The Worst Pokemon Videos on YouTube 

One quazilion percent agree with you mate. Popular showdown content as of late just goes to show the worst out of the community, be it genuine or faked, it's not good for the image and wellbeing of the players. Sure its funny, but in appropriate doses, not spam quantities to the point where it's not even about the creativity of the content creator, but about the sheer toxicity of the opponent.

The overlapping “OH HOT HOT HOT” fucking killed me

The drag race analogy instantly gave me flashbacks to Zack's stupid "best at driving" discussion in Mario Kart Wii

I'm half expecting Tempt to comment on this, I'm pretty sure he watches the Australian Cinematic Universe.

I’ve never actually had anyone rage on Pokémon showdown in the chat. Everyone’s usually pretty nice and the closest to rage is just them leaving without even saying anything

Ooh Hopcat’s brave putting a picture of Verlislies on his Bad content list. Well done Mr. Hopcat. You’ve earned my full support in any action that guy takes against you!

Thank you for making this video! As someone in this realm of videos and referenced in the vid, I've love to give some of my input and I'll be sure to reach out to you with some of my content to review like you suggested! I started making 'Showdown Salt' videos about 4 years ago, when I was 14, and before it was a trend. I got the inspiration from "PhoenixMaster1" and his 2 videos on salty showdown interactions. I thought the concept was cool and my first few compilations were some personal battles I had archives, and as the videos started picking up attention, I transitioned to fan submissions for nearly every battle. While my videos back then were very amatuer editing-wise, I consistently sought to improve the quality over time. My upload schedule was very inconsistent, and as the pandemic rolled around, I got back into making videos - starting with the showdown salt montages and soon branching out into other categories of showdown content such as commentary with meme teams/genuine laddering teams, collabs with Pokeaim, Emvee, Elo Bandit, Garbodors, livestreams, and montages outside of 'salt'. The 'salt' itself mainly consisted of extremely lucky/unlucky or rare occurrences within battles, more than just the idea of raging opponents. Throughout my channel and descriptions I made it clear that 'salt' was an umbrella term that encompassed anything interesting or unique to watch. I stuck to this approach for a while, and as its success continued, that's when a lot of copycats started coming out. I couldn't blame them, people were responding positively, although I was slightly 'salty' myself at the idea of my content style being emulated and mass produced. But to their credit, temp6t especially, they were more consistent than me and uploaded daily - which is a double edged sword as imo it takes away from the quality... As I saw this style of content becoming more and more commodified, I have consistently aimed to put quality and originality before easy clicks/spammable uploading... and as a result my channel has plummeted in views. I say all this to hopefully provide some clarity and to make it apparent that I have purposely avoided this spammy style of content, so as to not be lumped in with this basket of other creators that are providing this different style you are describing in this video here. Weedle, Garbodors, and I were the first to make 'Showdown Salt' into a genre, and I think that as it has manifested into its current state, our old videos may unjustly be lumped into this new category at times. I'll be sure to reach out and let you see for yourself, as I'm confident in my style and would love to get the word out there! While we are on the topic of quality showdown content, I have to mention my buddy FIRE LORD AESON, who works for MONTHS on his videos, and deserves so much more attention!

Honestly, yeah, you're right about everything. The biggest issue that I think you overlooked was how these types of videos encourage harassment. Couple days ago I was playing unrated randbats and this dude just started being outright toxic for no reason. After the match I said gg, started building a team for a tournament I had later in the day and the dude DMs me and keeps harassing me. It ends with him saying he'll put me in a video, to which I ask "Isn't this just you harassing me and not making me salty?" He blocked me after that which was pretty funny but it put into perspective just how bad this was. Easy to make videos that'll net you 5 seconds of fame because they're easy to make, whether it be through faking it or harassing the opponent and editing out anything that makes you look like the bad guy

10:12 - I immediately died at the double "Hello there!" You may be in the wrong business after all, lmao.

The showdown salt genre has really been dragged down by these wannabes, but WeedleTwineedle videos absolutely never fail to amuse me. Between these and her commentated battle videos, it’s a pretty great channel.

I treat the Pokemon Showdown videos like wrestling: we know that 99% of it is fake, but it's fun to watch

I very much agree with this video. I got recommended temp a bunch not too long ago and I honestly didn't hate the sound effects and all that too much. The thing that got me was when people would be genuinely confused and sometimes not even being toxic and salty. They'd go "what, how'd you do that" or "what just happened" and rather than explaining to them or helping them he'll just go "I hacked the game/cheated" just to make these literal children angry because they don't know what's going on (assuming they aren't faked which is just a whole other issue). Like sure they didn't hover over your pokemon and look up the ability/move or are simply really bad at the game but it's just not funny to me and the whole "toxic salty noob" thing just seems in poor taste and really only making the toxicity worse. I really like seeing creative and unique teams or really skilled pokemon players in general but in this context it's really hard for me to enjoy though they always get loads of views and likes so I guess a lot of people just can't get enough of it.

