April Fools’ Day, Anyone? YouTube Is Shutting Down After 8-Year Quest For Best Video

This can't be right.

This can’t be right.

We’re just gonna go ahead and take everything we read today with a giant grain of salt, as it just so happens to be April 1. In an April Fools’ joke that would likely devastate anyone who’s a fan of funny cat videos or 10-hour loops of Kate Upton on a runway, Google announced today that it’s shutting down YouTube tonight.

See, YouTube isn’t what you thought these last eight years — a place to watch videos — but has been instead, a contest to find the absolute best video in the world, And now, according to Tom Liston, the communications director at YouTube, it’s time to sort through all those “submissions.”

“Tonight at midnight, YouTube.com will no longer be accepting entries. After eight amazing years, it’s finally time to review everything that has been uploaded to our site and begin the process of selecting a winner.”

As one commenter on the video says, “This better be a joke or I’m never buying a computer again.”

Considering Antoine Dodson (“Hide yo wife, hide yo kids”) is a “judge,” we’re going to go ahead and guess this is an April Fools’ prank.  Or perhaps YouTube really will shut down until 2023.

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