As the internet wraps up another year gone, Youtube presented its annual tribute to the year's best viral videos, Youtube Rewind. The seven minute video, riddled with Youtube stars like Jake Paul, Logan Paul, and Jake Paul's friends, features a lot of dancing, a lot of hand-holding, and, overall, joy.
The set-up is simple. As Stephen Colbert, safely tucked away in the world of offline television, throws it back to the seemingly professional hosts of the Rewind, perpetual "Despacito" dancer Niana Guerrero bursts into the room, throwing the whole thing into a world where the last 365 days have not only been fine - they've been great.
For nearly six minutes the cast of Youtube Rewind celebrates, feverishly, the year's most joyous moments of 2017, such as "Salt bae" and "fidget spinners." At one point they visit a graveyard - Smash Mouth is there, RIP Smash Mouth - and then, suddenly: darkness. It's the eclipse (remember the eclipse?), but it's not the eclipse you and I bought paper glasses for, it's the general eclipse, on Youtube, of happiness. As recordings of various world-ending tragedies play, the residents of Youtube grasp hands and stop dancing. They still beam wildly, but the dancing stops. These were the Bad Parts of 2017. We are meant, in the face of their wide smiles, to reflect.
Luckily, that passes pretty quickly, and everyone starts to dance again, and even prank each other. Eventually Colbert comes back to badger the hosts, still desperate for a report on 2017.
"It was good," they say. On Youtube, that's true.