We take a look at some of the most-viewed and most-shared videos on the web. This week features April Fool’s hoaxes from YouTube, Toshiba and a headless driver, Fred Cooke’s ditty on dating in the digital age, a seal that doesn’t miss a beat, and a reason to stay away from triumphant basketball players.
More than 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, 500 years of video watched on Facebook every day, and more than 700 YouTube videos shared on Twitter each minute, ensuring there is always video trending on the web.
With so much video available for viewing, we take a look at some of the viral videos that have caught our eye this week.
YouTube’s ready to select a winner
You may have realised that it was April Fool’s Day this past Monday (and if you didn’t, more fool you). For the day that was in it, YouTube posted this prank video pretending that the whole concept was a competition and that they were now preparing to spend a decade wading through the submissions to select the winner of best video.
Uploaded: 31 March 2013
Toshibasphere
Another April Fool’s hoax came from Toshiba US, who had us salivating at the thought of a new games system with 12-core 3.5GHz processors, a 4GB GDDR5 RAM graphics card, infrared motion detection, 1080p full-HD output and 7.1 channel surround sound. Too good to be true indeed, but we’ll forgive them for this satirical take on gaming in the 21st century.
Uploaded: 1 April 2013
Drive-thru headless prank
YouTubers just love pranking the people that work the drive-thru window (do you remember cone-ing?), and they certainly weren’t going to be safe when 1 April rolled around.
Uploaded: 3 April 2013
I’m Gonna Getcha on Facebook
This week’s viral collection isn’t all April Fool’s pranks, as comedian Fred Cooke’s ode to the modern romance also caught our eye. You know the story: girl meets guy, guy looks her up on Facebook, gets as much personal information on her as he can and stalking ensues. What’s love got to do with it when we’ve got social media, eh?
Uploaded: 30 March 2013
Beat-keeping in a California sea lion
While YouTube is replete with videos of animals acting like humans, it’s all the better when it happens in the name of science. Researchers from the University of California Santa Cruz were curious to see if mammals other than humans could keep a beat. This trait has typically been seen in birds, particularly cockatoos and parrots, and because of this it is suspected that vocal mimicry may have a role to play. But Ronan the California sea lion can’t mimic a human voice and he can still bop his head to Earth, Wind & Fire’s ‘Boogie Wonderland’ and Backstreet Boys’ ‘Everybody’. In fact, he’s got more rhythmic ability than some people I know!
Uploaded: 31 March 2013
Carlos Boozer accidentally punches the referee
And, finally, Chicago Bulls basketball player Carlos Boozer teaches us all a valuable lesson on the danger of fist-pumping in celebration.
Uploaded: 30 March 2013
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