How the Skibidi Toilet creator reportedly lost control of his viral empire
Skibidi Toilet exploded into a 65-billion-view phenomenon built by one guy. Now that creator says he’s “broke” and frozen out of his own creation, while the company that bought it tells a very different story. Here’s how it happened, and the messy legal reality no one fully agrees on.
It’s one of the strangest and most cautionary tales in internet history. Skibidi Toilet became a genuine global phenomenon, tens of billions of views, a movie in development, a merchandise empire, all built by a single animator. And now that creator says he’s been frozen out of his own creation and left “broke.”
But the company that bought the rights tells a completely different story. Here’s how the creator of one of the internet’s biggest sensations reportedly lost control of it, and the disputed, unresolved mess of where things actually stand.
First, how big Skibidi Toilet really is
Let’s establish the scale, because it’s staggering.
Skibidi Toilet began on February 7, 2023, as an 11-second joke video: a man’s head singing gibberish from inside a toilet. Created by Russian-Georgian animator Alexey Gerasimov (known online as DaFuq!?Boom!), it was made using video game tools like Valve’s Source Filmmaker and Garry’s Mod.
Then it exploded. The absurd little meme evolved into an ambitious, Terminator-style sci-fi war epic, with toilet invaders battling an army of humanoids with cameras and speakers for heads. Skibidi Toilet racked up an almost incomprehensible 65 billion views in 2023 alone, became a defining obsession of “Generation Alpha,” and drew coverage from the New York Times, Forbes, and CNN. Gerasimov, on his 47-million-subscriber channel, hand-crafted roughly two hours of this content largely by himself.
Naturally, Hollywood came knocking.
The deal that changed everything
Here’s the turning point.
In late 2023, Gerasimov signed over the rights to Skibidi Toilet to Invisible Narratives, a self-described “tra-digital” studio founded by former Paramount Pictures executive Adam Goodman. The company’s goal was to turn the meme into a mainstream juggernaut, complete with a feature film, Roblox games, and merchandise. (Transformers director Michael Bay was associated with the company and reported to be involved with the movie, though Bay himself later shut down a report that he was directing it.)
At first, this looked like a dream come true, a viral creator getting a Hollywood machine behind his work. But according to the creator himself, it curdled.
How the creator says he lost control
Here’s the version that set the internet on fire.
In November 2025, the Skibidi Toilet community erupted after a content creator called EliteBlueGuy shared Discord messages attributed to Gerasimov, messages Gerasimov later confirmed were legitimate. In them, he painted a bleak picture of his situation:
He said he felt “completely isolated from the process” of the Skibidi Toilet movie, claiming he’d received “no concepts, no updates,” and had only seen “bits of script.”
He indicated he was being excluded from creative decisions on his own series.
Most alarmingly, he described himself as “broke” and said he was “not being paid out.”
Fans also alleged that Invisible Narratives had taken control of Gerasimov’s YouTube channel and social media accounts, and that his original contract may have taken advantage of him as a non-native English speaker. Shortly after, another message appeared in which Gerasimov asked for his earlier critical statements to be deleted, which supporters interpreted as a sign he was under pressure from the company.
The fans revolted
Here’s how the community responded.
The Skibidi Toilet fandom, one of the most passionate on the internet, went to war. They launched the hashtag #bringboomback, flooding the comments of new videos with it, and started petitions demanding Invisible Narratives return control to Gerasimov, gathering thousands of signatures.
Fans obsessively analyzed every tiny change, when the DaFuq!?Boom! account changed its profile picture, when a playlist got updated, hunting for clues about their creator’s fate. In their eyes, a beloved solo artist had his life’s work taken by a corporation, and they weren’t going to let it go quietly.
The company tells a very different story
Here’s the crucial other side, because it flatly contradicts the tragic version.
Invisible Narratives disputes the “creator got robbed” narrative entirely. In a statement, a company representative said it was Gerasimov himself who approached them to sell his channel, wanting to escape “the nonstop grind” of animating every episode alone and being the constant public face of the franchise.
