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.”
I always get an aneurysm whenever Enhancer for YouTube fails to hide shorts and I see all the fucking shorts spam on YT. It’s horrible how much it ruined search results. I fucking hate what YT has become over the last decade especially.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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. Kind of like Garry’s mod but specifically for making videos.
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
Source Film Maker, 3D animation software based on source engine which was used for games like Portal and Team Fortress 2.
