Tag: VIRAL VIDEO

It looks like 4chan is cooking up a plot to take down Rebecca Black -- the 13-year-old from Orange County, whose 'Friday' video has given new meaning to the word "cringe." The infamous /b/ message board has been aflame with activity lately, with members of the 4chan underworld working to patch together an anti-Black campaign dubbed 'Operation Black Friday.' The community seems determined to ...

Remember the video of the mysterious hacker taking over the video monitors in Times Square? The one we were all sure was fake, probably? Well, the cynical among you can strike a smug pose because not only is the video fake, it's a viral ad for the upcoming Bradley Cooper vehicle 'Limitless.' Miss it? Scroll to 1:26, when the hacker tackles the big screen. Oh, whaddya know, that screen is ...

Meet Max Page, the 6-year-old boy who plays a bite-sized Darth Vader in Volkswagen's latest Super Bowl commercial. Max, who was unmasked on the 'Today Show' this morning, has a congenital heart defect that forced him to get a pacemaker at an early age. But that hasn't stopped him from pursuing his dreams in Hollywood. He's already appeared on 'The Young and the Restless,' starred in a handful of ...

This year hosted one of the most contentious and spiteful election seasons in recent memory. Thankfully, the vitriol, propaganda and rumor-mongering generated at least one beneficial byproduct: awesomely ridiculous campaign ads. Various spots took the Web by storm, as candidates relied on jingoism, ingrained Southern stereotypes, 'Dracula' and demon sheep to convey their important messages of ...

Like many of those who live and die by the Internet, Switched staffers are often entertained by the feline antics flooding the Web. This story, it should be said, is particularly heinous, and not at all in line with 'cats in boxes' or whatever else might be our YouTube search du jour. As Coventry, England resident Mary Bale walked down the streets of her hometown not long ago, she encountered an ...

Microsoft is turning to a giant robot arm and an army of Facebook fans to create a light sculpture (slash-viral marketing gimmick) to promote the upcoming 'Halo: Reach.' Remember Reach will launch Monday and ask visitors to plot points of light in a living monument to the members of the Noble Team, fallen Spartans and the main characters in 'Reach.' Wired has a great video explaining the project ...

With advertisers constantly competing against each other with catchier jingles, bigger celebrity endorsers and better effects, a tactic that has grown in recent years is to simply make a product known by being as weird as possible. Case in point: that horrifying, masked Burger King 'King,' who effectively has emblazoned everyone's brain with the terrible image of his deadened-but-all-knowing ...

Aspiring amateur filmmakers frequently parlay inexpensive digital shorts into viral sensations, but rarely does Net success actually produce tangible profits. If reports from Newslite are accurate, the previously-unknown director of the Web hit 'Panic Attack' has turned his $500, five-minute robot apocalypse film into a big budget, multi-million dollar project. Representatives of Mandate ...

Imagine, for a moment, that you're a turkey. And it's November. You've been living the entire month with the specter of death hanging over your head like, well, like an axe. Everywhere you go, the comments are the same. You have to put up with the predictable "stuffing" jokes and cruelly insensitive "gravy" puns. And on your morning commute, everyone seems to stare at you and lick their lips ...

Being forced to use moronic terms like "paradigm," "outside-the-box," and "proactive" can be depressing for corporate employees. But suffering through humiliating and soul-crushing corporate rituals can be even more debilitating to one's sense of individuality and autonomy. While reeducation camps corporate retreats and orchestrated events are popular among big businesses, very few companies ...

Finding information about this gem of a viral video (posted below the break) has been tough. All we know is what we've been able to glean from a YouTube posting -- that Yongchul Lee, from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), put together this impressive demonstration of robots getting down. The song is "Nobody," a 2008 hit from the K-pop group Wonder Girls and the ...

As the de facto spokes-band of the U.K. once suggested, "Get by with a little help from your friends," a notion four British teenagers took to heart, becoming a YouTube sensation in the process. Charlie McDonnell and his buddies don't fancy themselves musicians, songwriters or producers, but the boys know the power of online communities. According to Mashable, these teens created a song that ...

A troupe of six students have created something of a mini-sensation with the above video, which just may capture the most impressive shot in basketball this side of Dr. J. Maybe. In the video, a member of the group "Dude Perfect" (brilliant name) launches a basketball from the upper deck of Texas A&M's football stadium, and -- if we are to believe our eyes -- sinks it into the basket, ...

In 2007, YouTube established its Partnership Program, a way for some of the site's "most popular and prolific content creators" to actually earn revenue from their viral videos. YouTube has occasionally rewarded the creators of massively popular individual videos, as well, like the dad who filmed his stoned kid after a visit to the dentist. Today, YouTube announced that it is extending the program ...

Viral marketing campaigns are are an accepted part of advertising these days. Even the makers of soft drinks and jeans feel it necessary to flood the YouTube with thinly veiled ads. But arguably the first, and best, exploiter of viral gimmicks has been Hollywood. Total Film, a cinema blog, has compiled a list of the best and worst viral campaigns for movies. The list tracks the evolution of the ...