Cats, Mobs and Fails -- The 25 Most Popular YouTube Trends Of All Time

YouTube is always trending with popular themes inspired by everything from people to songs to specific viral videos. Sometimes trends on YouTube are short-lived, but other times they stick around for a while, spawning millions of views and inspiring YouTubers to upload a plethora of remixes, parodies and similar videos. We decided to compile a list of the top 25 YouTube trends of all time. They include everything from cats to double rainbows, flash mobs to Epic FAIL videos and everything in between. Check out the full list of popular YouTube trends after the jump. Cats On of the most popular themes on YouTube is the cat meme. Cats have been one of the most viral phenomena on the Web for years now, spawned on by sites like I Can Has Cheezburger? and LOLCats. Cat videos are scattered throughout the most-viewed YouTube videos of all time and include everything from musical cats to talking cats, sneaky cats, and even songs about cats. Check out one of our favorite cat videos below, and click on the thumbnails to watch more cats on YouTube. Kids Saying Funny Things Videos of kids being kids and saying funny, cute or weird things are the recipe for virality on YouTube. Whether it's a video of a little girl talking about catching her parents "in the act" (if you catch our drift), a little boy mispronouncing the word "truck", trying to say "blood", or doing a heartbreaking cover of the Beatles, viewers just eat up videos of kids. Watch some of our favorites below. Pets & Animals Cats are popular enough to get a category of their own, but that doesn't mean that pets and other animals aren't popular on YouTube too. We've put together our own compilation of the best Pets & Animals videos on YouTube, which you can check out below. Yesterday my dog was doing the cutest thing, but I didn't get to my video camera in time. To bad, I'm sure my dog has got massive viral potential! FAILS For some mysterious reason, people love watching the failures of others. Be it an idiot who can't park or someone falling down and getting hurt, people watch FAIL videos by the millions. Maybe watching other people fail and fall makes us feel better about ourselves, or maybe it's just freakin' funny. Whatever the reason, Epic FAILS account for some of the most viral videos on YouTube. FAILblog, the king of YouTube FAIL videos, has over 1 billion upload views and over 1 million subscribers. Check out our compilation of the Best Epic FAIL Videos on YouTube. Babies What's cuter than an adorable, little baby? Whether a baby is laughing, dancing, crying, or just sitting still, a baby is a great subject for a viral YouTube video. Babies have been a rising trend on YouTube for almost as long as the site has existed. Babies strike a chord in most online video viewers - after all, we were all babies once, many of us have babies and some of us want babies. Check out some of the cutest videos that are part of YouTube's babies trend below. You can also check out our compilation of the Best Kids & Babies YouTube videos here. Keep reading to see more popular YouTube trends on the next page! Charlie Bit My Finger & Friends 'Charlie Bit My Finger' is the third most popular YouTube video of all time, with over 223 million views, and it is a great example of a video that spawned its own YouTube trend. After 'Charlie Bit My Finger' went viral, it inspired YouTubers to upload an avalanche of remixes and parodies. Although the video was uploaded three years ago, it is still one of the most-known YouTube clips and the original clip, as well as those inspired by it continue to accumulate views. Check out the original clip below and then click on the thumbnails to see some of most popular videos inspired by the trend. David After Dentist & Friends In the same way that Charlie inspired a YouTube trend, 'David After Dentist' also inspired a YouTube meme that has received millions of views and a plethora of remixes and parodies. Check out the original clip below, which shares the story of David, high on pain meds after a trip to the dentist, and click the thumbnails to see some of the top 'David After Dentist' remixes and parodies on YouTube. Kicked in the Nuts For some strange reason, people absolutely love watching dudes get kicked in the nuts. I'm not sure why it's so funny...Probably for the same reason that FAIL videos are so funny and popular. But as painful as it may be, it's a fact of life that kicked in the nuts clips are one of the most popular YouTube trends. Check out some of the most popular videos of guys getting kicked in the nuts below. Why do you think these videos are so popular? Rickrolling Have you ever been Rickrolled? Rickrolling is a popular trend that even YouTube itself got into for April Fool's Day 2008. Not sure what Rickrolling