Haters. Trolls. Locals. Call them what you like, but internet cynists are some of the most powerful and united users on the world wide web. These enemies of the content creator have the power to make or break any popular curator right at their fingertips and from the comfort of their gamer chairs. Although the comments section remains a hater’s home turf on any given social media website, YouTube is one of the few platforms that offers a negative reaction option with its “dislike” feature on videos—and people do not hesitate to use it. At over one billion users, YouTube houses almost one third of the internet which, according to our calculations, leaves a lot of room for trolls to do their dirty work.
Contrary to the pure, old fashioned clips of future’s past that remind us why YouTube is just downright fun are the uploads that objectively deserve to be disliked. Often characterized for their controversial subject matter, you’d think videos flagged and dragged by every internet user under the sun would fall victim to the unrelenting grasp of the dislike button. Included in this category would be the #Elsagate videos that Forbes called “poison disguised as children’s entertainment”, every video uploaded by the malicious prankster Sam Pepper, and Rick Astley’s music video for “Never Gonna Give You Up” (just to be cautious).
But alas, many of the videos on YouTube that should be labeled “B” for “Bacterial” seem to slip through the cracks when it comes to dislikes. With one billion hours of videos watched daily, it’s unsurprising that some of the most disliked uploads on our favorite video-sharing website are also some of the most popular, because of the aforementioned power of internet trolls. Ranging from music videos for absolute bops to an episode of a Russian animated TV series, here are the most disliked videos on YouTube. We thank them for their service.