Skibidi Toilet
Skibidi Toilet began on February 7th 2023 as a short absurdist YouTube animation about a singing human head emerging from a toilet. It was created by Alexey Gerasimov, an independent animator posting under the channel name “DaFuq!?Boom!”, who created the series in Valve’s Source Filmmaker, with assets used under their Video Policy.
What had started as an 11 second throwaway joke quickly evolved into a serialized Sci-Fi action story about a war between humans infected by a virus (the Skibidi Toilets), a fleet of alien invaders (the Astro Toilets) and robotic humanoid protagonists known as Cameramen, Speakermen, and TV Men.
Within months of the first short, Gerasimov was posting multiple episodes per week, each one expanding the lore and production scale of the series. By mid 2023, Skibidi Toilet had amassed tens of billions of views and was being discussed in outlets ranging from Rolling Stone to The New York Times as a defining cultural artifact of Generation Alpha. Gerasimov had built this almost entirely alone, single-handedly animating every episode while managing a channel that was briefly gaining subscribers faster than almost any other on the platform.
Invisible Narratives
This explosive success attracted the attention of Adam Goodman, a former head of Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks SKG who had helped produce franchises including Transformers, Paranormal Activity, and Interstellar. Goodman had founded Invisible Narratives in 2018, a self described “Tra-Digital” studio built on the premise that the next great media franchises would not originate in Hollywood but online. When Goodman encountered Gerasimov’s work, he initiated contact.
The circumstances that led Gerasimov to transfer his intellectual property rights to Invisible Narratives were the product of several converging motivations. By all available accounts, the decision was driven by a combination of practical pressures and genuine ambitions. These included his desire was to expand the brand beyond YouTube into merchandise, gaming, and licensing partnerships; the appeal of the commercial opportunities Invisible Narratives was promising, including Roblox deals, toy lines, and retail relationships; the prospect of a major film adaptation with Hollywood infrastructure behind it and the background pressure of ongoing DMCA attacks against the channel from scam operators who were exploiting YouTube’s copyright strike system.
Gerasimov was, at the time, a solo creator managing one of the fastest-growing channels on the platform entirely by himself. He had no team, no legal infrastructure, and no institutional support for the business side of what had become a global franchise. Invisible Narratives presented itself as the entity that could handle all of this, they offered assistance with brand partnerships, merchandise, legal protection, Hollywood connections, and the long-term development of the IP into a multi-platform property. These promises, collectively formed the basis of the deal.
October 12, 2023
On October 12th, 2023, Gerasimov signed. Court documents later confirmed the exact legal language: “Boom assigned to Invisible Narratives all rights to the Skibidi Toilet series and concept, including all Skibidi Toilet videos and other content existing at that time or later created.” This was not a licensing agreement. It was a full assignment. Invisible Narratives became the legal owner of Skibidi Toilet, its characters, its universe, its trademarks, and the intellectual property underpinning the entire franchise. Gerasimov retained, for the time being, his creative role, but the ownership had formally changed hands.
Further reading: https://www.courthousenews.com/skibidi-toilet-studio-battles-for-ownership-of-its-multimillion-dollar-ip/
It is worth noting a significant factual detail regarding the false DMCA strikes that had plagued the channel in the lead-up to the deal. Statements later attributed to Gerasimov himself indicate that the attacks were not resolved by Invisible Narratives, but by the popular YouTuber and streamer “MoistCr1TiKaL” also known as Penguinz0. According to claims surfaced by Skibidi Toilet creator Elite Cameraman and corroborated by a leaked email, Gerasimov confirmed in writing that Penguinz0 had been the one to help get the early strikes removed from his channel, adding that the two subsequently lost contact due to “administrative changes around [his] accounts.” This is a meaningful distinction: one of the key justifications Invisible Narratives could point to for the value it brought to the partnership protection from copyright attacks, may not have been delivered by Invisible Narratives at all.
The DMCA attacks subsided by December 2023, with the strikes removed through channels independent of the company that now owned the IP. In February 2024, Invisible Narratives formally registered copyright in the United States for key Skibidi Toilet characters, including Titan Cameraman and three other works, establishing the institutional legal basis it would later use for IP enforcement against fan creators, rival claimants, and third-party platforms alike.
Another reason for the transfer is because of income laws. According to an ex-employee account, Gerasimov was located in either Georgia or Russia during the series’ explosive early growth. U.S. sanctions imposed after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine created significant practical barriers. According to that account, as a Russian national he reportedly could not easily collect revenue from new partnerships, licensing deals, or merchandising. His pre-existing YouTube AdSense account continued to function because it predated the invasion, but “nothing else he could collect or gain from it.”
Despite being the “actual copyright owner of his creation,” he reportedly “couldn’t make claims or partnerships” without a US-based intermediary. Inviz was presented as the solution: a U.S.-based intermediary capable of scaling the brand and securing partnerships. The ex-employee further claimed the deal included promises of migration assistance (including paying for attorneys) and a clause tying full payment collection to Gerasimov’s migration to the US, which allegedly never materialized. The account asserts that Invisible Narratives collected money from expanded revenue streams but never paid him, leaving Gerasimov without a dollar from non-YouTube sources at the time the statement was made. These claims however remain anecdotal and unverified in court, and Invisible Narratives has strongly denied exploitation, stating that Gerasimov has earned substantially through YouTube, merch, games, and licensing.
