Viral Videos

            Recently in New Zealand, a researcher stumbled upon a tribe of people that had not yet seen a member of the outside world. They had no idea whatsoever that people existed outside of their tribe. The tribe is thought to be one of the last on earth that were completely “virgin” until found. Imagine what a shock it would be to completely believe one thing about life and find out that everything you believed was completely untrue. Nowadays people get their voices out in the open if they want to and even if they don’t want to. The whole concept of viral videos is new to most people. Viral videos are videos uploaded to the internet by random people. These videos end up having millions of views in a short period of time; the video is spread around the world quickly- hence the term “viral”.

            Sometimes people don’t even mean for their videos to become so big so quickly. I have seen more viral videos that have been sent to me by friends than commercials and ads put forth by politicians. So why do some videos become “viral” and others just flop and are completely ignored like the local Chico commercials? In class when comparing the videos of Makeba and Fassie, a few different things were brought up. The first thing brought up was that Makeba’s video was in English. I definitely did not agree with this comment. First of all, there are tons of videos out there with no speaking at all or videos in a different language that get picked up. I feel the main reason Makeba’s video was so popular was because she performed with another famous artist; this definitely brought her into the spotlight.

            Another student brought up the fact that if someone with money says it is a good thing, then people will automatically watch it. I definitely disagree with this. I have worked on two television shows in Hollywood the past two summers. It is not hard to make a bad television show that people won’t watch. It all comes down to whether or not it is appealing to the people, and everyone is different.