Trending This Week: YTMAs, A Dog Named Fritz, and The Allure of the Beautiful Stenographer

The YouTube Music Awards 2015


This year's celebration of the best and brightest of music on YouTube was among the most viewed content this week, the show's 13 music videos seeing over 30m views since Monday - and the biggest hit, "Nicky Jam y Enrique Iglesias El Perdon," earning more than 7.5m. Four days since launch, the impact of the YTMAs continues to reverberate across the web'sphere, receiving an estimated 6b impressions on Twitter (!!) and top 10 spots for Max, Action Bronson, Charli XCX, Migos, and Lindsey Stirling on the Billboard Top Trending 140 chart.

Every Tom Hanks Movie in 7 Minutes (with Tom Hanks and James Corden) 
 His first week on the air as the new host of “The Late, Late Show,” James Corden is already making big waves (... as in 10 million views, big waves..!). For his first party trick, Corden followed the example of Carly Rae Jepsen and her single “I Really Like You,” and enlisted the help of Tom Hanks for the effort. Together, the pair recreated every movie in which Hanks has ever starred in one take and under seven minutes. Since its debut three days ago, the video has gained over 9m views and anchored itself as the number one most viewed video for an entire 72 hours. Another gem / fantasy come to life: karaoke with Mariah Carey (once a diva, always a diva!).

 Wisconsin Basketball Player Has Embarrassing Moment at Press Conference
So far, the most memorable moment of March Madness is arguably not a shot, game or locker room celebration, but rather the endearing mishap between Wisconsin forward Nigel Hayes and his microphone. During a recent press conference, Hayes didn’t realize how hot his mic was until after he whispered to his teammates about the beautiful stenographer sitting nearby. Video of the accidental confession of love has gained over 4.7 million views in 48 hours. Perhaps this video brought a bit of luck to the Wisconsin team, as they continue to compete in the elite eight for the NCAA title. (And to Nigel Hayes, although you might not have scored a date with that lovely stenographer, you did win the Internet’s heart, so at the very least you have that going for you.)

Fritz Learns to Catch Compilation #1

And last but certainly not least... Humor, suspense, pizza, EDM, a surprisingly uncoordinated dog - this one really has it all. Fritz the Dog is a happy, hapless golden retriever that just can't seem to catch anything in his mouth. (Watch the video and see for yourself.) Thanks in large part to mentions by the Today Show, Huffington Post, and a somewhat disturbing tribute from Buzzfeed, this compilation has become one of the top trending (and most "awwww"ed over) videos of the week, earning more than 3.6m views in five days. Keep on keepin' on, Fritz.

- Christine Huang & Carly Lanning

Trending This Week: Evil Pixels, The Art of IKE Andrews, Too Many Cooks - D.C. Edition

Pixels - Official Trailer (HD) - Summer 2015


On Tuesday, Sony released the much-anticipated first teaser for "Pixels," an action-comedy movie pitting an eclectic group of heroes (Adam Sandler, Peter Dinklage and Michelle Monaghan, to name a few) against classic arcade game characters programmed by aliens to destroy Planet Earth. The inspiration behind "Pixels" is the lesser known, eerier film of the same name by Patrick Jean released on YouTube in 2010. Jean's short film gained a cult following over the last 5 years and is experiencing a resurgence in interest since the release of the new "Pixels" trailer, seeing more views on March 18 (57k+) than any other day in its history.

Showing IKEA print to Art experts

LifeHunters, an Amsterdam-based digital production group specializing in "awesome viral video content," played a highbrow prank on the patrons of the Museum Arnhem, planting a mass-produced IKEA print alongside the museum's most famous modern artworks and asking for their reactions. Visitors to the museum expressed their appreciation for the provocative piece by "IKE Andrews," some estimating its worth at being in, at least, the hundreds of thousands. The video, LifeHunters' second most popular behind their "Serving McDonald's to food experts" prank from last year, has gained more than 1.1m views in 2 days, and was the 9th most popular video in the Netherlands this week.

Här gör teckentolken succé i Melodifestivalen 2015


A stunningly expressive sign language interpreter named Tommy Krångh won the internet this week, stealing the show at the Swedish singing competition Melodifestivalen with his impassioned interpretations of songs performed by various rising Swedish stars. Krångh first gained buzz after a video of him signing and dancing along to a Magnus Carlsson song on Swedish TV channel SVT started making the rounds. SVT quickly caught wind of the fervor and released a special tribute to Krångh and his emphatic signing skills (above). In response to this sudden fame, Krångh told Swedish media outlet The Local: "I am overwhelmed, happy, thrilled...  I have heard people have been discussing me on TV in Hong Kong, Australia, the United States, Belgium, Spain...I hope that this will help more people understand that sign language isn't just about two deaf people communicating. It is creative, it is an art."

