We spoke to DaFuqBoom, the guy behind the “Skibidi toilet” videos

A bizarre series of videos have cropped up on YouTube and TikTok, featuring animated fights between toilet creatures and camera people.

Have you ever scrolled through TikTok late at night and found something so tantalizingly weird, it drags you into the depths of 3 AM? That’s how I found DaFuqBoom, an animator based out of Georgia.

It’s also how a lot of people appear to have found him. His real name is Alexey, and his videos of vicious, singing toilet people fighting a series of hardware-headed people have racked up millions of views.

On YouTube, a video compilation of “Season 14” uploaded three hours ago – as of writing – has already hit over 800, 000 views. It’s an astonishing rate, which Alexey says he didn’t expect:

“It gained bigger views from the start, but I was not expecting to have it that big. It started to blow up huge somewhere during the release of [episodes] 8-9.”

From parody to war – DaFuqBoom ups the ante

You might also recognize the song, as it was a huge meme on TikTok for a few weeks in 2022. User yasincengiz38 danced his belly while being served mountains of food, bringing it to the forefront.

However, it was user Paryss Bryanne who inspired DaFuqBoom. Her excessive movements and quick cuts to a new position led to the creation of the Skibidi Toilet series:

“I did a parody of her take on the ‘skibidi dop dop yes yes’ meme. [The] Skibidi toilet video was a random thing, just based on [an unexpected] head popping out of the toilet.”

Alexey has been animating for around nine years, using Source Filmmaker. The software, which was released by Valve in 2012, is what powered the excellent Team Fortress 2 adverts. It also bore its own community, with its easy-to-pick-up nature enticing users into recreating movie scenes or, in DaFuqBoom’s case, creating a war epic.

When I asked why he chose Source Filmmaker, which is known for being a little finicky, DaFuqBoom said it was due to how easy it was:

“Easier access to different assets [and a] great interface. I know how to animate as well in Blender, but the whole process including lighting and rendering would take [three times as longer].”

He makes sure to credit the creators of the assets that he uses in each video as well.

Skibidi toilets are taking over YouTube

Since DaFuqBoom started uploading the series of videos in February, and since then has managed to earn a staggering 10 million subscribers since May. Alexey now sits on a YouTube account with 15.8 million subscribers and a TikTok account with 2.8 million followers in just a few weeks.

The videos don’t really have much of an expressly told story, instead relying on visuals to great effect. There are toilet people, made up of assets from Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source. These creatures have infected, or taken over, the human race, and all that’s left are suited individuals with cameras for heads.

Each video is a tug-of-war between the two sides. The cameramen figure out how to best the toilets, and in the next episode, the toilets strike back harder. As you go further, more characters are introduced. Speaker-headed people, and more recently, devastating mysterious TV people that blare the THX sound to kill the enemy.

Episodes end with a jumpscare of sorts, or a thumbs up for a job well done. The TV people use emoticons to express their feelings. Those with speakers on their heads are often dancing.

DaFuqBoom raises the bar he’s having to pull himself back

These videos start out fairly simple, but the quality of the animation and the intensity of each fight is ratcheted up further with each minute-long video.

When you watch these videos, the different animations – most recently featuring a spider-legged toilet – are incredible. DaFuqBoom has been putting a video out each day for a few weeks. It makes you wonder how one person can keep up with the pace.

However, Alexey admits that he’s had to scale back how frequently he uploads to “[two] days because the quality of the videos has risen.”

He’s not wrong either, as the videos have gone from featuring toilets singing the series’ namesake song, to full-scale war scenes. Speakers fly overhead, as a giant GMan toilet shoots laser beams from its eyes.

Though, the song has begun to take a backseat. While the toilets screech or bellow it out, the videos are more about the ongoing war than a meme.

Between all of this, Alexey has also developed a video game adaption that’s on mobiles.

Skibidi toilet fakers

Meanwhile, on TikTok, there’s a forgery happening. A user has been making their own – albeit worse – versions of the videos to piggyback off the success of DaFuqBoom. These videos feature similar tropes, and commenters are slowly picking up on the quality.

TikTok, though, is not interested in removing the content according to Alexey:

“I tried to take them down, but TikTok support doesn’t care, even after all the proof I’ve given to them. They’re unable to verify me.”

The account, which claims to be “DaFuq?!Boom! Official” reuploads the content, and then will re-edit it to scrape more views. It hasn’t deterred Alexey though, as he’s already planned out the future of the series:

“[The] main plotline is all planned out already, but some in-between episodes are added sometimes. It will continue for a while.”

Will the Titan TV Man be able to subdue the corrupted Titan Speaker Man? It looks like we might find out in just a couple of days as Alexey is already hard at work on the next few episodes.