The showdown content was good a few years ago when the only major showdown creator was Garbodors. Now all these new creators are making bad copies and the whole genre has devolved.

7:16 reminds me of the brick shoes conversation Peter and Zach had in the underdogs channel 😭 when they played mario kart and were arguing what makes a good driver

Hopcat is slowly becoming a commentary RU-vidr, and I for one, am all for it

I watched a few of these because they were kind of funny at first, but the sheer number of ridiculously salty encounters from the same person made me realize that they were 100% fake.

I honestly remember seeing someone just be the most annoying person and when the other person gets understandabley angry they pass it as salt

I know the Showdown clip is about how easy and low-effort this kind of content can be, but when the cockroach with the Darth Maul lightsaber showed up after Ninjask Swords Dance I fucking lost it. I guess the joke is on me!

Y'know I'm surprised he didn't talk about my channel in this video lol But yeah I see a lot of these types of videos here and there. Sad thing is most of these are faked. But I do like watching ones by Sacred Sky because some clips are submitted by other users battling on the ladder, making it (to me at least) more legit. This video really showed me actually how many "salty showdown legendary spammer kids cry salty tears nae nae" videos there really are. Great video!

Okay Hop’s attempt on this style of video was actually hilarious

Who's ready for the 10 videos that Verlisify is gonna make on this video which will all be 35 minutes long.

I’m a little shocked you made a video detailing exactly how I feel about these videos lol. Wasn’t expecting it, but you nailed it.

Temp’s nice and all, but I agree with Hop-it’s absolutely mean spirited to do this to kids. I’ve played competitive Pokémon before; I won tournaments at a regional scale back in the ORAS days. In the most local ones, anyone can enter, and the full team of legendaries was, 100% of the time, someone age 11 or younger. They do that because they simply don’t know better and don’t know how to play competitive yet, but want to get started. And if you’re that young, using the strongest Pokémon in the game seems to be the best way to win. Sure, you’re a noob and you play like it, but it’s not okay to shame kids for playing like kids. Titling the video honestly would be: “Beating and Publicly Shaming a 10 Year Old at a Hobby He Just Picked Up (MUST WATCH)” and that just ain’t it

This video sums up my thoughts really well. My friend was raving about a video where someone disguises Zoroark as a Magikarp and I just felt bad for the kid being shamed, when they clearly didn't know what Zoroark was Also, I spotted that Buttass vs Poppt1 joke lmao #Istandwithbuttass

Ive been following pokemon youtube for about 10 years and have been generally more focused around high level competitive channels like pokeaimmd. The part of this that irks me is that its just dunking on lower level players farming content like whats impressive about stomping people you are better than, it just makes the poster look like a bully. Thats not even getting into the ones that are fake.

I'm lucky to have born with the surprisingly rare ability to have fun even when I'm losing, so I used to just hop on gen 7 anything goes with a full team of hitmonlees named Bob, Lob, Gob, Dob, Rob, and David Von Cheese that only knew metronome and mimic, absolutely get obleterated and still have a great time.

I used to enjoy a few of these but this is such a good breakdown of these videos. Super funny take on it too Hop. Love to see you comfortable doing non smash stuff, while I love that content I enjoy everything you release!

Okay okay, so I agree. I have been seeing these thumbnails and I just thought they looked stupid so I never clicked on them, but it's almost tragic to see what people will do for clicks. It's soulless and uninspired. I totally agree with what you said. Now, full disclosure, I actually really enjoyed your gameplay segment. I know it was meant to show how dumb the concept is, however it was actually funny and the stock images and sounds did make me laugh. I'm not even that big of a pokemon fan, I'm honestly just a hopcat fan and that being the case I'm quite conflicted on enjoying that section of the video when you probably didn't intend for it.

