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• Thursday, August 30, 2007 02:24 AM

  The Sheer Number of Views is Telling

  In some comments, people defend the humor they find in the Miss Teen South Carolina video, by arguing that they also laughed at videos of men caught in gaffes. Therefore, they argue, the humor is not based on stereotypes of women and southerners. This may be true in some individual cases, but I think it does not hold up as an explanation for the general reception of the video.

  Of the top one hundred videos on YouTube this week, twelve of them are postings of the (one and same) Miss Teen video. In fact, it takes up four of the top five slots for the week and five of the top ten. Another eleven of the top one hundred videos are commentary on the original video. That means nearly a quarter of the top on hundred videos are taken up with Ms. Upton's gaffe.

  Altogether the twelve postings of the original Miss Teen video have gotten over 14 million views, in five days. To put that in perspective, it makes this video the 28th most viewed video in the entire history of YouTube. In five days. I'm guessing, but I would assume that few, if any, other videos have gotten that many views that quickly. The other videos with those kinds of numbers have taken months, if not years, to get there.

  If you add in the other eleven commentary videos that are in the week's top one hundred, you get another 3 million views.

  So it seems like one has to ask, why does this particular video garner more interest in five days than almost any video ever posted on YouTube? I don't think comparing the interest in the Miss Teen video to other (far less popular) gaffee videos makes sense. This is not just like other viral videos. What's more I think this video is far from being the most entertaining, most amazing, or funniest video ever posted on YouTube. The unprecedented amount of interest in the video is disproportionate to it's entertainment value (as merely a gaffe like others). Obviously, this particular video touches a nerve. And judging by the fairly base nature of the vast majority of the commentary out there (including the YouTube response videos that are popular) that nerve is simply: "Look at this dumb blond southern girl."

  It takes little interpretation to come to this conclusion, this is what most commentators are saying explicitly. So I think it a big stretch to say any significant part of the laughter at this video has much that's sympathetic about it.

  —Anonymous
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