Election 2016: Too Many Cooks

And finally... wha?? Following the breakout success of last year's "Too Many Cooks," Adult Swim's viral dark comedy short, CNN decided to get in on the joke by releasing its own election-inspired version, starring the many, many "cooks" of the U.S. political world. The parody of a parody was released yesterday, with an unknown goal and geared towards an unclear audience, but has already got the wide range of media outlets buzzing (and scratching their heads) -from CNET, to NY Mag, to Daily Dot, to the Hollywood Reporter.

--Christine Huang

Trending This Week: Real-Life Bionic Heroes; Blue Steel's Back!

For The Collective Project: Robert Downey Jr. Delivers a Real Bionic Arm

For 8 months, members of University of Central Florida's Limbitless team (a group of students focused on producing affordable, 3-D printed bionic limbs for children with amputations) had been working on a specially designed Iron Man-themed appendage for a young boy named Alex who was born with a partially developed right arm. Yesterday, we had the privilege of witnessing Alex's much-anticipated introduction to his new arm, delivered by the world's most powerful bionic hero himself - Iron Man. The video, filmed by Microsoft as part of their Collective Project initiative, has earned more than 3.7m views and ~2k comments in less than 24 hours.


 Zoolander 2 - Maison Valentino Runway
 This week, guests at Maison Valentino's runway show in Paris were treated to a very special guest appearance by two of fashion's most infamous rivals: Hansel and Zoolander. Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller, the two stars of 2001's comedy "Zoolander," took to the catwalk together for the first time in more than a decade, a reunion that confirmed the release of the movie's sequel next year and that sparked a flurry of excitement around the web (1.5m+ views on YouTube, plus hundreds of thousands of shares, comments and likes across Twitter and Instagram). The nearly unanimous positive feedback from the bold marketing stunt bodes well for the aging (but still so hot right now) duo, and suggests that maybe there isn't much more to life than being really, really ridiculously good-looking.


Mean Tweets - President Obama Edition

For his latest edition of celebrities reading mean tweets, late night host Jimmy Kimmel invited one of the biggest celebrities of them all - President Barack Obama - to meditate on some of the criticism he's received in the Twittersphere (@Campaignrpoz: "A 30 rack of coors light is $23 now at Sun Stop. Thanks Obama."). In total, Kimmel's Mean Tweets clips have amassed a stupendous 300m+ views, and continue to be among the most buzzed-about and consistently popular segments from his show.


 Funky Flight Attendant

Adding to the 70k+ "Uptown Funk" covers, parodies, and homages that have been keepin' YouTube funky, this short dance tribute performed by one particularly coordinated WestJet flight attendant tickled the fancy of millions of viewers this week, the video of her in-aisle performance earning 5.5m+ views in little more than 4 days. The clip - recorded (vertically, smh) by the attendant's brother - gained quick traction through social media and blogs, first starting on Reddit then quickly spreading to sites like Mashable and Buzzfeed, the sum of which made up 60% of the video's views.

The Other Billion-View Song You Never Saw Coming

There is one video that sits atop the mountain of YouTube videos bearing the crown inscribed “Most Watched YouTube Video of All Time,” and it is a video for a song. That song is "Gangnam Style" by Psy. Uploaded almost three years ago by OfficialPsy, the video has tallied 2.3 billion views. This number, which is almost mind boggling, would have seemed unthinkable when the video was released. And yet, here we are.

"Gangnam Style" became the first video and song to cross 1 billion views on YouTube in December 2012. Next came Justin Bieber’s "Baby," which crossed a billion views last year. If you look at the list of YouTube’s most-viewed videos, you’ll see that there are a couple more videos, all songs, that are close to accomplishing this feat. Psy has another contender with "Gentleman," already at .8 billion, Katy Perry has "Roar" at .8 billion and "Dark Horse" at .9 billion. But there’s one other song that has already passed this prestigious mark and doesn’t appear on the list of the ten most-viewed videos of all time, and there’s no way you’ll ever guess what it is. Here’s a hint: It was released in 2007.

In 2007, the first iPhones was released, the last Harry Potter book went on sale, destined to become the fastest-selling book of all time, and a humble Gummy Bear began singing a self-affirming ditty titled I’m A Gummy Bear. For those who are unfamiliar, or are in need of a reminder, this is "I’m A Gummy Bear."