It's not quite the exact same type of videos but I've always enjoyed Pokeaimmd and blunder's showdown sessions, be it them as a bunch of friends dicking around or solo and just having fun. Really worth checking out if you like some showdown vids

I tried showdown several years ago but didn’t really like it that much. There was a match up that ended in a stall war with someone who was streaming. That alone put me in awkward position

I have an amazing salt replay that I am still proud of. It's from the very top of Gen 8 ag, where I was against the very top of the leaderboard. At the end of the battle it was his ferrothorn vs my zekrom(might have had something in the back), and my set was sub-leftover-ddance, which completely destroys ferrothorn. So while I'm setting up, my opponent, the top of the ag leaderboard, says "Your team is shit" then "I won't lose" and then left. The replay should be under the name charizard=trash in the Gen 8 ag category if you want to watch it.

i think the random sounds and gifs played into my gen z humor bc i was dying during your showdown segment lmao

i do a bit of pokemon showdown salt on my channel except all the replays i use are mainly from smogon based-tournaments, and are all 100% real. i agree the genre is being beaten to the ground but im still showcase some of the interesting high level gameplay i've had in tournaments, and the "salty" editing style seems to appeal a lot of the pokemon demographic that isnt involved in such tournaments.

Viz's videos are actually genuine. he doesnt just make salty pokemon videos by himself, he asks people to send him salt replays and he makes vids of them. sure, the sound effects can be a little annoying sometimes, but i dont think theyre fake.

Bless Hop's soul, for once again suffering the pain of crappy content to create such an elaborate while also educational video that's just so entertaining.

Number 1: the hopcat channel. I’m kidding Peter I love you.

I fucking died with your own edit, it reminds me of people emphasizing the kitchen nightmares sound effects. If I hadn't known it was a parody, it'd look just like any other showdown video XD I also can't believe you got the same exact sound clips.

true video, don't blame anyone for not liking these videos because i don't like making them or watching them either. i am fully of the opinion that there's nothing wrong with using legendaries, especially not in the one tier that's literally built for it. "legend spam" teams are teams i use in serious gameplay, but those kinds of titles resonate best w/ the target audience for pokemon. fully aware of the same cuts, zoom ins, and vine boom sound effects every 2 seconds. completely intentional to keep the viewer attention like a MrBeast Gaming video unfortunately, these videos are what will be popular. because they will be popular, the mindset that the videos are super easy to replicate (as you also expressed in the video) will be popular too. that mindset is why so many new and small pokemon creators set out to replicate these videos, and is why it's become oversaturated. it's also the mindset i had when transitioning my content to this style in the first place. replicating the video style is only the first step, where actually improving on the content is where all of the new small creators fail. also i guess salt videos are my most popular but they take up less than 20% of my entire channel so i wish channels would chill with the daily salt narrative. i've uploaded so little salt as of late that i've seen comments asking if all the other youtubers have stolen the salty opponents from me LMAO i just think Artemis, showdown's auto-mod system, has been doing its job and cutting down on the amount of toxic players. my channel is still performing better than usual with minimal salt

pokemon showdown youtuber not using the "what the dog doin" sound effect the moment a canine pokemon enters the field challenge (instant fail)

at one point in the video it said "what does this have to do with anything" its a jojo reference, its a sound effect that plays when king crimson used his ability that basically is just substitute with extra steps

In my experience of showdown, I’ve only had ran into one person who I’d consider “toxic.” I still don’t know my type matchups by heart and I was learning to play gen 1 ou. Clicked a resisted move, tried to set up reflect not realizing reflect works differently in gen 1. They told me that “not even a noob would have made that mistake.” and Im just sitting here thinking that we’re at the bottom of the ladder. What could they be gaining from this?

4:55 This is the best description I’ve heard relating to these videos. As I’ve watched more Pokémon showdown, the less I’ve liked these types of videos. I never really liked them to begin with but now I find them annoying, especially with the monotone AI voice. If you like those videos, I’m fine with that, but it ain’t for me.

It’s these and “Hardcore platinum nuzlocke but I don’t use any Pokémon” videos

Yeah, idk if it’s just me but I’ve seen the exact same thing but over chess games. It’s honestly worse because chess isn’t that intense to begin with and there are literally thousands of the same thing. Super weird trend

As soon as I saw the thumbnail, I knew this was gonna be about Pokemon Showdown. Not being sarcastic but I love these react/rant type videos from you Hop 🤣

I 100% agree that the sound effects are WAY too much in the videos. I can slightly enjoy the content from time to time but the over abundance of sound effects definitely ends out putting me out of it. Probably why they seem to be shorter compilations now as well

I feel like HopCat has really honed in on his style in this video. This pacing is really well done. Good job Hop!

when I was playing showdown at school the person I was going against told me that I "needed to go outside and get some bitches" and then I just stood there bewildered...

