The arrival of this brand new Internet sensation to our viral vault was inevitable, and we just couldn’t wait any longer, to give it a shout out.
With silly dance moves, a bizarre music video, and a tune infused with catchiness worthy of any western pop music outing, the Gangnam Style epidemic has stirred the online community into frenzy. And if you can tie down the formula, you may very well have the 101 master-class on how to become big online. In its wake forums are a-buzz, spin-offs and animations adding to the glee have spread, and the overall concept of ‘Gangnam’, itself, has now risen to meme-status.
Let’s look at those numbers.
The video hit the YouTube playlists on the 15 of June, and straight off the bat, tallied a view total of 2,555,205. Since then, it’s gone on to garner a whopping 115,308,071 views, with 1,149,193 Likes, and 47,917 Dislikes. This is engagement that’s grown faster than the whole Justin Bieber ‘Baby’ debacle, according to this SocialTimes article by blogger, Megan O’Neill.
Many would be at a loss as to why this particular online offering has spawned, in two a months, a craze so all-permeating it can now safely be deemed a phenomenon. Well, perhaps we still don’t fully understand the context or back-story, but we love the light-hearted, goofiness that shines out from every scene. It’s fun, pure and simple, and after viewing, above the initial reaction of ‘wtf?,’ happiness is the dominant emotion.
In a world where mine massacres and political upheavals dominate all hubs of information available to us, it’s easy to see, then, that any form of media delivering content packaging the ‘goofy’ or the ‘happy’, is sure to be pounced upon by the online community as a whole.