"I’m A Gummy Bear" was a phenomenon. While it had debuted as a 30-second video clip in Hungary in August 2006, the full-length song was unleashed on the world in October 2007. Not only did the song spend eight months atop Hungary's ringtone charts, but the song charted in the US as a dance track, where it has gone double platinum. Gummy Bear has spawned video games, movies, and licensing deals galore. This video, the English version of the song, has received 528 million views since being uploaded in October 2007. Of course, 528 million views is an astonishing number, but it’s nowhere near a billion. Well, this isn’t the only official upload of this song.

"I’m A Gummy Bear" has been translated into dozens of languages and uploaded to the official YouTube channel, "ICanRockYourWorld.” If you add up all the different translations of the song uploaded to ICanRockYourWorld, you arrive at: 921 million views. That moves the Gummy Bear song past Dark Horse and Roar, but it isn’t quite the 1 billion views promised above.

Not a problem.

There’s the other official Gummy Bear channel, “GummyBearIntl,” which also hosts the song and even more translations.  If you add those views to the mix, you get 1.1 billion views, making this a third song to have crossed one billion views on YouTube.

Psy’s "Gangnam Style" was unique. It was a song sung almost entirely in Korean, a language spoken by less than .01% of the world’s population, that managed to charm the world. Justin Bieber’s "Baby" had an army of Beliebers behind it and the benefit of being in English, the lingua franca of the pop music world. "I’m A Gummy Bear" became a force to be reckoned with by greeting people around the world on their own terms in their own languages - my gummy bear, your gummy bear, everyone’s gummy bear.

- Earnest Pettie

Trending This Week: Love for #DearMe; Miracles at 4,000 Feet

GUY HAS SEIZURE WHILE SKYDIVING


22 year-old Christopher Jones was skydiving 12,000 feet over Western Australia when, at around 9,000 ft, Jones began having a seizure. Free falling unconsciously through the sky, Jones was intercepted by his jumpmaster, Sheldon McFarlane, who managed to grab a hold of him and deploy his parachute, allowing him to float safely to the ground (at around 3,000 feet, Jones regained consciousness and was able to navigate his own secure landing). On Monday, Jones posted headcam footage of this terrifying fall - "possibly the scariest moment of [his] life" - and it immediately became one of the top trending topics of the day. Within the first 48 hours, the video received more than 9m views, 10k comments and hundreds of press mentions (and earned Jones an interview with Anderson Cooper, to boot).

Diversity & Inclusion - Love Has No Labels

Filmed on Valentine's Day in Santa Monica, CA, this touching PSA from Ad Council struck a chord this week - spreading the simple message of love, diversity and inclusion to more than 28.5m worldwide viewers in less than 3 days.  Set to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis's Same Love, the ad features partners and friends of different backgrounds, genders, and ages expressing their appreciation for one another - openly and proudly - and demonstrating that love doesn't have, or need, any labels. The video was the top viewed non-music video of the week, coming in 4th overall behind Taylor Swift's "Blank Space".


Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars - "UPTOWN FUNK" (Sung in CARTOON Voices!)

Adding to the 60k+ parodies, covers and other tributes to Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars's hit "Uptown Funk," voice impressionist Mikey Bolts lent his voice (and a dozen or so others) to his own version of the song this week, amassing ~2.7m views in just three days. Bolts, whose channel has seen nearly 170m views and more than 1.8m subscribers since its 2008 debut, assures his fans in his comments section that this video, though seemingly complicated, was but a single day's effort: "Started recording at 3am, filmed at noon, edited til 9. Tuesday vid." (A well spent day, we'd say!)

#DearMe - What Advice Would You Give Your Younger Self?


Tuesday saw the launch of #DearMe, our campaign aimed at inspiring and empowering girls around the world by asking them to answer one simple question: "What advice would you give your younger self?" This 2 minute spot features encouragement and words of wisdom from some of our biggest creators, including Hannah Hart, Laci Green, Michelle Phan, Grace Helbig, Gigi Chao, and Lilly Singh. The video received a 90%+ positive sentiment (likes vs. dislikes) and reached more than 2m people in three days.

--Christine Huang

Trending This Week: The Dress Shared 'Round the World; Goodbye, Mr. Nimoy _\\//

Here is our rundown of some of the top trending videos this week. Enjoy!

(For more, head on over to our Spotlight Channel!)

Sesame Street: House of Bricks (House of Cards Parody)

Sesame Street joined in on the House of Cards hype this week with "House of Bricks" - an ingenious mini-parody that racked up more than 1.4m views in 4 days. In this kid-friendly version of the fraught political drama, three little piggies are pitted against a shady powermonger named Mr. Underwolf determined to take down the town, one huff at a time. Since its posting on Feb 23, the video was quickly picked up by media outlets and blogs, including The Washington Post, Daily Dot and The Verge, the sum of which drove 40% of the video's views.

