This is a video I received a few days ago from a friend with whom I had recently shared stories of my cats antics and failed acrobatics, which roughly sums up the contents of the video. Now why has such a simple thing draw over sixteen million viewers? If all it consists of is cats running around and being silly, which can be seen happening several times a day by anyone who has a cat, why has it gotten so much attention? Out of all of the things that are posted on youtube the ones that generally seem to gain so much success schadenfreude which involves deriving pleasure from others misfortune or humiliation (e.g. Afro Ninja, Star Wars Kid or a cat chasing a bear up a tree). Schadenfreude is part of or general collective culture as seen in examples like America's funniest home videos which started in late 1989 and twenty years later is still going. This show feels like a precursor to youtube and all other video hosting web sites, showing funny video after video and the only thing preventing them from going viral is the inability to send the TV show to your friends and family as you would a youtube video. Now with the advent of video hosting websites like youtube we can easily send videos of cats grabbing on to a ceiling fan and being swung around till they fly off or walking off of table to just about anyone.
Joel Paarmann.
This video is a good example of the infrastructure that is YouTube. The cats running around are for our entertainment, a video designed for us to view only. It is grand stupidity, but that is what makes watching the cats entertaining. This video can be easily shared in a work environment because it is short and has no real point to it, making sharing convenient.
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