By now, you’ve surely seen the grotesque heads of Skibidi Toilet singing from their stained porcelain bowls, and wondered if the kids are alright.
What began as a few loosely connected YouTube shorts in 2023 has since exploded into a phenomenon among children. Even Gen Z appears to be baffled by the trend, as the younger generation, Gen Alpha, is leading the charge.
Skibidi Toilet has even sparked something of a moral panic, with many parents under the impression that whatever it is, it can’t be good for their children — it just doesn’t feel right.
Some parenting websites are warning against so-called “Skibidi Toilet Syndrome,” while Russian authorities are reportedly investigating the series for its “detrimental effect” on children.
What Is ‘Skibidi Toilet,’ And Why Is It So Popular?
It all started from a single YouTube short created by animator Alexey Gerasimov, whose channel is known as “DaFuq!?Boom!.” Gerasimov was inspired by the TikTok remix of the song “Dom Dom Yes Yes” by Biser King, specifically the version posted by TikToker Paryss Bryann.
Gerasimov created a short featuring a man’s head emerging from a grungy toilet and singing the song. At this point, there was no point — it was just an unexpected image created for fun and shock value.
Gerasimov continued using toilet heads in a series of shorts that became sequels, gradually giving way to a real narrative, depicting a great war between the Skibidi Toilets and an army of mechanical men with speakers, screens and cameras for heads (these designs are, admittedly, pretty cool).
While the Skibidi Toilet series would never have emerged from a traditional children’s media platform, kids seem to find them deeply compelling. The catchy song, combined with the image of a human head inside a stained toilet, seems to stain the brain, like a cigarette burn.
It’s worth noting that Gen Alpha is growing up in a world over-saturated with media, surrounded by flashing, flickering screens screaming for attention, so perhaps it makes sense that such a viscerally unpleasant image would stick.
After binge-watching the series with my son, who became a fan of the characters via Roblox, I even started to understand the appeal.
There’s definitely a story being told, without dialogue, set in a strikingly original world (for some reason, the younger generation seems to like faceless characters with objects for heads, like Sirenhead).
The moral panic is overblown, but the series can be fairly violent, in a video-gamey way. In fact, the whole thing was animated using Source Filmmaker, a free 3D animation software released by Valve, a video game company famous for Half-Life, Counter-Strike and Portal.
Hence, Skibidi Toilet is filled with references and assets from the Half-Life video game series.
The ‘Skibidi Toilet’ Series Is Incredibly Successful On YouTube
Gerasimov has been hard at work ever since the series took off, releasing shorts that slowly reveal more details of the war, with his videos becoming far more elaborate and ambitious.
Since the series took off, Gerasimov has accumulated more than 38 million subscribers on YouTube, and his videos consistently draw tens of millions of views — many boast more than 100 million. Those are practically MrBeast numbers, and the success of the series is not limited to YouTube; videos relating to “Skibidi Toilet” on TikTok have been viewed more than 20 billion times.
Gerasimov seems to have an intuitive understanding of internet culture, and his series was released at the perfect time to take advantage of the platform’s pivot to YouTube Shorts.
Now, Skibidi Toilet has colonized the rest of the internet via memes, games, knock-offs, edits and fan-made videos dissecting background details and speculating on the lore.
What Is ‘Skibidi Toilet’ Actually About?
The toilets appear to be either an invasive alien species or a virus, and their appearance can be quite grotesque — from the beginning, their faces tend to twist into terrible, inhuman smiles.
Interestingly, it isn’t quite clear if they are the bad guys; there’s something nihilistic about the conflict. As the series progresses, it becomes obvious that the world is being destroyed, with the city seen in the first few episodes reduced to rubble.
The series quickly shifts to the perspective of the Camera Heads, often taking a first-person view, like a video game shooter. However, there is an authoritarian vibe to the machine men — most wear suits, and they clearly have abundant resources to create advanced weaponry.
The humans that first appeared in the series appear to have gone extinct, or been replaced by the toilets, while the mechanical men are bringing more advanced firepower to each battle, only to see the toilets adapt and grow stronger.
Notably, the Skibidi Toilets are reusing the broken machinery of the machine heads to enhance their own bodies and weapons, suggesting that they are more creative and resourceful than their opponents.
Plus, the sight of men with security camera heads feels like a commentary on surveillance culture, but it’s difficult to say what the implication is.
Fans have come up with some interesting theories, speculating that the Skibidis are speaking in song and spreading their “virus” via sound.
One popular theory suggests that the war is a metaphorical battle between traditional media (film and TV) and new media (internet content and memes), the latter represented by the grimy, absurd toilets.
It’s unclear where the series will go from here, but there is a plan — Gerasimov says he has an ending in mind, and it will take some time to get there. So far, parasitic toilets and mind-control has been introduced, as well as towering, Godzilla-esque mechanical men that appear to have been inspired by Attack on Titan.
The whole thing might seem baffling to parents raised on Saturday morning cartoons, but really, the forever war of Skibidi Toilet isn’t that different from He-Man, G.I. Joe or Transformers.
It is, however, a very online phenomenon, spawned by the natural chaos of internet culture, where endless remixes and eroded context sparks surreal, unsettling imagery.
Perhaps the strangest thing about Skibidi Toilet is that some day, Gen Alpha will be nostalgic for it, in the way that parents are nostalgic for Ghostbusters.