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It’s official – kids have taken over YouTube.

I’ve been subjected to hours of Peppa Pig thanks to my nephew, and bacon has never been more appealing.

During the pandemic, parents desperate for five minutes of peace have been turning to the internet to entertain their ankle-biters, and it’s fundamentally changed the rankings for the most-watched videos of all time.

We had all resigned ourselves to the lingering presence of Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s ‘Despacito’ in the top spot (it took the crown over three years ago), but it has been unceremoniously dethroned by the worst song ever to grace the airwaves.

The rankings were determined by views over the period from January 2012 to October 2020. The number of views listed below reflects the count when the list of the top five was finalised.

I’m going to let The Verge deliver the bad news.

“Baby Shark” has now crossed 7.043 billion views — which officially makes the kid-friendly, adult-terrorizing earworm the most-watched YouTube video ever.

Spare a thought for the parents who were in the same room as the children racking up those views.

For those of you who have been spared ‘Baby Shark’, it’s a nursery rhyme-like song and video, produced by a South Korean kids’ entertainment company called Pinkfong.

The Guardian once described its aesthetic as a “child force-fed sherbet and given a set of DayGlo paints”.

The song itself, however, isn’t South Korean.

It’s actually from a 2012 collection of camp songs. In the original, the singer ends the song by losing an arm and dying.

You might also be interested to learn that it became a rallying cry for Lebanese protesters last year, for reasons as yet unknown.

Last April, ‘Baby Shark’ only had 2,5 billion views. Since then it has shot up more than 180%.

‘Despacito’ kept up for a while but eventually fell into second place.

The same can’t be said for the other big music hits over the same period. In the third spot, Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’ gained less than a billion views rising to 5,05 billion.

In fourth place, Wiz Khalifa’s ‘See You Again’ only went from 4 billion to 4,8 billion.

The fifth most-watched video? A kid song, of course.

‘Johny Johny Yes Papa’ had 4,15 billion views:

So without further ado, and because we can’t put it off any longer, here it is.

The number one most-watched video of all time:

Sorry.

[source:verge]