Overview

Built By Gamers, sometimes called the Skibidi Toilet Podcast, refers to a series of viral videos featuring two guys from the TikTok account Built By Gamers (@builtbygamers) discussing seemingly superficial events in internet and gaming culture, such as Skibidi Toilet, Plants vs. Zombies, Five Nights At Freddie's and The Backrooms lore. One guy is white and wears a backward hat and the other guy is black and he wears a red hat that says "Gamer" on it. The YouTube channel for Built by Gamers has been active since 2022, however, the channel's "fake podcast" style videos did not achieve virality and attention until 2023. This led to parodies en masse on Twitter / X using the format of the guys talking to each other and discussing some type of lore.

History

Built By Gamers began posting videos to their TikTok in March 2021, with the earliest post appearing on March 18th, 2021.^[1] Despite focusing on gamer-related content in 2021,^[2] the account did not start posting podcast-style videos until 2022, with an August 25th, 2022, clip about The Backrooms lore^[3] gathering over 5.5 million plays and 500,000 likes in a year (seen below, left). Another notable video posted by @builtbygamers^[4] on September 29th gathered over 11 million plays and 1 million likes in a similar timeframe (seen below, right).

The channel's earliest upload to YouTube^[5] can be traced to June 2nd, 2022, with a video titled, "We Built An NBA Star's ULTIMATE Game Room." The video gathered over 9,000 views in a year.

Parodies

Plants vs. Zombies Video

On May 8th, 2023, Built By Gamers posted a video to TikTok^[9] that covered the game Plants vs. Zombies, gaining roughly 313,900 plays and 17,200 likes in six months.

The video was the first of theirs to gain memetic attention and parodies, predominantly starting on August 7th, 2023, when X^[6] user @Hey1mJay reposted the Built By Gamers clip with the caption, "me after the lobotomy." The post gathered over 16,000 likes in two months (seen below).

me after the lobotomy pic.twitter.com/clHeeeY2dT

— Jay (@Hey1mJay) August 6, 2023

On October 30th, X^[8] user @fyridk reposted another Built By Gamers clip with the caption, "what line from this vid would work best as a senior quote?" The post gathered over 28,000 likes in a day (seen below).

what line from this vid would work best as a senior quote? pic.twitter.com/REDZemn5XE https://t.co/meEk7FLOij

— maddy🍋🌸 (@fyridk) October 29, 2023

Further Parodies

On October 23rd, X^[7] user @TheRealNeoThe quoted a reposted Built By Gamers video, saying, "I love these guys and their fake podcast clips with Chat GPT scripts I genuinely hope they never stop," gathering over 35,000 likes in a week (seen below).

I love these guys and their fake podcast clips with Chat GPT scripts I genuinely hope they never stop https://t.co/orzlif9VOt

— Neo The 🇦🇷🎃 (@TheRealNeoThe) October 23, 2023

In October and November 2023, the two men in Built By Gamers' podcast clips started to gain memetic usage as image-based characters on X and elsewhere. For instance, an early, viral example was a tweet posted by X^[10] user @ArcSysEGirl on November 3rd, 2023, which received roughly 32,000 likes in one week (seen below, left).

Soon after, on November 3rd, 2023, X^[11] user @RadiantAeonstar posted a similar tweet in which the duo were humorously explaining lore about JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, receiving roughly 14,000 likes in one week (seen below, right).

Continuing into November 2023, memes following the same format became increasingly meta and elaborate. For instance, on November 4th, 2023, X^[12] user @redshibe_ joked about them being "matching pfps for couples 💕," receiving roughly 33,000 likes in six days (seen below, left).

On November 7th, 2023, X^[13] user @ozlako posted an exploited iteration that added stereotypical child signifiers, gaining roughly 21,000 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Reposts of the tweets as well as original iterations of the format spread on Instagram^[14] and iFunny^[15] during the same timeframe.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References