What works as a viral video? What type of video are you, as a viewer, want to send all your friends, and they in turn will want to send to all their friends and so on until the "virus" effect of the video has spread to millions?
There is no real, good examples of what makes a video becomes viral.
The video has been Viral
Why has Paul Potts video (from
Why did Will Ferrell's The Landlord will be the backbone of his entire FunnyorDie website? Because it was fun, and more importantly, had Will Ferrell in it.
Why Cheerleader Getting run over by a football team becomes viral? Because it was extreme?
Why did 2 Girls 1 Cup (we refuse to link this video), the most vile and disgusting video of all time becomes viral? More on that later.
Are these videos have nothing in common? Do they have an identifiable feature that makes them tradable?
"These videos are something innate in them that makes people want to see them again and again," explains Chris, a prominent Independent Film Producer from
"I've seen videos fail that featured huge stars and good writing ... and they were funny," says Joey, a Hollywood writer: "They had simply not viral in nature."
Or in the case of a video like The Glitch, featuring American Pie's Jason Biggs ... little too long.
"People have 30 seconds to 2 minutes to watch a clip at work before they are caught," says Tom, an actor from
The most odious Video Ever - Why are people Watching it?
2 Girls 1 Cup is perhaps the most graphically disgusting video of all time. It is equipped with two women celebrations, let's just say "fecal matter". Why have all be aware of it? What was the attraction? It is not known.
After the video went viral, a stream of "reaction" videos surface. These videos were mainly friends filmed other friends see 2 Girls 1 Cup and trying to catch their reaction as most of the time was a gut wrenching puke.
These reactions videos were more popular than the original video itself, but also served to place the original video accidental with the logic, "If the reaction is so bad, I've gotta see it!"
There are even fake "spoof" reaction videos pop up, the newest has Kermit the Frog watch the video and responds with profanity.
Another spoof is "2 Guys 1 Cup featuring John Mayer" which incidentally is not an offensive video set to the same music, but featuring two guys who share a cup of ice.
Difficult to define
Viral video is hard to define but it is fast becoming its own genre.
I had a college professor once, in an attempt to define poetry, says:
"Poetry is like pornography. It is hard to define, you know, when you see it."
Substitute "Viral Video" for "poetry" and you have one definition of viral video genre worthy Webster.
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