Larry Sanders - Why I Walked Away From the NBA: Players' POV



In this moving video, Larry Sanders, former power forward for the Milwaukee Bucks, explains why he left a burgeoning career in the NBA, offering an intimate glimpse into his life, struggles, and  ongoing recovery from depression. The video was the fifth posted by The Players' Tribune, a new media platform founded by baseball giant Derek Jeter, aimed at 'presenting the voices of professional athletes, bringing fans closer to the game they love than ever before." Since its debut just a week ago, the channel has received 600k+ views and 2k+ subscribers.

ASAP Science: What Colour is This Dress? (SOLVED with SCIENCE)


The 'net was ablaze with just one question yesterday: what gosh darn color is this dress? ASAP Science was quick to step in and help bring some science-based clarity to the debate, confirming that, indeed - the dress appears as different colors to different viewers - and that it's just one of many tricks our minds play on us when using contextual cues to differentiate shades and hues. The video has received an estimated 1.2m+ views over the last 24 hrs.


Spock Dies SCENE - Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan MOVIE (1982) - HD


Though more than three years old, this clip from Star Trek: Wrath of Khan (a classic more than 30 years old) started trending again today, following the news of the passing of Leonard Nimoy this morning. Nimoy - a poet, singer, photographer, director and actor - was most famously known for his portrayal of Mr. Spock, a character that grew to become as celebrated and beloved (if not more so) as the show franchise itself. Following his passing, this goodbye scene from the second installment of the movie series struck many fans as particularly poignant, as reflected in the 800+ goodbyes, tributes, and thank yous left in the comments section today alone. (Check out our celebration of Leonard Nimoy's life here.)

- Christine Huang

Trending This Week: Thundersnow and Taekwondo

Cantore Thundersnow Montage! - #ItsAmazingOutThere

The weather outside is frightful, but Jim Cantore! Jim Cantore is so delightful! In this montage, the Weather Channel's most venerable first-on-scene meteorologist shares his exuberance for one of mother nature's many wonders, thundersnow: "an unusual kind of thunderstorm with snow falling as the primary precipitation instead of rain" (via Wikipedia). With 3.5m views and counting, this tribute to one man's indefatigable excitement for all things wintry has already inspired several mash-ups and parodies, including a songified version from the Gregory Bros. which has racked up more than 150k views in less than a day.

 SNL Celebrity Jeopardy - SNL 40th Anniversary Special

Saturday Night Live celebrated its 40th birthday on Sunday with a three-hour, truly star-studded special (just ask Jimmy Fallon), taking a look back at the show's greatest hits and recreating some of its most unforgettable (and interminable) skits. Their anniversary edition of "Celebrity Jeopardy" became the most popular clip from the night on YouTube (3.5m+ views)   - seeing the return of a handful of classic impersonations/ impersonators, including Alex Trebek (Will Ferrell), Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond), Justin Bieber (Kate McKinnon), Tony Bennett (Alec Baldwin), Burt Reynolds (Norm Macdonald), and Matthew McConaughey (Jim Carrey).

Series to Watch: Adult Wednesday Addams

This week also saw the return of everyone's favorite goth grrrl, Wednesday Addams - this time, as the modern-day heroine of comedian Melissa Hunter's web series "Adult Wednesday Addams." In last week's episode "Wednesday vs. Catcallers," the unlikely protagonist (played by Hunter) takes justice into her own hands after being harassed by a pair of catcalling buddies on the street. The episode put the series on the map after gaining the attention of bloggers and mainstream press alike this week, resulting in more than 3.8m views to her channel in the last seven days (1.9m+ of which went to "Wednesday vs. Catcallers").  This week's episode, "The Haircut," marks the 10th episode in the series, which now has a total of 161k+ subscribers and 6.1m+ views since its debut in September 2013.

 3 Year Old White Belt Reciting the Student Creed


Yesterday, Leeds Taekwondo & Premier Martial Arts Centre posted this homemade video of their youngest student, 3 year old Sophie Wong, dutifully reciting the student creed. Within 24 hours, the outrageously adorable video made the rounds on Reddit, Huffington Post, and Buzzfeed, became a meme, amassed nearly 1m views, and earned young Sophie a spot in the Cute Toddlers on YouTube Hall of Fame. (Just kidding, there's no Hall of Fame, but if there were...!) Keep up the good work, Sophie - you really put the tyke in taekwondo! (Sorry.)

...For more trending videos, check out our weekly playlist here.

-- Christine Huang