YouTube meme culture is the set of jokes, formats and in-jokes that spread through video uploads, from YouTube Poop remixes that appeared around 2004 to reaction videos and the Rickroll bait-and-switch of 2007.
The vocabulary around these clips overlaps heavily with stream slang, because the same viewers move between uploads, live streams and short posts.
YouTube Poop and the remix roots from 2004
Wikipedia’s entry on the genre states that “YouTube Poops originated around 2004, quickly becoming popular online.” The format takes existing footage, cartoons, game cutscenes and commercials, and chops it into absurd new sequences. Early examples were made with Windows Movie Maker, and the media scholar Randall Halle suggests the word “poop” pointed at the supposedly low quality of those first efforts.
Scholars place the genre inside remix culture. Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Harvard Law School, compared its habit of answering earlier videos with new edits to a form of call and response. That description fits how the format works in practice: one creator’s stutter loop or sudden volume spike becomes a trope that the next creator borrows and exaggerates.
The genre also produced catchphrases that outlived the videos. “Pingas”, a mangled line tied to the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, became one of that franchise’s biggest memes, and the film actor James Marsden was asked about the word in an interview. The pattern repeats across YouTube: a rough clip is reworked until the reworking is better known than the source.
2006 and 2007: when reaction videos took off
Wikipedia’s reaction video entry notes that one of the first viral examples showed a child reacting to the “Scary Maze Game” prank on YouTube in 2006, and that “Beginning in 2007, reaction videos began to proliferate on the Internet.” The appeal is simple: viewers watch a person watch something, so the emotion arrives pre-packaged.
The idea did not start online. The same entry says reaction clips have long been a feature of Japanese variety shows, where celebrities react to video clips, and that the format works there as the equivalent of a laugh track on American television. YouTube turned that television device into a genre that anyone with a webcam could make.
Reaction videos also feed other meme types. A clip of someone gasping, laughing or covering their face is easy to cut out and reuse as a response image or sound. Most reaction memes on short-form feeds are fragments of longer uploads, which is how a single face can end up standing in for a whole emotion.
Rickrolling: the bait-and-switch of 15 May 2007
Wikipedia dates the origin to 15 May 2007, when the forum user Shawn Cotter uploaded the “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video to YouTube and linked to it in place of the trailer for a major video game. The joke is a disguised link that leads to Rick Astley singing, and it needed no editing skill at all.
The prank reached the mainstream in April 2008, when YouTube used the meme for its April Fools’ Day event and users of several websites voted for the song in a poll for the New York Mets’ rally song. Astley was initially hesitant about the meme, and he declined to appear at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards after an online vote named him “Best Act Ever”. He later accepted the publicity by rickrolling the 2008 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with a surprise performance.
The same source says use of the prank peaked in 2008 but that it remained popular, and calls it a very long-lived meme. Its staying power comes from being a shared secret: the target only recognises the joke once it has landed.
How YouTube meme culture turns a clip into a format
Meme formats on YouTube tend to follow a repeatable path. A clip gains attention, a few creators copy its structure, and the structure is then detached from the original footage. YouTube Poop shows the path clearly, since the Wikipedia article describes the genre developing “references-within-references” inside each sub-community and following the general YouTube trend toward more professional editing.
That layering makes older memes hard for newcomers to read, much like regional slang. Text-first platforms handle the same material differently, which is the subject of the page on x twitter humor, where a screenshot or a one-line quote carries the joke. Live platforms add another layer, covered in the guide to twitch slang, where chat spam and emotes turn a clip into a call-and-response.
The Rickroll shows the path in miniature. In 2007 it was a single link swapped for a game trailer; by April 2008 it was a site-wide April Fools’ Day event on YouTube itself. The original uploader no longer mattered, because the joke had become a template that anyone could fill with a new disguise, whether a fake news link, a fake homework answer or a fake download.
Reaction videos followed the same route. A child reacting to the Scary Maze Game in 2006 was a one-off clip, but within a year the idea of filming a viewer became a genre with its own conventions: the corner webcam, the paused footage, the exaggerated gasp. Creators then competed on personality rather than on access to new material, which explains why a reactor with a recognisable laugh can build a following by watching content that already exists.
Remix communities add a different incentive. A YouTube Poop creator earns standing by knowing which obscure cartoon line or game glitch will land with the audience, so the audience is part of the joke. Newcomers who miss the reference are shut out, and that exclusion is exactly what keeps the in-group loyal to the format.
Three traits recur in formats that last: a template simple enough to copy, a reference that rewards insiders, and an element, such as a sound or a face, that survives being cut out of context.
Reaction videos and the fair use argument
The Wikipedia entry says the question of whether reaction videos constitute fair use of intellectual property, rather than appropriation and copyright infringement, “has generated controversy and is a subject of discussion and debate.” The entry also notes that the video being reacted to is often shown inside the reaction video, so viewers see what the reactor sees.
Remixes face the same tension. A transformed clip with commentary or parody is easier to defend than a full re-upload with a face in the corner. Creators who rely on borrowed footage therefore tend to add commentary, edit heavily, or cut the borrowed material down to the shortest useful excerpt.
The debate matters beyond law because it shapes style. When a platform’s rules or a rights holder’s claims punish long unaltered excerpts, creators drift toward tighter cuts, heavier commentary and more original framing. In that sense the fair use argument has quietly pushed the reaction genre away from passive watching and toward criticism, which is the kind of use that Wikipedia’s entry says is under discussion. The same pressure explains why remix genres such as YouTube Poop lean on short, mangled fragments instead of whole scenes: a transformed fragment is both funnier and harder to claim as a straight copy.
Platform policy shifts continue to change what is safe to upload, so any rule of thumb here describes the pattern in the cited sources rather than a legal guarantee.
Frequently asked questions
What is YouTube meme culture?
It is the body of formats and in-jokes that spread through YouTube uploads. Wikipedia dates YouTube Poop remixes to around 2004, reaction videos to a 2006 prank clip, and Rickrolling to 15 May 2007.
Who started Rickrolling?
Wikipedia credits the 4chan user Shawn Cotter, who on 15 May 2007 linked the “Never Gonna Give You Up” video in place of a Grand Theft Auto IV trailer.
What does YouTube Poop mean?
YouTube Poop, or YTP, is an absurdist remix genre. Randall Halle, quoted by Wikipedia, suggests that “poop” referred to the supposed low quality of early videos made in Windows Movie Maker.
Are reaction videos legal?
The answer is contested. Wikipedia describes the fair use question as a subject of discussion and debate, and the outcome depends on how much the reactor transforms the original clip with commentary.