is? Well just click here to get $1 Million and find out what it means to be Rickrolled. Did I get you? News Bloopers Live news is the ultimate source for viral videos. When news reporters have Freudian slips, passersby make outrageous statements or get in the way of the broadcast, and accidents happen, these clips often make their way to YouTube where they get hundreds of thousands (if not millions!) of views. Check out our compilations of some of the best news bloopers on YouTube. Do you have a favorite blooper? Surprising Talent Another trend that has YouTubers watching in droves is the surprising talent trend. Videos of people who look too old, too young, too weird or too ugly to be talented and - surprise surprise! - end up busting out with an out of this world voice or other amazing skill are hugely popular on the YouTube streams. The first video to really go viral in the surprising talent arena was that of Susan Boyle, who blew Simon Cowell away, along with the rest of the world, with her performance on Britain's Got Talent. Taiwanese singer Lin Yu Chun also blew YouTubers away with his rendition of Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You'. Check out some of our favorite instances of surprising talent on YouTube below. Music Videos Music videos are incredibly popular on YouTube. A lot of people use YouTube for their background music throughout the day, as well as to watch and share the videos of their favorite artists. Since VEVO launched and started sharing their collection of music videos on YouTube, music videos have become an even more popular trend on the video site. Check out some of the most popular music videos on YouTube below, starting with Justin Bieber's baby, which has over 331 million views! Bieber Fever! The whole world has Beiber Fever! Justin Bieber has the most popular YouTube video of all time, as you saw above, with over 331 million views. But Bieber isn't only popular on YouTube for his personal videos. It has become a huge trend for people to post their own fan clips (as well as hate clips) about Bieber. Justin Bieber-related videos have accrued hundreds of millions of views on the video site. Check out our own Bieber-inspired clip below and click on the thumbnail to see other popular videos in the Bieber trend. Lady Gaga Parodies YouTube is gaga for Gaga! Lady Gaga is second only to Justin Bieber when it comes to YouTube views. Her video for 'Bad Romance' has 281 million views. Lady Gaga's outrageous style and popular music has also made her one of the most-parodied musicians on YouTube. Following the release of her video for 'Telephone', a whole slew of parodies hit the YouTube streams. Check out some of the most popular Gaga parodies below. Auto-Tune Auto-Tune has become one of the biggest trends ever to hit YouTube. It started to take off when the Gregory Brothers, inspired by T-Pain, started making a video series called 'Auto-Tune The News', in which they auto-tuned politicians, news reporters and commentators and set them to music. The Gregory Brothers, AKA Schmoyoho, have gone on to create a large number of auto-tune hits, including the Double Rainbow Song and Bed Intruder Song. Auto-Tune has since been used to create remixes of popular YouTube clips and to put smiles on the faces of YouTubers around the world. Check out some of the best Auto-Tuned YouTube clips below. Double Rainbows Over the summer an over-excited mountain man introduced the world to the wonder that is the double rainbow. When Jimmy Kimmel tweeted about a YouTube clip of a guy names Paul Vasquez freaking out about a double rainbow a new popular YouTube trend was born. The Gregory Brothers turned the clip into a song, and tons of people started uploading their own double rainbow parodies to YouTube. Check out the original clip below, and then click the thumbnails to see some of the best double rainbow-inspired parodies. Antoine Dodson & The Bed Intruder Song Just a couple of months ago a news clip of Antoine Dodson, an Alabama native, going off after chasing a would-be rapist from his sister's bedroom went massively viral. However, the true success of the clip came when the Gregory Brother's turned it into a hit single called 'The Bed Intruder Song'. The Bed Intruder Song got over 24 million YouTube hits, made the Billboard Hot 100, and has so many iTunes sales that Dodson was able to buy his family a new house! Aside from being a huge success for Dodson himself, who achieved instant YouTube fame, the Bed Intruder Song became one of the most popular YouTube trends of all time. Tons of people uploaded their own covers of the song, including a cover by a marching band! Check out the original song below and click on the thumbnails to see some of our favorite Bed Intruder covers. Old Spice Old Spice became the top brand on YouTube this year