If you’ve spent any time on TikTok or YouTube lately, you might’ve seen some short, strange videos of heads emerging from toilet bowls to sing a somewhat catchy song. The clips, built using the software behind some of Valve’s games like Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2, have been racking up millions of views on YouTube since they popped up earlier this year. But what is this trend? What is the song? And more importantly, what in the fuck is actually happening here?
This trend is known as “skibidi toilet” and it’s part of a series of YouTube Shorts that went viral back in February. Created by Georgia-based animator DaFuqBoom, the videos depict a random human head making erratic movements in a toilet bowl (colloquially called a toilet creature) singing a remix of a Turkish song that took TikTok by storm in 2022 thanks to “tummy dancer” Yasin Cengiz. The song Cengiz danced to, “Dom Dom Yes Yes” by Turkish group Biser King, spawned its own viral TikTok trend of creators such as turkishoogway, Twitch streamer and fitness influencer Paryss Bryanne, and thatoneguy.tt all moving sporadically to the catchy bop. And by way of viral inception, we’ve entered our current moment, where the chorus’ onomatopoeia of “brr skibidi dop dop dop dop yes yes” has become an audio file used by creators like DaFuqBoom to create some truly unsettling content.
A war between cameramen and toilet creatures
So, what’s happening in DaFuqBoom’s videos? They start pretty innocuously. The first episode in the ongoing series embedded above, uploaded on February 7 with over 75 million views at the time of writing, is just a head singing the song. However, with each episode, the stakes become increasingly fraught. By the third episode, there’s an army of toilet creatures moving in on a city as denizens watch in abject horror. There are a few episodes that have different renditions, like episode four that syncs it to a Star Wars theme and episode six with Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary,” but the song is always the same and the toilet creatures are always present. By the time you reach episode eight, things ramp up as a war between people with cameras for heads (the cameramen) and toilet creatures begins. It all comes to a head with episode 12 as the cameramen fight back, attempting to thwart the invasion as toilet creatures laser beam the city.
Things continue at this pace with each subsequent episode. The cameramen send in spider-legged tanks to bomb floating toilet creatures. Toilet creatures fire laser beams, blowing up everything in their warpath toward supremacy. The cameramen even call in giant mechs by episode 18 to crush the toilet creatures, only to get absolutely rekt once episode 22 rolls around. And at the end of most videos, there’s a pseudo jump scare, with a toilet creature rapidly closing in on the camera making the most unsettling face possible. It’s creepy.
Skibidi toilet’s creator floored by the series’ popularity
People love whatever DaFuqBoom is doing here. Many of the replies to his videos beg for a live-action series. Others are invested in the story DaFuqBoom is telling, hoping the cameramen overpower the toilet creatures’ onslaught and save their city. A few folks have even said skibidi toilet is better than anime. In the end, most wonder why they’re interested in this “show” they can’t seem to turn away from. The simple answer, as I’ve spent a few hours watching every episode on YouTube, is that it’s fun, intense, and unsettling in one breath. Things evolve rapidly. The toilet creatures develop technology to control the cameramen, while the cameramen recruit new soldiers with radios and TVs for heads that can paralyze the toilet creatures for immediate flushing. It’s weird. But it’s also a look at how collective action can overcome oppressive regimes.
DaFuqBoom, whose real name is Alexey, told Dexerto in a June 29 interview that he’d been animating with Valve’s proprietary 3D software tool Source Filmmaker for nine years. Taking inspiration from Paryss Bryanne, DaFuqBoom said he didn’t expect his random videos to blow up like they have.
“I did a parody of her take on the ‘skibidi dop dop yes yes’ meme,” DaFuqBoom told the publication. “[The] Skibidi toilet video was a random thing, just based on [an unexpected] head popping out of the toilet.”
It’s probably the toilet creatures themselves that’ve skyrocketed the virality of his videos. Created using assets from Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2, these toilet creatures are giving headcrab meets siren head in a lavatory. And that Valve inspiration seems to be on purpose as, although he’s skilled in Blender, DaFuqBoom opted for Source Filmmaker for one simple reason.
“Easier access to different assets [and a] great interface,” DaFuqBoom said. “I know how to animate as well in Blender, but the whole process including lighting and rendering would take [three times as longer].”
The trend has become so popular for DaFuqBoom that he’s noticed copycats popping up on TikTok. Despite boasting over 250K followers on the short-form video-sharing platform, he’s run into problems taking the phonies to task.
“I tried to take them down, but TikTok support doesn’t care, even after all the proof I’ve given to them,” DaFuqBoom said. “They’re unable to verify me.”
Kotaku reached out to DaFuqBoom for comment.
The copycats are a bummer, but it’s not stopping him. He’s got more episodes planned, with a main plot that’s been mapped out already. He also developed a single-player action-shooter mobile game based on the Skibidi toilet. So, it appears we’ll be seeing these toilet creatures for a while to come. Yikes.
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