SAN BRUNO: For the first time in a decade, YouTube Rewind, the company’s annual end-of-year tribute to creators, trends, and moments that defined the platform, will not happen this year.
The company issued a statement acknowledging that 2020 has been different, adding that “it doesn’t feel right to carry on as if it weren’t.” This marks the first time Rewind won’t happen since YouTube started the annual celebration in 2010.
Even with the global COVID pandemic, job losses, a reckoning on racial injustice and the U.S. presidential election, YouTube praised its creators for helping people get through a stressful year.
About Rewind this year. pic.twitter.com/oVayH8iyqG
— YouTube (@YouTube) November 12, 2020
The year 2020 has been different. From social distancing to a depilating economy, from pandemics to natural disasters, the year has been tough. The most tragic of all is losing over 1.3 million lives.
“We know that so much of the good that did happen in 2020 was created by all of you,” YouTube said in the statement. “You’ve found ways to lift people up, help them cope and make them laugh. You’ve made a hard year genuinely better.”
While many people were stuck at home because of the pandemic, YouTube saw surges in usage as more people spent time streaming video online. Last year, YouTube Rewind took a new approach to the mashup video, which was presented as a montage instead of past year’s highly produced original videos segments.