with their 'The Man Your Man Could Smell Like' campaign. They put hunky actor Isaiah Mustafa in a bathroom and produced a number of viral commercials that got millions of views on YouTube. But the Old Spice trend really started taking off when Old Spice launched a fan-response campaign that was more popular than Obama! In the Old Spice response campaign, Mustafa made nearly 200 video shout-outs to fans, responding to their comments on Twitter and Facebook. The campaign was a huge success, raking in over 40 million views in a week. Check out some of the man your man could smell like's most popular YouTube response videos below. You can also read about the Top 10 Old Spice Parodies here and the less successful Old Spice copycat campaign run by Cisco here. WTF Was That? One of the biggest trends on YouTube are videos that make you think, "WTF was that?!" These are videos that are so strange that you are left with a blank look on your face, wondering who thought to make this video, what were they thinking, and why? Check out some of our favorite WTF videos below. JK Wedding Entrance Dance & Friends When Jill and Kevin uploaded a video of their unique wedding entrance dance the world took notice. When the couple's friends danced down the aisle they spawned a whole new YouTube trend - wedding entrance dance parodies. From a JK Divorce Entrance Dance to a dance introducing pets to their new owners, YouTubers came up with all kinds of cool parody ideas. The Office even did a JK Wedding Dance of their own. Check out the original entrance dance clip below and click on the thumbnails to see our favorite parodies. Flash Mobs There's nothing like a good old-fashioned flash mob to spread cheer throughout the real world, and the YouTube world. When groups of people gather in public places and break into spontaneous dance, freeze or engage in other out of the ordinary activities it puts a smile on people's faces and makes prime viral video material for YouTube. In recent years, flash mobs have been a growing trend on YouTube. Check out some of the most popular flash mobs on YouTube in the videos below. Stop Motion Stop motion is my ultimate favorite YouTube trend. I love watching stop motion videos, making my own stop motion videos, and basically living and breathing stop motion. The good news is that I'm not the only one who lives and breathes stop motion, so there are a ton of cool stop motion clips on YouTube, making it another one of the video sites most popular trends. There are so many amazing stop motion videos on YouTube that it's hard to choose just 6 to share here. You can see my all time favorite ten stop motion videos here, or check out the selection below. Remixes Every time a new video goes viral on YouTube it doesn't take long before remixes start popping up. People love putting their own spin on popular YouTube videos, whether it means changing out the audio, auto-tuning people to turn videos into songs or adding graphics and effects to popular YouTube clips to turn them into something completely new. Check out our video compilation of the best YouTube remixes below. Dancing Dancing is something that puts a smile on everyone's face, and YouTube has given dancers around the globe the opportunity to share their talents, as well as given wannabe dancers the opportunity to watch videos to practice and learn new dance moves. There are tons of dance videos on YouTube with millions of views, making it one of the most popular YouTube trends. In fact, the sixth most popular YouTube video of all time, with over 152 million views, is called the 'Evolution of Dance' and goes through a history of dance moves in six minutes. Watch the 'Evolution of Dance' below, and then click on the thumbnails to see more of the most popular dance videos on YouTube. Inception Movie Trailer Parodies Little did the creators of this summer's box office hit Inception know that when they released the trailer for their film they would spawn one of the most popular YouTube trends of all time. Shortly after the trailer was released, YouTube started to overflow with Inception parodies. Some creators re-made the trailer completely, and others remixed footage from other movies to go with the original trailer audio. The outcomes were pretty entertaining. Check out the original trailer below, and then click on the thumbnails to see some of the best Inception trailer parodies.

Social Pro Daily

Cats, Mobs and Fails -- The 25 Most Popular YouTube Trends Of All Time

Sometimes trends on YouTube are short-lived, but other times they stick around for a while, spawning millions of views and inspiring YouTubers to upload a plethora of remixes, parodies and similar videos. We decided to compile a list of the top 25 YouTube trends of all time.

Megan O'Neill

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