YouTube icon Ryan ‘NigaHiga’ Higa revealed he quit YouTube Rewind after being lied to about his apparent role in one of the videos.
To celebrate the end of the year, social media platforms have long been putting recaps together. The release of Spotify Wrapped is a big moment for every subscriber, but YouTube Rewind predates that.
Rewind was YouTube’s way of celebrating the last 12 months on the platform, bringing together memes, big moments, popular creators, and everything else in between for a star-studded video.
The series was discounted back in 2019, as viewers had started to turn on Rewind, with dislikes heavily outweighing likes. Ryan ‘NigaHiga’ Higa, who has more than 25 subscribers on YouTube, regularly appeared in the early Rewinds, but revealed he quit over “scummy” requests.
Ryan Higa explains why he stopped doing YouTube Rewind
“I stopped watching it since I didn’t have to spoof it anymore. I was a part of the first two. There was another one I was supposed to be a part of, and I specifically remember leaving mid-shoot because they lied to me,” the now-Twitch streamer said.
“I think they wanted me to dance in one of the shots and I said ‘no, thats alright, I don’t want to do it if I have to dance’ and they were like ‘ok, come and shoot this other thing.’ When I got there, I think I shot my scene and then they were like ‘ok, now its time for the dance scene and we need you to do this’ and I was like ‘nah, I’m not doing that.’
“So, I changed, caught an Uber and left. I literally left mid-shoot, and they were calling and I was like nah, we already talked about this. I never really wanted to do it again after that. I was straight up lied to and they tried to like convince me, once I was there, that it would be easy but I was like, nah, I’m good.”
The YouTube icon said it was “scummy” to ask him to do something that he’d specifically requested not to, even though he is happy to do plentyof extra work for shoots.
“If you specifically negotiate and say I’m not doing this thing and they try to get you to do that thing, thats scummy, and I will never forget that,” he added. “Although, I do forget who it was that we were talking to. That pissed me off because I was already doing it for free. Ever since then, I was not a fan of YouTube Rewind.”
Ryan added that he was asked to participate in Rewinds that followed that, but he turned them down as a result of that request.
YouTube has, as of 2025, launched a personalised recap for viewers, similar to Twitch’s end-of-year recap.
