YouTube’s look back at 2015 is a fast-paced mashup of dance moves, x-rays and plastic balls, featuring TV personalities and stars made famous on the site. These seemingly random parts form a hilarious whole, with music from OMI, The Weeknd, Silentó, and the duo of Major Lazer & Dj Snake as its soundtrack.
The video is an epic rewind of the videos, people, music and movies that made 2015. It features snippets from popular videos such as ‘Charlie bit my finger,’ The Lonely Island’s ‘I’m On a Boat,’ Jean-Claude Van Damme’s epic split and Rebecca Black’s, ‘Friday,’ blended with familiar elements from 2015’s most popular videos, such as the cage from Sia’s ‘Elastic Heart’, Pizza Rat, and the bus-top dancing scene from ‘Lean On’.
The ‘whip and nae nae’ dance craze also gets an honourable mention (along with numerous costume changes), the flamethrower guitar from Mad Max: Fury Road and Shia Labeouf’s infamous ‘Just Do It‘ speech gets redone and translated to dramatic effect.
YouTube has also introduced a ‘Trending’ tab that keeps viewers updated on what videos are popular.
Facebook also released its Year in Review, showing the social network’s ability to connect people and provide a platform for them to discuss globally significant events and issues.The video focuses on the most discussed events and issues of 2015.
The 2016 US presidential election features prominently, along with the terrorist attacks in Paris, the Syrian civil war and refugee crisis, the Nepal earthquakes of April and May, the fight against ISIS, New Horizons’ close-up photos of Pluto, and the debate as to whether one particular dress was black and blue or white and gold.
It’s a snapshot of a year that has featured both tragedy and triumph, with the joy and devastation of these moments playing out as small moments on individual profiles.
“Year in Review top 10 lists were measured by how frequently a topic was mentioned in posts made between January 1st and December 1st, 2015”, Facebook said in a statement. “To put this list together, Facebook posts were analyzed in an aggregated, anonymized way, and then ranked to create a snapshot of the year on Facebook.”
