Viral Videos

Everyone wants to famous. And in our current culture of YouTube, blogs, reality shows, viral videos, and the power of the Internet it is increasing easy to do so.

In his TED Talk, aptly named “Why Videos Go Viral”, Kevin Allocca, a YouTube trend manager, discusses the characteristics of new media. New media is a new kind of culture where anyone has access to it and the audience defines the popularity of the media.

The three components of a viral video:

1. Tastemakers
2. Participation
3. Unexpectedness

A tastemaker is someone who judges what is good, fashionable, funny, et cetera; the judgments are accepted and followed by other people. For example, the viral video “Double Rainbow” only became extremely popular months after it was uploaded because Jimmy Kimmel tweeted about it. This boosted the video because tastemakers like Jimmy Kimmel are mediators who filter new and interesting things before bringing the “best” to a larger audience, accelerating the popularity process.

Community participation is a fundamental element of viral videos. When people make parodies, critiques, reviews, reactions, and links they are spreading the original video by doing so. For example, “Nyan Cat” has been changed, adapted, remixed, et cetera. People can enjoy media more through participate.

Unexpectedness is important to creating popular videos. Only the unique and unexpected stand out among the millions of hours of videos floating around on the Internet. For example, in the video “Bike Lanes by Casey Neistat” a NYC cyclist was ticketed for not riding in the bike lanes. He told the ticketing officer that the bike lanes are not always the safest place to bike. To respond the lack of safety and unsafe obstacles in the bike lanes, he created a video of him riding in the bike lanes but hitting everything that stood in his way, including: cars, construction cones, people, and trashcans. The video is surprising, humorous, and, above all, unexpected. As such, the video was well received, passed around, and became viral.

In today’s age of the Internet, it’s important for everyone to remember that the audience is the publisher. People deicide what articles they like or don’t like, which picture they emotionally respond to, who’s going to make it or break it, which info-graphics are informative, and videos quizzes are entertaining.