There is no official, objective ranking of the funniest YouTube videos ever made. The best answer is a watchable cross-section of the platform’s comedy history: accidental family moments, animal clips, reactions, sketches, parody songs, dance performances and surreal edits. The selections below are editorial recommendations, not a claim that view counts prove a joke is funny.
How this list defines “funniest”
YouTube comedy has never belonged to one format. Its early hits included ordinary people uploading brief moments from family life, while professional creators and comedy companies later brought scripted sketches, music videos and parody formats to the same platform. YouTube’s 2013 comedy curation, reported by The Daily Dot, treated both kinds of video as part of the medium’s emerging canon. TechRadar’s 2025 staff retrospective shows how later lists broadened that canon with remix culture, reaction videos and creator-led formats.
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I have therefore weighed five practical qualities: the form of the joke, cultural staying power, originality or influence, whether the idea remains understandable today, and whether a legitimate upload is likely to be watchable. Availability changes, especially for very old viral clips, so search for an official or rights-holder upload rather than assuming that the first result is the original.
The shortlist
| Video | Comedy form | Why it belongs | Watchability note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Charlie Bit My Finger | Spontaneous family moment | A tiny interaction between brothers became an early example of YouTube turning an unplanned domestic scene into shared global comedy. | Original-upload status has changed over time; confirm the current legitimate source. |
| David After Dentist | Home-video reaction | The child’s post-dentist confusion became a widely recognized reference for the strange behavior that follows anesthesia. | Its humor depends on the unpolished, brief home-video style. |
| Twin-baby videos | Baby-and-family clip | YouTube’s 2013 comedy selection showed how ordinary baby interactions could work as visual, nearly language-free comedy. | “Twin babies” describes a group of early viral clips rather than one single canonical upload. |
| Sneezing panda | Animal surprise | The sudden sneeze is an almost perfectly timed physical gag, requiring no dialogue or cultural context. | Look for an authorized upload because animal-video titles are frequently copied. |
| The Lonely Island — “I’m On A Boat” | Comedy music video | Its polished production and deliberately overblown rap parody provide a sharp contrast with accidental home footage. | It contains adult language and works best as a produced music-video spoof. |
| Evolution of Dance | Dance performance | Judson Laipply’s rapidly changing dance routine became a landmark performance video and a durable example of simple escalation. | Its appeal is built around recognition and physical timing rather than a narrative sketch. |
| Double Rainbow | Reaction video | The comedy comes from the creator’s escalating, sincere amazement at a double rainbow—a reaction so intense that it becomes the event. | The original’s energy is the point; shorter reposts can lose the buildup. |
| HowToBasic | Surreal tutorial parody | The format imitates instructional videos and then destroys their promise of orderly explanation through escalating absurdity. | Some older jokes may not have aged well, so choose episodes selectively. |
| Potter Puppet Pals: “The Mysterious Ticking Noise” | Puppet musical parody | A repetitive song, recognizable characters and increasingly silly mystery make it a concise example of internet-native musical comedy. | Its references are clearest to viewers familiar with the Harry Potter characters. |
| Yee | Ultra-short remix edit | This extremely brief surreal clip represents a YouTube tradition in which editing, repetition and nonsensical sound become the joke. | It is best treated as a micro-dose of absurdism, not a conventional sketch. |
Why the early viral clips still work
Charlie Bit My Finger
Howard Davies-Carr filmed and uploaded the family video in 2007, according to TIME’s 2021 account. The clip’s structure is almost impossibly clear: a toddler bites his brother’s finger, the brother reacts, and the younger child repeats the line that became the title. Matthew Liu, a YouTube product manager at the time, recalled that “This video, in particular, really captivated the entire world’s imagination.” TIME reported more than 880 million views in 2021, a historical figure rather than a current count. The same article described a planned NFT auction and departure from YouTube at that time, which is why present-day availability should be checked rather than assumed.
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David After Dentist
This clip became shorthand for the disoriented, unexpectedly philosophical things people say after dental anesthesia. Its appeal is not a crafted punchline; it is the mismatch between the child’s earnest questions and the adults’ attempt to understand him. That candid quality is exactly what made early YouTube feel different from television comedy.
