Ariana Grande "Thank U, Next" Video Sinks YouTube's Comments

Ariana Grande broke YouTube today, in a manner of speaking. The pop singer's anticipated "thank u, next" music video went live on the video destination today, resulting in a mass of viewers that overloaded the platform. YouTube revealed in a tweet that it was unable to handle the huge influx of comments, resulting in a posting delay.

Around 11AM ET, YouTube Music started the countdown for Grande's music video, inviting users to watch it and join in on the video's chat. The video, at the time of writing, has more than 11.5 million views and nearly 200,000 comments. Comments appear to be publishing immediately now, but that wasn't the case earlier today.

In a subsequent tweet, YouTube said on its Team YouTube account this afternoon, "@ArianaGrande the thank u, next video was so good, it broke the internet (or at least delayed YouTube comments from posting for a bit)." The account also went on to clarify, "Comments are still working on the video, they're just delayed!"

It's unclear what the video's current view count is, as YouTube has continually pointed out that its platform often slows down or freezes view counts while verifying that the views are authentic — meaning they come from human viewers and not bots. However, the system continues to count the authentic views in the background and updates periodically.

It's yet to be seen whether the video manages to set a new 24-hour viewer record; the honor recently went to BTS's "Idol" video, which got around 45 million views in its first 24 hours on the platform. Before that, Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do" held the record at 43.2 million views in a single day.