There were many videos uploaded and shared in 2015. Some hilarious. Some upsetting. But, there are others that just hit the roof in terms of sharing and viewership. We bring you five such videos. You will understand why they went viral.
1) Unbelievable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_lyJt2T3GY
Reminiscent of oldie songs in Taiwanese soap dramas from the era of open-necked shirts, mullets, and bell bottom jeans, this Unbelievable music video featuring Chen Tianwen is filled with cheesy lines like “Please be the metal cable to my cable car” and “You blossom like a flower, I’m so stunned like vegetable”. It has garnered over 2 million views on YouTube and has been featured on Time and The Huffington Post.
Chen’s hunky allure matched with flowers and a head of broccoli, while slowly gyrating his hips and dancing to a cha-cha rhythm, is oddly hypnotising. You can’t stop watching once you start. It’s un-un-un-believable.
2) Tianjin Explosion
This video of the warehouse fire in Tianjin city in China on Aug 12 captured the explosion – reportedly having the equivalent power of 3 tonnes of TNT – that is reminiscent of apocalyptic Hollywood films. The night sky enveloped in a forbidding red was a spectacle to behold as the voices heard in the video turned from “Woah” into “No”.
But it was the second explosion – packing the equivalent power of 21 tonnes of TNT – that saw the people running for their lives, as the second explosion seemed more like an atomic bomb going off. You have to see it to believe it.
The reason for the ferocity of the explosions is because the warehouse had illegally stored hazardous chemicals, including 700 tonnes of highly toxic sodium cyanide. The final death toll is set at 173 deaths, with 8 missing, and 797 injured.
3) Charlie Charlie African Edition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN6QbRdR-IE
The Charlie Charlie game is an internet fad that spawned from a Spanish game where people pivot a pencil on top of another in a cross shape (of course), above a grid marked with yes and no, and ask a question to a “supernatural entity”, Charlie. It’s like a variant of an Ouija board.
In this video, an apparently pious father walks in on his clueless child in the midst of calling out to Charlie.
What resulted is a hard whack smack dab on the boy’s head that would’ve sent any revelling demon running off to the safer haven that is Hell.
“Are you high?” The father grabbed his son by the collar and gave him a lecture before instructing the boy to call out to “Jesus Jesus not Charlie Charlie”.
Call it schadenfreude but we just can’t get enough of watching the livid father literally knocking some sense into his boy.
4) Hotline Bling
Rapper daddy – checked.
Curvy women – checked.
Awkward dancing – checked.
An unlikely internet hit – checked and checked.
With 22 million views on Youtube, Hotline Bling is Drake’s first top-10 hit in two years. It reached No.2 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Emo lyrics aside, which some say was about his fallout with former flame Nebby, the video has inspired a meme boosting the number of eyeballs online.
5) Movin’ Up by Honey Boo Boo (Alana Thompson)
“Honey Boo Boo bop, do the Honey Boo Boo bop! / Honey Boo Boo bop, do the Honey Boo Boo bop!”
Child beauty pageant contestant turned reality TV star Alana Thompson also known as “Honey Boo Boo” has returned with her debut single, Movin’ Up! The video has garnered over 2 million views.
Best appreciated if you turn off your grown-up brain to jive along to the song with lines like “Started out as a pageant queen/ Then on TV doing my thing/ Now I’m moving up in the world/ New house, fun times with my girls”.
