So there are many YouTube
videos out there. Some of them go viral and some don’t. What makes a video go
viral?
These
videos are just a sampling of videos that have gone viral. But almost all of
these videos have a real meaning to me and have gone viral, even if only to a select group or two.
I want to
start with what has been pegged as the first viral video ever to hit the world.
Or at least the USA, "The Angriest Man in the World," or as it is
titled in the documentary about it, "The Winnebago Man." Jack Rebney
is the man behind this magic. Now yes, this outtake reel is hysterical if not
insanely profane, but it also helped create the magic we now have called viral
videos. In the 80’s Jack retired from being a News Anchor because he was fed up
with how news was no longer just about the facts. After he left that job he became a Winnebago
Infomercial Salesman. This required him to help write and shoot an infomercial about Winnebagos. During the shoot he had a lot of troubles remembering his lines (despite the fact he wrote them!) and as a result swore. A lot.
The crew found this to be really funny, and found themselves taping these
outtakes so that they could make a blooper reel at the end of the shoot. Sadly
this video found its way into the hands of those in the upper management of the
Winnebago Company and Jack was let go. After that he vanished.
This
video however started to circulate across the country from filmmaker to
filmmaker. It was sent from friend to friend via VHS (old school!) and then
people would copy it several times and send back the copy they got from the
original owner and then send out new tapes to their friends. It was sort of a
you're in the club, and know what it's like to work with someone who can be
difficult, or always forgets their lines and then screams at everyone about it,
including themselves sometimes.
In the
documentary Ben Steinbauer (the maker of this film) stumbles upon this viral video of “The Angriest Man in the
World,” and decides that he would like to find and interview him. He sets off
on a mission to find him and finds that Jack had retired to the top of
a mountain to live as a caretaker of sorts of the lands at a park. In fact Jack
had no idea that this video was viral and that he was famous.
The
documentary follows Jack as he learns about his infamy or fame, and watching him use it
to forward his political messages against Dick Cheney and Walmart. In addition
to that this movie shows us about what it is like for someone who is just
trying to live their life and then have it interrupted due to the viral video.
In his case Jack makes good on it and is able to go slightly political with his
viewers.
Also
watching this documentary and what they talk about involving viral videos you
can see that what really makes a viral video take off and spiral out of control
is people sending it to their friends with the message of, “You are not going
to believe what I just saw!” or, “This is the funniest/most touching/cutest/sickest/etc.
thing that I have ever seen.” Then people click on the video because their
friends who they trust have watched it and watch it themselves. Then as they
watch it they are moved in whatever way that they are and they forward it to
their friends.
To view the trailer of the movie or the website for the documentary go here:
Now I
want to move onto some other viral videos that have made an impact on me, and
how they went viral when they did. The first one that I want to show is the one
that really touched me. It is of a young 21 year old Airman who is gay who is coming out to
his father. Randy Phillips calls his dad on Sept 20th 2011 which is the day that the
LGBT men and women of our armed services were finally released from their bonds
to DADT (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Here's an article from the U.S. Department of Defense about DADT and the WikiDADT WebPage.) and
are allowed to be open to being who they are.
This
video was actually really hard for me to watch at first. I had to have a friend
who posted in on Facebook tell me that it ends well. It goes really well with
his dad, but his mom doesn’t take it as well. Which is really interesting since
normally people think that is tends to go the other way due to all the
Hollywood movies and TV shows showing the dad as the one who is against it,
such as Queer As Folk with Justin’s (a character on the show) coming out.
Randy
actually talks about that in the follow up video where he comes out to his mom.
This video is also hard to watch for a few reasons. The first is that his mom
doesn’t take it as well as his father, but also because it is a bit hard to
hear her voice over the phone. In addition to that she starts in on the Bible
and how god apparently didn’t make gay people. One of the things that is good
about this video is that despite all the things his mom says, and she does say
that she’ll still love him, he manages to say that he is OK with himself and is
happy with who he is. This is important for all the kids out there who are
still scared of coming out and are trying to figure out who they are.
