Skibidi Toilet is a crudely animated online video series where disembodied human heads burst from toilets saying the word ‘skibidi’. The skibidi toilets wage war against figures with CCTV cameras for faces.
It is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. The humour is rudimentary. The animation is basic. It might as well be made by AI.
And so it is immensely popular with young children who delight in its low-grade inanity. Its creator, a Georgian man named Alexey Gerasimov, made around $23 million from his YouTube channel DaFuq!?Boom! last year.
The popularity of Skibidi toilet among the under-tens has led to its being termed one of the first pieces of true Generation Alpha culture. Generation Alpha is the cohort born after 2010, who follow on from Gen-Z.
I learned about it via my four-year- old, who – to be clear – has never actually seen the series. Like any sensible parent, I do not allow him to roam
YouTube unattended any more than I would allow him to frolic in an open sewer. He had simply heard other children say ‘Skibidi!’ in the playground and so started imitating them.
The internet meme had metastasised into a playground meme, acquiring an almost unprecedented degree of pop cultural penetration.
My 11-year- old explained this to me – and, as a relatively senior member of Gen Alpha, he was disdainful. Skibidi Toilet is the sort of ‘brain rot’ he associates with ‘iPad kids’.
An iPad kid, he explained, is ‘the kind of child who spends all their time watching crap on YouTube Kids. They have a tablet in a chunky red case, their fingers are covered in orange Wotsit crumbs, and they are capable of communicating only in low-grade internet memes.’ He blames the parents.
For many families, car journeys are unthinkable without personal entertainment devices. A GP told me that ‘literally 100 per cent’ of under-sixes who come to the surgery are handed a device by their parents to distract them.
A recent survey found that one in four children now arrives at primary school in nappies. Teachers have reported poor basic motor skills and underdeveloped muscles linked to excessive screen time.
It’s as if our entire civilisation is going down the skibidi toilet. Richard Godwin
