algorithm hath brought us.
it’s not zoomer humour, it is alpha gen humour. zoomers hate it.
as a millennial i think it’s very funny that gen z are confused by the next generation’s memes
The hate for skibidi toilet baffles me because it’s literally the same shit we laughed at not even 20 years ago? Does nobody remember pingas and pootis? Fan flashes? It’s crazy how fast people fall into “kids like it so it’s bad”
That’s what I’ve been thinking, too. As a zoomer/zillennial who doesn’t follow it, from what I’ve gathered Skibidi Toilet seems to be just Gen Alpha’s equivalent of YouTube Poops that Milllennials loved and GMod animation shitposts Zoomers enjoyed.
Considering I loved both of these while growing up, and still like rewatching them from time to time for nostalgia’s sake, it’d be hypocritical of me to hate skibidi toilet 😅
I have honestly never heard of pingas and pootis, or fan flashes. Are those American things? Or was I already too old for these things 20 years ago. Late thirties here.
Edit: and even after skimming this thread, I still have no clue what skibidi toilets are, haha.
They were popular gags that dominated the millennial YouTube landscape. I can’t say they were American things since I’m not American and they were still popular here. Possible you just missed, the internet’s big
Every generation just finds it’s humor further and further up the anus of the internet
Gen Z here. Even I have no idea
welcome to feeling old. (well. older.)
You must learn to skibdi your Ohio to gyatt Kim wexler feet pics shortie you will become a skibdi rizzler sigma like me top g
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It’s good marketing of a trash product.
Skibidi toilet is too compliacted…