Baby and animal moments
The twin-baby clips and sneezing-panda example highlighted in YouTube’s 2013 curation show an important early pattern: very short videos could travel internationally when the joke was visible without translation. A sneeze, a startled expression or two babies reacting to each other supplies its own setup and payoff.
Rank #2
When YouTube comedy became deliberately produced
“I’m On A Boat”
The Lonely Island’s parody music video demonstrates how YouTube could host work made with professional performers, songwriting and editing while preserving the platform’s direct, shareable sensibility. YouTube’s 2013 comedy selection placed it alongside homemade clips, making the contrast part of the story: “funny YouTube” was already a spectrum, not a genre with one production standard.
Evolution of Dance
Judson Laipply’s performance is a chain of recognizable dance fragments presented with increasing speed and commitment. Its joke is cumulative: each new move asks the viewer to identify it, then wait for the next escalation. TechRadar included it among its 2025 staff favorites as a landmark of YouTube-era performance video.
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Reaction, parody and absurdist editing
Double Rainbow
Many reaction videos explain why something is funny; Double Rainbow is funny because the reaction is so overwhelming that it becomes the spectacle. The clip’s sincerity matters. It is not a character pretending to be impressed, but an unfiltered response that grows more ecstatic with every repetition.
HowToBasic
HowToBasic takes the visual language of recipe and tutorial videos—titles, demonstrations and confident instructions—and turns it into controlled chaos. The format is influential because viewers understand the promised structure before the creator sabotages it. Older installments can contain jokes that feel dated, so this is a case where a “best of” approach is more useful than watching chronologically.
Rank #4
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Potter Puppet Pals
“The Mysterious Ticking Noise” uses puppets, a repeated melody and a familiar fictional cast to build a deliberately foolish musical payoff. Its compact structure makes it easy to revisit, while its fan-fiction-like treatment of a major franchise captures the participatory tone of mid-2000s internet culture.
Yee
Yee belongs to a different branch of YouTube humor: the edit so short and strange that explanation would weaken it. Sound, timing and repetition do the work. It is useful on this list because not every influential online joke resembles a sketch or a story.
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How YouTube shaped this comedy canon
YouTube’s infrastructure encouraged the mixture of amateur and professional comedy. In November 2009, the platform announced a partnership with Funny or Die, describing the site as “Will Ferrell’s comedy think-tank” and promoting a collection of classic and regularly updated videos. In May 2013, YouTube’s first Comedy Week brought Hollywood participants and established YouTubers together around the platform’s eighth birthday. Those initiatives helped normalize the idea that a personal upload, a studio-backed parody and a creator series could all compete for the same audience.
The canon has always been selective rather than scientific. TIME reported in 2014 that video editor Luc Bergeron reviewed 233 viral videos for a seven-minute annual supercut. That number describes the clips considered for one compilation; it is not a measurement of how funny YouTube was, nor a platform-wide ranking.
How to make your own watchlist
- Start with the format you enjoy. Choose spontaneous clips for warmth, sketches for constructed jokes, reactions for personality, or remixes for surreal editing.
- Verify the upload. Prefer the creator’s channel, a rights-holder account or an established publisher. Old viral videos are often reposted under misleading titles.
- Check the context. Look for adult language, dated references or jokes that may now feel uncomfortable before sharing a clip with children or in a public setting.
- Use historical claims carefully. View counts, availability and ownership can change; a number reported in an older article is not automatically current.
- Mix eras and formats. Pair a home-video classic with a produced parody, a reaction and a short absurd edit so the list reflects YouTube rather than one narrow style.
What “all time” can—and cannot—mean
“All time” is useful as a promise of range, not as a measurable championship. YouTube’s 2013 selection was an editorial snapshot by trends manager Kevin Allocca, and TechRadar’s 2025 list was explicitly a staff-favorites retrospective. Both are evidence of what editors and audiences remember, not permanent official rankings. Humor also varies by age, language, cultural context and tolerance for chaos. A strong personal list can disagree with this one and still be right for its audience.
For a balanced starting point, watch one clip from each branch: Charlie Bit My Finger for accidental family comedy, “I’m On A Boat” for polished parody, Double Rainbow for reaction humor, Potter Puppet Pals for musical absurdity and Yee for remix culture. Together they show why YouTube’s funniest history is less a leaderboard than a collection of radically different ways to make a few seconds memorable.
Quick Recap
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