Another
really interesting thing is that Randy started making videos before it was ok
to come out as a gay soldier. What he did however was cut off his head from the
screen so only to have a shot of his chest. His first video is actually really
beautifully done here. He wanted to document his journey in coming out. You can
actually feel the fear and excitement from him as he is able to start making
this YouTube video. He is finally going to be able to come out and be who he
is.
The
first video of the three that I showed you went viral because of Rachel Maddow.
She posted it to her blog http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/ and I believe that she showed the clip on
air around the time it was posted. It then was spread all across Facebook. This
all happened right as the repeal of DADT happened. It was spread by people to
show those who were in doubt that there were LGBT members in our armed forces
that they existed and also to show that these people are human just like us.
The video had a lot of help becoming viral because of the topical subjects of
coming out, DADT repeal and Rachel Maddow talking about it. It is a great video
and I hope will continue to inspire kids and grownups alike in coming out and
showing the world that we are just like everybody else. In addition to Rachel Maddow there are tons of articles on Randy and his coming out story. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/who-is-randy-phillips/2011/09/20/gIQA2MYBjK_blog.html and http://abcnews.go.com/topics/sports/football/randy-phillips.htm Since the video's success Randy has now started recording workout videos on YouTube and plans to open his own gym someday. http://www.towleroad.com/2012/01/phillips.html
The final
viral video that I want to talk about for now is the infamous Rebecca Black
song Friday. The music video was a viral video over night. This is one of those
cases where a video went viral for the wrong reason. It went viral because it
was so bad and everyone had to show their friends so that they could make fun
of it.
The video
was released last year on September 16th, 2011. To date it has
27,950,540 hits on YouTube. There are still comments being posted to this day
on it. At this point there are 400,154. And in addition to that it is one of
the most disliked videos out there on YouTube with 587,630 dislikes compared to
140,370 likes. If you look at the graph that is under the video next to the
number of hits called show video statistics you can see that this video
spiraled into a viral hit with over 10 million views within two months of the
video coming online.
To this
day there are still people commenting on how this song is the worst thing that
they have ever seen and as YouTube user levig090 commented, “[T]his will be
used in future concentration camps.” It almost seems that still to this day
people are trying to one up each other for the most funny and horrible thing
that they can say. Most of the comments are really quite inappropriate.
This is
actually not that surprising because if you listen to the lyrics you’ll be
quite amazed (and in my case mortified) at the phrase, “Yesterday was Thursday,
Thursday. Today it is Friday, Friday. We, we, we, so excited. We so excited. We
gonna have a ball today. Tomorrow is Saturday and Sunday comes afterwards.” A
lot of my friends happen to be song writers and these lyrics offend them. Also
my friends who are not lyric writers were offended. Because of how bad the
lyrics are and Rebecca’s only OK performance it has become the video you wont
believe when you see it. That is yet another reason that it went viral.
Another
interesting reason that this video went viral is because of all the parodies
that were made for it. Thecomputernerd01
is a guy on YouTube who makes parodies of a bunch of different songs by
rewriting them and then singing them himself. His version of the song,
“Friday,” is called, “Tuesday,” because that’s his “favorite day of the week.”
The parody focuses on the absurdity of the lyrics in addition to the randomness
of the song as a whole. This version of the song also went viral with close to
6 million hits so far.
Another
parody is a personal favorite of mine, which is the ASL (American Sign
Language) version of this song. It doesn’t have as many hits (20,415), but in
my opinion, just like “Tuesday,” it is far more entertaining to watch then the
original video. While this song is more of a copy it was made so that those who
are deaf and or hard of hearing could understand what all the hype was about
Rebecca Black’s song when it first came out. While there are a few ASL videos
that have gone mainstream viral over 20,000 hits is really good for a video
where the main base are the deaf and hard of hearing.
There
are many videos that have gone viral and I plan to post a few more and their
interesting stories of how they became viral soon. To me a viral video can
slowly accumulate a ton of hits but still manage to reach a large audience in
addition to springing into the spotlight overnight. However just because it
only has 20,000 hits doesn’t mean it hasn’t gone viral in a specific group of
people. What are your thoughts on YouTube and viral videos?
~Jason
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