Tuğçe Kurulday – Sept 28, 2023

Exploring the Viral Skibidi Toilet Trend and Its Impact on Mobile Games

If you’ve recently come across videos featuring a singing head inside a toilet bowl and had a perplexing “what the heck” moment, you are not alone!
The ‘Skibidi toilet’ trend, featuring a head singing from inside a toilet bowl to a catchy remix, has taken the internet by storm and mobile games soon after that. This uniquely eerie trend, albeit in a captivating way, has left many wondering about its origins and why it became so trendy.

Origin

The Bulgarian artist Biser King released a song called “Dom Dom Yes Yes” in June 2022 which later gained some popularity on TikTok, as a guy named ‘Yasin Cengiz’ used it for his dancing videos. In January 2023, a YouTube creator named DaFuq!?Boom! uploaded another video to the series of his portfolio where a head singing inside a toilet bowl. However, this time, he cleverly merged it with the popular ‘Dom Dom Yes Yes’ song, resulting in an immediate surge in video views. Currently, the creator has many videos with over million views in his account and six of the Skibidi videos surpassed more than 200M views.

Characters

Besides the catchy background song, there are three characters in the video series that are catching our eyes.

Skibidists
They are the main characters which are used most, with the long necks sticking out of the toilet bowl.

The Cameramen
Humanoids with a camera head

Stereoheads
Similar to cameramen, stereoheads have a human body but their head is replaced by a stereo.

Why Is This Trendy?

Some believe the series offers a satirical take on how viral content consumes our attention and time, acting like a digital epidemic but why is that exactly?

It’s safe to say the trend’s appeal lies in its creepiness, absurdity, ongoing plot development, and the possibility of a hidden meaning.

Market Overview

This trend has flooded the mobile games market: Currently there are more than a thousand games with “Skibidi” in their names or descriptions, with a peak in late May and early June. The downloads for these games are still increasing, hinting at its enduring popularity.

A Closer Look at the Games

The standout game in this category is “Merge Toilet Monster Battle” by ABI Global LTD, boasting an impressive 13 million downloads. It dates back to the early days of the trend’s emergence.

This trend didn’t just fuel the creation of games; it also spurred innovative advertising campaigns. Publishers and game studios harnessed the trend’s market appeal to enhance their game metrics, following the pattern of previous trends. Notably, the ad creative for the game “Craft Shooter FPS Battles” garnered one of the highest impression rates observed in the last 30 days.

Giant Rush creatives screenshot

Conclusion

Despite several months having passed since the trend first surfaced and its peak period, Skibidi toilet games continue to dominate the top charts. This phenomenon serves as yet another testament to how social media trends consistently ignite the imagination of developers and publishers, encouraging them to craft games and ad creatives centered around emerging worlds. It underscores the enduring influence of social media trends in shaping the landscape of game development, advertising strategies.