The rights transfer remained largely invisible to the public through the first half of 2024. Gerasimov continued to produce and publish episodes, maintaining the appearance of an independent creator driven series. This changed dramatically in late July 2024
July 2024
Invisible Narratives publicly announced its plans for the Skibidi Toilet franchise: a film adaptation, television potential, and expanded commercial partnerships, with blockbuster director Michael Bay attached as Chief Creative Advisor.
Almost immediately after the announcement, the first major public controversy erupted. Garry Newman, creator of the iconic sandbox game Garry’s Mod, revealed on the S&box Discord server that his game had received a DMCA notice related to Skibidi Toilet characters. The letter, signed with an @inviz.tv email address, identified four characters as registered copyrights: Titan Cameraman, Titan Speakerman, Titan TV Man, and Skibidi Toilet, they also alleged that Garry’s Mod workshop items were generating “significant revenue” through their unauthorized use.
Non-Skibidi Toilet fans were outraged. Skibidi Toilet exists because of Garry’s Mod. Gerasimov had built the entire series using Source FilmMaker in conjunction with character models derived from Garry’s Mod and Valve’s Half Life 2 assets. The most iconic characters in the franchise were built using Male 07 and G-Man models from Half-Life 2. The strike was perceived as a corporate entity asserting ownership over characters whose visual foundations rested on third-party game assets, while simultaneously threatening the sandbox platform that made those characters possible.
Gerasimov himself was caught off guard. Appearing in the S&box Discord, he wrote publicly: “Is there a way to contact Garry? I did NOT strike Garry’s Mod and I’m trying to understand what else is written in the letter!” The message was significant: it revealed that Invisible Narratives had acted on the IP rights without informing or consulting the original creator. Gerasimov was discovering, alongside the public, that his former creation was now being used as legal leverage by a third party.
Newman later confirmed to IGN that the DMCA notice had actually been received months earlier, “DaFuq has been in touch, all resolved,” he added. This suggests that Invisible Narratives had been quietly asserting its newly acquired rights before its public franchise announcement. Gerasimov contacted Newman directly and the notice was dropped. Invisible Narratives did not issue a public statement at the time.
The situation was revealing in structural terms. It demonstrated that Invisible Narratives was operating with an IP enforcement posture that outpaced both its public communications strategy and its coordination with the original creator. Gerasimov’s public confusion was not performative, it reflected a genuine gap between what Invisible Narratives was doing in his name and what he had been informed about. This apparent asymmetry would become a defining feature of the partnership’s later controversies.
One of the most consequential aspects of Invisible Narratives’ post-acquisition strategy was how it approached the extensive fan creator ecosystem that had grown organically around Skibidi Toilet. Hundreds of channels had built audiences by producing what-if animations, lore analyses, reaction videos, and original ST universes content. This ecosystem had been central to the franchise’s cultural spread and now Invisible Narratives owned the IP those creators were building on.
The “Creator Alliance”
Throughout 2024, fan creators began receiving copyright strikes and claims against their videos, with the notices traceable to Invisible Narratives. The approach was not simply punitive, it was also used as a recruitment mechanism. Creators who received strikes were simultaneously approached with an invitation to join the “Skibidi Creator Alliance”, an MCN (multi channel network) structure through which their revenue would route via Invisible Narratives before being paid out. Signing meant protection from further strikes and not signing meant continued exposure.
The experience of Dydder Floutin, a Belarusian SFM animator with more than 750,000 subscribers, illustrates the dynamic. Floutin described receiving a direct Discord message from someone representing Invisible Narratives, informing him that the company held rights to the franchise, that they were interested in his channel, and that his failure to respond to prior outreach meant they would be proceeding with strikes.
Having missed the messages amid the volume of fan interactions on his account, Floutin found his channel hit with more than three copyright strikes in succession, enough to temporarily suspend his entire channel. The strikes were eventually lifted, but the sequence made the dynamic explicit: unresponsiveness to corporate outreach could result in channel termination, regardless of the creative quality or goodwill of the work being produced.
The Creator Alliance itself was presented to potential members in aspirational terms. Spanish creator Ibio75 described being pitched the Alliance as a way to earn money from official Skibidi merchandise through affiliate links and to connect with other top animators and creators within the Skibidi fandom.
In practice, however, the Alliance delivered little for those who signed. According to ten creators who spoke with Aftermath, the promised benefits failed to materialize. Contracts signed by half of the interviewed creators gave up control of their monetization and required them to run ads. Creators who refused compliance risked further strikes. Some who had signed reported receiving payments late and receiving almost nothing from the arrangement beyond immunity from takedowns. One creator, Iron Cameraman (700,000 subscribers), summarized the experience: “We had such a fun indie vibe, with no obligations and no control from above. And now that’s being taken away from us.”
Invisible Narratives disputed this characterization, stating that contracts are designed to protect both parties and that IP enforcement actions were a legitimate defense of their intellectual property. In October 2024, the company hired content management firm Bent Pixels to systematize its copyright claim operations, further centralizing and scaling its enforcement activity across the creator ecosystem.
These events in 2024 also established an important precedent which is that Gerasimov was publicly and credibly distanced from actions taken in his name. His Discord message during the Garry’s Mod controversy expressed genuine confusion about a DMCA notice filed by his IP owner. He signaled to the community that the creator and the corporation were not always operating in coordination. That gap between creators and corporate controllers would only grow more visible.
These early tensions set the conditions for the larger crisis that would erupt in November 2025, when leaked messages attributed to Gerasimov would bring these dynamics fully into public view.