YouTube's Creative Trend Report is making me feel old

Look, I know I'm not particularly young anymore. I'm very much a millennial, which apparently means I spend my time rock climbing, talking about Pokémon and using the word "hashtag". But nothing has made me feel older in recent months than YouTube's 2025 Culture and Trends report.

This year's report describes a "maximalist moment shaping our culture", and explores how today's teens are given the "desire, tools, and distribution to make the content they want to see", which has led to a new era of what YouTube describes as "Creative Maximalism".

YouTube describes Creative Maximalism as being centered around four main pillars:

• Audio/Visual Complexity: Densely layered information and faster-paced editing.
• Narrative Co-creation: Public-generated, massive, decentralised entertainment properties with immense casts of characters and storylines.
• Internet-Referential: Humour and ideas built on layers of online inside jokes.
• Globally Influenced: A seamless blend of cultural references from around the world

In other words, YouTube is describing exactly why modern content is giving me whiplash. It's fast, it's loud, it's busy, and it's full of in-jokes I don't get. The rise of short-form video has pushed me away from Instagram and deterred me from ever joining TikTok at all.

Even the design of YouTube's report captures the aesthetic – loud, low-fi, colourful and brash. And it's filled with stats that reveal just how chronically online today's teens are. 58% of 14- to 24-year-olds agree that their sense of humour has been shaped by the internet, 60% of 14- to 24-year-olds agree that they’ve picked up habits, traditions, or rituals from online creators, and 59% of 14- to 24-year-olds agree that their sense of personal style has been influenced by content they’ve seen online.

Even the phrase "brain rot" is being celebrated. "All of the attributes of Creative Maximalism can be found in one of 2025 biggest cultural phenomena: Italian brain rot videos, an absurdist universe of surreal internet memes that boasts more than 450,000 uploads in 2025."

And, of course, Skibidi Toilet is hailed as one of the prime examples of Creative Maximalism. For the uninitiated (how I envy you), this series of YouTube videos "follows a war between toilets with human heads and humanoid characters with electronic devices for faces."

If anything, the report shows that content is only going to get louder and faster. If you need me, I'll be in the corner playing Pokémon.