THE VERLISIFY CALL OUT LMAOOO. Also, I like weedletwineedle because some of their teams are pure genius

Glad to be able to watch this when Poppt1 doesn’t upload

You should make a video with Zack of you two doing the randomized battles. Those are a lot of fun

Temp6t's content be faker than my dad bruh aw hell nawh

It’s so weird that a tempt6 video started playing in the middle of hopcats video

12:00 damn he just used pain split on the other guy's rating

I remember watching a tempt6 video one day, and it was funny then over the next week a watched a couple more as they showed up on my time line, but I did stop watching them after 4 or 5 because the novelty runs thin? It is funny seeing someone rage at first because you wonder how they can be so angry. However, when it is all the time it is kinda suspect. It has to be fake, even playing hundreds of battles has to be fake because like you said, most players would just leave before yelling at you constantly. If they were to rage, it would most likely be one rude sentence and then they would forfeit

This is one the best videos ive seen ina while. Keep up the great work

Banger video. Have not played mons in months but i remember these videos being the most annoying shit ever and im glad someone made a video addressing them

These videos are a total guilty pleasure for me but this video was really neat and seeing all of these channels taking it well in the comments is great!

this trend cringes me so much. you can tell they're faking that shit almost every time. temp6t is imo the biggest offender, but i swear every other week there's a new showdown salt channel

Omg Hop your parody of the salty showdown videos was hilarious. Love you :)

You might not see this but in temp6ts video he uses an account called “drop a draco” And in another video he faces that account and it is salty

I admit to starting to watch this stuff relatively recently. Partly because they're quick bites, partly because I'm trying to learn a bit about interesting strategies so I can get a little bit better at coming up with my own, and yeah, partly because sometimes seeing examples of people acting badly and venting my annoyance at the type is cathartic. Though it's not like I NEED them to have a source of that, I have other places, but still, sometimes that grunge does the trick. I don't disagree with you about the clickbaity titles, or that people shouldn't be harassed over it. Or that some of the content is likely faked - that's the nature of this kind of thing, there are always a few people who make stuff up. That said, I think that a bit too much is make of fakery, because art imitates life - if you can imagine a plausibly realistic scenario, there's a good chance that somewhere it's already happened to someone, maybe not precisely but close enough. My take is, if you do it well enough that it's not OBVIOUS that it's fake, I'm not going to complain about it. I do think more of it is real than you think, though...there are absolutely enough people in this world who act like that, even if you don't run into them. I haven't run into a terrible customer in my 35 years on this planet, but that surely doesn't mean the thousands of stories out there about them aren't real either. It just means you're fortunate enough not to have had that experience. (Location may also be a factor, though I don't know for sure, not having used Showdown or knowing much about its operation - here in the US, I think that problem is a lot worse than some other places, due to our culture.) This may be a controversial take, but I think sometimes you need the worst of something to get spammed before it gets better. And I think people behaving badly DO need to be called out, because too often people, especially over the internet, act like assholes because they think there are no consequences (which may or may not be true depending on where they're acting). Where there are no consequences, bad behavior proliferates, a thing we've seen all too much if in this world of late. Now, that doesn't mean they should be harassed or get death threats or stuff, because that's just perpetuating the problem, and I in no way would encourage or participate in such things - the consequences should be context-appropriate, like being removed from the platform or reputational damage. But there needs to be some measure of accountability for behavior, and people - even kids (who do still need extra protections, but being fully shielded from all consequences is not protecting them, it's encouraging them) - need to learn that just because they can use an avatar to mask themselves doesn't mean they have a license to be as nasty and toxic as they want to be. And if it's a problem on a particular platform, that platform getting a reputation may be what's needed for them to take action, if they actually do care about having a decent reputation. Which may have happened - I don't think it's an accident that I've seen significantly fewer of the 'toxic salty' videos more recently. This is all nothing new, of course - issues like these have been in existence for ages, and with regards to the Internet have been a problem since its inception. A problem with no good solution, because the ability to present something that isn't raw reality is part of the appeal of the Internet, and there are advantages to taking off some of the filters and inhibitions we would have face-to-face, particularly for folks who have struggles with social anxieties and such, so forcing "realness" would be pretty disastrous. But there can't be perfect insulation, either, because then people don't gen any feedback to curtail their worst impulses. It's not an easy realm to navigate, and I don't really think anyone has all the answers for it, but, well, that's what we need to figure out.

Ikr. I first saw those and watched like 20 of them before I completely decided these are all the same I don't care how board I am I'm done. I still have to tell youtube occasionally I don't want to watch tempt6's latest use settup move 6 times while stalling with sub and stuff while opponent does... something then spam one move to sweep them.

Is it weird that I somehow saw the difference between the three thumbnails and titles ( i watch two of the three so that might be why but I somehow knew which was which save the person i don't watch cause I had no clue who they were so i thought they were pineapplefred)

My boy, you've done it. I watched those videos for like an hour at work and your take is spot on. 😆🍻

The instant shade thrown in the beginning was an instant sub for me haha

that underdogs trailer was sick! give the editor a raise

I would love to see you play some normal competitive Pokemon or VGC.

