What does it take to make a video viral? Why will people watch them time after time? The recent Internet blow up of “Friday” by Rebecca Black has over 30 million views on YouTube alone, and it is still climbing. Also, former UCLA student Alexandra Wallace also created a controversial video on YouTube, insulting the entire Asian community. Even though she deleted it soon after uploading it, the video gained millions of views. What about these videos made them such internet phenomenons?

The first time I saw the Rebecca Black video was back when it had about eight million views. After watching it, I was appalled at the high number of views, as the video had little more to offer than mediocre lyrics, generic beats, and autotuned singing. Many other videos have the same attributes and content, but they aren’t even close to the view count of “Friday”. But why?

First, many people thought it was a joke. The song lacks diverse lyrics since the word “Friday” practically repeats the whole time. In the bridge, the lyrics stated the obvious about the progression of days in a week: “Yesterday was Thursday, today is Friday, tomorrow is Saturday, and Sunday comes afterwords”. The depth of the lyrics were so pathetically shallow that many found it funny. The questions Rebecca asks through her song are similarly inane. She asks, “Which seat can I take?” when her friends pull up in the car, despite the fact that there is clearly only one open seat available.

Similarly, Wallace’s video hit a critical mass that made it viral. Wallace begins by telling her typical day in the library, but soon transitions to insulting the Asian population. In the middle of her story, she recreates a scene  with the stereotypical “Ohhhhh! Ching chong, ting tong, ling long”. She also says that her mother taught her to be a polite, well-mannered, American girl. The irony of her statement makes me laugh because she explicitly degrades the Asian culture throughout the whole video. The racism and irony of this video attracted millions of users, making it viral.

Both of these videos have one thing in common: they influence viewers to create new videos. These responses all lead back to the two original videos, which exposes millions of clicks. Parodies and remixes of “Friday” include a slowed version, a death metal remix, and a “fried eggs” parody. Other users created parodies of Wallace’s rant, mocking her intelligence.  

The future of viral videos is uncertain since there are many attributes that make them blow up. “Friday” and Wallace’s rant will be the epitome of the viral videos until new, creative ones surface.