Dislike the Dislikes

A satirical comparison of successive changes to YouTube's public rating system to a man progressively applying clown makeup to mock the changes as absurd

This is a 5-panel comparative meme. Each left-hand panel displays a sequential change to YouTube's public rating system, starting with the original discontinued 5-star rating system showing a 4.9/5 rating, followed by the introduction of public like and dislike counts showing 305K likes vs 1.1M dislikes, then the hiding of public dislike counts where only the word 'DISLIKE' appears next to 3M likes, then an internal hidden 5-star rating prompt asking users to rate videos to help improve YouTube, and finally the complete removal of the dislike button from YouTube Shorts. Each corresponding right-hand panel shows a man progressively applying clown makeup: first applying white face paint, then adding colored clown eye and mouth makeup, then finishing facial makeup, then putting on a rainbow clown wig, and finally appearing as a fully completed clown. The meme satirizes YouTube's successive changes to its rating system as increasingly ridiculous and clownish, referencing widespread user criticism that removing public dislike metrics hides low-quality or misleading content from viewers.

This meme was originally shared on the Reddit r/Meme subreddit under the title 'Dislike the Dislikes', accessed via an RSS feed of the subreddit's content. It uses the widely circulated 'man putting on clown makeup' meme template, a common format used to mock decisions or behaviors that are seen as progressively more absurd or self-defeating, to critique YouTube's multi-year rollout of changes to its public rating system that were widely unpopular with the platform's user base.