Skibidi Toilet morphed modern internet culture into the short-form “brain-rot” content that defines it today.

On Jun. 27, 2012, Source Filmmaker was released. Among countless other contributions the graphics software tool has made, Skibidi Toilet is one of the most notable additions. The first episode of Skibidi Toilet released on Feb. 7, 2023 and met instant fame. 

Since then, there have been 77 episodes of Skibidi Toilet.

It is undeniable that as of late, the internet has become more focused on short, sensationalized content, with videos requiring more and more engaging content to keep the viewer watching. This change could be observed before the creation of Skibidi Toilet, but it skyrocketed in growth afterwards.

An important cause of this shift is due to Gen Alpha having grown up on Skibidi Toilet, the oldest among them being only 13 when Skibidi Toilet’s first episode was released. With these new consumers of the internet enjoying content similar to Skibidi Toilet, they then watched similar kinds of videos.

Content creators soon caught on to this trend and, wishing to both maintain and gain views, changed the style of their videos. The internet is now faster paced; longer videos are less and less frequent, and the audience needs constant jingling keys to keep them entertained.

“It has impacted [the internet] significantly,” Oakmont senior Eric Salazar said. “Probably for the worse since it brain-rotted thousands of kids.”

The general perception of Skibidi Toilet seems to be negative. Nonetheless, young children are watching videos like Skibidi Toilet and are building a larger audience for that type of content. In order to meet the demand for that content, the internet is likely to only increase in so-called “brain-rot.”

Though Skibidi Toilet lost its popularity over time, its changes to internet culture has remained, and will likely stay for quite some time.