Gone Viral

The Ted Talk by Kevin Allocca was quite insightful, showing us how tastemakers (quite often celebrities) begin trends for videos to go viral. This is much easier today through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. But wait. Isn't YouTube also a social media website within its own right? It has similar interactions of sharing, commenting, and networking with other users as other social media sites. It allows tribes of people, as Seth Godin calls groups of people with similar interests, to connect in yet another way. And yet to me it appears that most videos that went viral in 2011 were not connected to a specific tribe. Nor were they a call to action. Instead, most seemed to be pointless and funny or adorably cute, with an auto-tuned pop song and an auto commercial thrown in. It appears to me that the majority of viewers are in for quick, rapid fire, easy-to-get entertainment. Some of which became lucky enough to become a pop culture phenomenon either in its universal berating (Rebecca Black's Friday) or by ease of reference and the humor related to it (Honey Badger).

The top ten viral videos of 2011 according to TIME magazine were:

1. Friday - Rebecca Black
2. The Homeless Man With the Golden Voice
3. Volkswagen's "The Force" Commercial
4. Jack Sparrow - Michael Bolton & Lonely Island
5. Father-Daughter Duet (A father and his little girl singing Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes.
6. Webcam 101 for Seniors
7. My Drunk Kitchen: Brunch?
8. Anderson Cooper Cracks Up
9. Dancing Thom Yorke
10. Honey Badger

Interestingly enough the Like/Dislike button has been disable for Friday. Perhaps once outclassing none other than Justin Bieber for the most disliked video on YouTube requires such dire actions.

Now I will go and clean out my browser history after even typing the words "Rebecca Black" and "Justin Bieber" into this blog.