This vid is not very technological. Okay, it's not at all, but it is brilliant video anyway.
Truly amazing!
Yeah okay, so it was only a publicity stunt for some reality TV show, but nobody cares, everyone just loves the video, and i'm one of them...
Now for a bit more off-topic rant on that most favoured of philosophical conversations. Internet sociology. And as an example, so-called viral videos are an amazing concept alone. Not only do they implicate that humans are in fact connected to a lot more people than it seems, but they must be, in all honesty, the fastest spreading anything. Like, i'm talking living, or otherwise. Take the 'Rick Roll' phenomenon, one of the longest-lasting, most widespread, and best remembered of the virals. It lasted for many months upon months, caught god-knows-how-many people and introduced a whole new phrase into the lexicon.
This particular one is likely to join some of the other virals, as a short-lived, quickly-forgotten, but much-loved memory. But look at the speeds involved. The actual incident was on the 23 March, less than a month ago, in Antwerp. It is going to take some time for all the various footage to come together and be released, so now we are talking weeks, but coming out of the editing room (which is just as likely to be some guys room in the basement of his mum's house), it would simply be a file floating around the Net. Another couple of days for it to be discovered, it catches on, and then FOOOOOM!! It explodes across every popular channel on the Net and otherwise, and becomes part of the illustrious "viral league".
Quick word on the first issue, which ties into this incredible speed, is the breadth of its expansion. Sure, it takes a lot for a video to make the jump from Internet sensation to cross-media phenomenon, but some have done it. Even if we deal with these Internet-only vids, there is still an incredible amount of people involved. Just looking at the first 6 or so videos, just off YouTube, I have come up with a juicy 2,525,214 views. Yes, 2 and a half million. Admittedly, some will be repeat views, but they would only make a small amount, and on the larger scale, that's a lot of people. More than 10% (12.02% to be vaguely accurate) of the population of Australia, for example...
And that's just the first page of one video host. I would put my guess at the larger side of 5 million, once you have all the main video sites rounded up. And, as such, it deserves the title of viral...
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14 years ago
