This assignment started out by watching “Charlie Bit My Finger”, reading about the ALS ice bucket challenge, watching “Teach Me How to Bucky”, watching Ellen read “Texts From Your Ex”, and watching “School is Closed”. Following this, we had to watch professor Gernsbacher’s lecture video. After watching this, we had to make a discussion board post where we had to describe one of the viral sensations from the lecture video, specify whether it was an intentional use or an unintentional result, and explain why it went viral by referencing the three features that research has shown to predict what content goes viral. Finally, we had to start our five-day news journal.
The lecture video was comprised of 12 viral sensations, some intended to reach a lot of people, and some not. The first sensation was “School is Closed”, in which a school principal made a YouTube song to the tune of “Let it Go”, and it explained that the school was having a snow day.
The second one was “Teach Me How To Bucky”. This was a video created by UW Madison students to the tune of “Teach Me How To Dougie”. They made it to bring glory and excitement to their school.
The third one was “Miracle on the Hudson”. Someone on a commercial ferry saw a plane submerging in the water, and he took a picture of it, and tweeted it.
The fourth one was “Help Wanted”. A father went to Reddit to try to find someone who could photoshop the medical tubes out of a picture of his daughter. The daughter had only lived 6 weeks and was in the hospital the whole time, so they had never been able to snap a photo without the tubes. Thousands of people responded.
The fifth one was “A Weird, Unidentifiable Rash”. A doctor saw a boy with a weird rash that he couldn’t identify, so he took a picture of it and posted on an app populated by other physicians. Soon after, the rash was diagnosed!
The sixth one was “Reading Rainbow”. This was a kid’s TV show that went off of PBS, but someone wanted to bring it to children by creating an app and streaming episodes into classrooms. He made a Kickstarter campaign and raised over 5 million dollars!
The seventh one was “The Ice Bucket Challenge”. To raise funds for ALS research, people poured ice water on their heads and challenged others to do the same, and if not then to donate to the ALS Association. They raised over 100 million dollars!
The eighth one was “United Breaks Guitars”. A musical duo’s $3500 guitar was broken on a United Airlines flight. Initially, they were not reimbursed at all, so they made a song on YouTube describing their situation, and it was viewed 15 million times. This led to United Airlines reimbursing the duo.
The ninth one was “Charlie Bit My Finger”. This is a video of two brothers hanging out and having fun together. It was uploaded so family from out of town could see the video, but it went viral.
The tenth one was “Cool Wand!”. An intern asked his boss for a few days off because something came up at home when really he just wanted to attend a Halloween party. A picture of him in a Tinker Bell costume got posted online and his boss ended up seeing it, and sent the intern an email about it.
The eleventh one was “Fair Trade Organic Bananas”. Scottish Labour Party candidate Stuart MacLennan tweeted “God this fair trade, organic banana is expletive. Can I have a slave-grown, chemically enhanced, genetically modified one?”. He eventually was removed from office.
The twelfth one was “Texts from my Ex”. It is an Instagram page that posts texts from ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends. Ellen DeGeneres even read off some of these on her show!
The three principles that are associated with things going viral are emotional salience, a point of connection, and an element of surprise.
In my discussion board post, I talked about “United Breaks Guitars”. I explained what it was, as I did above. Then I explained that it was intentional to broadcast widely, because the musical duo wanted as many people to see it as possible, to raise their chances of being reimbursed by United Airlines. Then I related it to the 3 principles of viral things.
It has emotional salience because it would make people sad or mad at United, and feel pity for the musical duo. It has a point of connection because many people have experiences with getting ripped off by a company. It has a point of surprise because it is not typical to turn a complaint into a song.
Reflecting on this assignment, It was really interesting to hear about the 12 different viral sensations that were discussed. I had known about a couple of them, but the majority of them I hadn’t heard of, so it was very cool to learn about them. For example, it was very heartwarming to see that the father whose daughter had passed away in the hospital received so many responses and support from others. That was an example that seemed to truly have significance to me, so it was nice to hear about.
Additionally, it was good to include a mixture of intentional and non-intentional viral examples. Clearly, things such as the Ice Bucket Challenge and the United Breaks Guitars video were meant to go viral, in order for more people to hear about it and support the cause. However, things such as the Charlie Bit My Finger Video went super viral, even though it was just a silly home video intended for a small audience. It is interesting to think about a bunch of viral videos and posts and try to distinguish if they were intended initially for a big audience or not.
It was also valuable to learn the principles of why something goes viral. The 3 principles given definitely make sense, but I had not known them before. Now I can apply them to viral things in the future, and I can realize if it met the requirements and can understand why it became so popular!
This assignment brought a combination of learning and entertainment, which was awesome. It kept me focused and interested because the new content was engaging and fun to hear about. This is definitely one of the better assignments I have experienced in the course thus far!
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