Your showdown salt video was spot on. Obviously they are very easy to make but I'm still impressed at how accurate that was.

I only ever play either randomised teams or against a couple specific friends

I'm glad Hopcat doesn't care about hating others for being cringe, I would too if I were you so well done Hop

hey hopcat when your play mario kart 8 deluxe again. their are some inside drift bikes that exist and this is what there called. : comet : sport bike : master cycle (not master cycle zero) : yoshi bike : jet bike (and also there are probably more but i couldn't find any more)

I 100% agree I think it just being needlessly mean to someone because they got angry at Pokémon, the people who get angry at Pokémon are probably children and I guarantee the people who make the videos also get angry at Pokémon showdown, I know because it has happened to me.

gosh the spoof video at the end was so accurate I almost clicked off out of reflex.... Well done Peter

13:11 I thought he was gonna say "I challenge you to a battle"

And if you beat a person with a full team of legendary Pokemon with just a Magikarp. It would be hilarious for the person to suffer the Magikarp loss.

Wait this video was so good, I have no idea what this genre is (Gamer commentary? Lol) but if you get another idea for this please make more

I started watching some of them like 7 years or more ago, now not only I ignore them but I hope they are fake cause if not it means they keep harrassing people over and over for HOURS until someone snaps against them for the video; meanwhile ruining the showdown experience for EVERYONE else

As somebody who gets clickbaited by these sometimes, the "Lengedary Spammer" bit was always the weirdest thing for me. Like sure, it's cool to win with low tiers, but if you made it to the top of the ladder and people were still using legendaries, you probably wouldn't say the same thing. That and I really don't like when they have a banger playing and one of the overused sound effects has to entirely cut the music for some reason, usually for too long, and sometimes cuts the music multiple times in quick succession. It's like junk food that I gotta stop eating lmao Edit: Commented before seeing you make your own, and you absolutely nailed the editing

I used to be super into showdown and although I never reached anything massive on the elo rankings I got myself in some top 100's like Gen 7 Ubers, Gen 8 national dex AG, and Gen 7 PU for a small amount of time. In all that time I came across 1 person who got salty, and he got banned cos the stuff he said was Bad with a capital B. Most people are really nice, I even made a couple friends on there. This content damages the image of a side of the pokemon community that is actually pretty healthy in my eyes.

The only one I really got frustrated was when I got hit by a max sped scarf zap cannon foretress and then I got filled pared 4 times to lose in a match that would have got me in the top 50. I guess I was mad but I was more in shock of scarf zap cannon foretress.

I used to play Showdown! often, but then Gen 8 came out and I really didn’t care for Dynamaxing, so I stopped. Not sure if there’s a Nat Dex format where only Dynamax is banned. If there is, please tell me, lol.

I keep getting Pokémon showdown in my recommended and I don't even care about it because it's just Pokémon battles with a ton of dead memes played over them.

The first video you showed at 0:15 is by sacred sky who really started the whole genre, and dw he also hates how oversaturated the genre has become

Aww, I kind of like tempt. He tries to make to make it as silly as possible with nothing but over the top soundclips lol

8:07 that also sums up my showdown experience

I remember no being able to look anywhere without seeing “ULTRA OMEGA LEGENDARY SPAMMER SWEPT BY BURMY AND GETS MAD?!”

Lmao the buttass reference

Aye hop did u just give us a sneak peak of the next underdogs vid? The last bits aren’t in a vid yet I retract my statement it’s literally the trailer

I used to watch these videos a while back, and I watched a few recently and most of the videos are the youtuber egging on the opponent in the first place

Ok I’m not gonna lie boss, the first 10 seconds of that Pokémon showdown spoof was some GOOD content

Temp is the only one thats editing actually makes sense

Temp6t was definitely the one who started the sub-topic of these videos, he actually made decent stuff, and he has some voiceover videos with an actual voice.

Peter deserves a like for the suffering he went through

I really want one of these showdown creators to do the same video but about smash bros and how they’re all the same etc. Would be the ultimate troll.

I only watch them realizing that they are faked to learn about some fun game mechanics, like wide guard being able to be used multiple turns in a row.

Very insightful 👍🏻 never knew these channels existed and yeah, it is a little bit sad to pick on noobs

7:34 that’s how I see most of the smash montage “clips” they’re playing someone way worse than them

weedle twineedle is the only showdown salt content creator ill accept

I hate how accurate the video at the end was