According to the company, Gerasimov didn’t lose his role, he changed it. They say he now serves as an Executive Producer who “oversees the creative direction of the series, reviews all episodes, and helps guide the storytelling,” and was even set to direct four episodes in the coming year. In their telling, this was a voluntary transition by an overwhelmed creator, not a hostile takeover.
Notably, Invisible Narratives did not deny that the Discord messages were real. So we’re left with two conflicting accounts: a creator expressing distress and financial stress in private messages, and a company describing a mutually agreed, creator-led transition. Both can’t be fully true, and outsiders can’t yet verify which version is closer to reality.
The other legal battle: the “IP theft” lawsuit
Here’s a twist that complicates the whole “evil corporation” framing.
While fans accuse Invisible Narratives of taking Skibidi Toilet from its creator, the company is simultaneously in federal court trying to protect the IP from someone else. In February 2025, Invisible Narratives sued a Dubai-based company called Next Level Apps Technology, accusing it of trying to “steal” the Skibidi Toilet IP by filing fraudulent trademark applications and abusing copyright-takedown requests to try to extract a settlement.
A federal judge granted Invisible Narratives a preliminary injunction in mid-2025 (blocking Next Level from filing takedowns), and the case is heading toward a likely trial. At one point, YouTube reportedly pulled the series for about a week over the tangled copyright claims. So the company fans see as the villain is, in this separate fight, positioned as the IP’s legal defender, a genuinely messy situation with no clean heroes.
Where things stand now
Here’s the honest state of play.
As of now, it’s unresolved and murky. Invisible Narratives owns the Skibidi Toilet rights and the DaFuq!?Boom! channel. Gerasimov, per the company, remains involved as an executive producer, though his own private messages suggested he felt sidelined and unpaid, and he hasn’t posted a clear public statement fully resolving the contradiction. The movie’s status is uncertain, and the once-booming fandom is fractured, with viewership reportedly suffering amid the turmoil. The Next Level lawsuit grinds on toward trial.
What’s clear is that nobody has emerged from this happy: not the creator, not the fans, and arguably not the company, which now owns a valuable property whose community actively resents it.
How the Skibidi Toilet creator lost control: what we know and don’t
The story of how Skibidi Toilet’s creator “lost it all” is real in its broad strokes, Alexey Gerasimov did sign over the rights to his viral empire, and he did later describe himself as broke and frozen out, sparking a genuine fan uprising. That much is documented.
But the full truth is genuinely contested. Invisible Narratives insists Gerasimov chose to sell and step back, and that he’s still creatively involved as an executive producer, not a victim. Both stories are on the table, and the private messages and the corporate statements point in opposite directions. It’s a cautionary tale for every creator who strikes it big online, about reading the fine print, understanding what you’re signing away, and what “selling your life’s work to Hollywood” can actually mean.
But it’s not yet the clean tragedy the internet wants it to be. Until Gerasimov speaks freely and clearly, or the contracts see daylight, exactly how the king of the toilets lost his throne remains, fittingly, a bit of a mess.
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Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
Hat Tips:
Aftermath and Courthouse News (2025-2026), verified for the factual backbone (Skibidi Toilet’s February 2023 origin, the 65 billion views, Gerasimov’s solo Source Filmmaker/Garry’s Mod production, the late-2023 rights sale to Invisible Narratives, founder Adam Goodman’s ex-Paramount background, and the federal Invisible Narratives v. Next Level Apps Technology lawsuit including the June 2025 preliminary injunction and likely 2026 trial)
Dexerto and TheGamer (November 2025), verified for the #bringboomback controversy (the EliteBlueGuy Discord messages attributed to and confirmed by Gerasimov, the “isolated from the process,” “broke,” and “not being paid out” claims, the allegations that Invisible Narratives took over his channel and social accounts, the deleted-messages incident, and the fan petitions), and Michael Bay shutting down the directing report
TheGamer and The Express Tribune (November 2025), verified for Invisible Narratives’ rebuttal statement (that Gerasimov approached them to sell his channel and step back from the grind, that he now serves as executive producer overseeing creative direction and reviewing episodes, and is set to direct four episodes), and the company not denying the legitimacy of the Discord messages