One thing that YouTube does better than anything else is to help promote the strange and unusual and make it viral. The most well-known of these viral infections has to be a short music video by the name of “Gangnam Style”. Put together by artist Park Jae-sang (AKA Psy), the YouTube video for this song has reached nearly 600 millions views.
Repeat after me: 600 million freakin’ views.
That is a seriously ridiculous amount of views for one 4 minute music video. I mean, that’s a major percentage of the Earth’s entire population! Sure, some people are watching the damn thing over and over and over, but that’s still a crazy-ass number.
The question is: Why did it get so big, especially considering it’s in Korean and most people don’t even speak that language?
Well, probably because it happens to have everything that makes the recipe for success when it comes to viral videos. There is some goofy dancing, a catchy beat that gets lodged in your head like a bullet and enough sexy girls to keep most men happy. There is even a guy singing while sitting on the toilet - you really can’t beat that for unique and viral.
The original video became a massive sensation in a matter of weeks, being featured on all sorts of major news networks, talk shows and any media outlet you can think of. Psy was even invited to perform his song at a Dodgers game.
And with this viral madness came the waves upon waves of people who just had to make their own versions of the song. Some chose to make new videos for the original song while others instead parodied it and made up their own video and lyrics while retaining the original music and beat. Here are a few of those videos, some of the better ones I could find (and there are literally thousands of them out there).
