VIDEO: Top Viral Videos of 2017 So Far

We all love viral videos!

In most cases, their protagonists never intended to become Internet famous, but one can find advantages to that, I suppose.

This video presents the best videos that have gone viral this year!

According to Wikipedia, videos were shared long before YouTube or even the Internet by word-of-mouth, film festivals, VHS tapes, and even to fill time gaps during the early days of cable. Perhaps the earliest was Reefer Madness, a 1936 “educational” film that circulated under several different titles.

It was rediscovered by Keith Stroup, founder of NORML, who circulated prints of the film around college film festivals in the 1970s. The company who produced the prints, New Line Cinema, was so successful they began producing their own films. The most controversial was perhaps a clip from a newscast from Portland, Oregon in November 1970.

In the clip, the disposal of a beached whale carcass by dynamite is documented, including the horrific aftermath of falling mist and chunks since the exclusion zone wasn’t big enough.

The exploding whale story obtained urban legend status in the Northwest and gained new interest in 1990 after Dave Barry wrote a hysterical column about the event, leading to copies being distributed over bulletin board systems—a sort of primitive Internet—around 1994.

The “humorous home movie” genre dates back at least to 1963, when the TV series “Your Funny, Funny Films” debuted.

The series showcased amusing film clips, mostly shot on 8mm equipment by amateurs.

The idea was revived in 1989 with America’s Funniest Home Videos, a series described by an ABC executive as a one-time “reality-based filler special” that was inspired by a segment of a Japanese variety show, Fun With Ken and Kaito Chan, borrowing clips from various Japanese home video shows as well.

Now the longest-running primetime entertainment show in the history of ABC, the show’s format includes showing clips of home videos sent in to the show’s committee, and then the clips are voted on by a live filmed audience, with the winners winning a monetary prize.

Logically, America’s Funniest Home Videos should have been cancelled once user-generated content could be easily accessed through sites like YouTube. However, they are currently branding their content on platforms such as Facebook and Imgur, even hosting “AFV Do Overs” on their own YouTube channel—where YouTube stars reenact their most popular clips.

During the internet’s public infancy, the 1996 Seinfeld episode “The Little Kicks” addresses the distribution of a viral video through non-online, non-broadcast means. It concludes with the citizens of New York City having individually witnessed Elaine’s terrible dancing via a bootleg copy of a feature film, establishing that the dancing footage had effectively gone viral.

Viral videos began circulating as animated GIFs small enough to be uploaded to websites over dial-up Internet access or through email as attachments in the early 1990s. Videos were also spread on message boards, P2P file sharing sites, and even coverage from mainstream news networks on television.

Two of the most successful viral videos of the early internet era were “The Spirit of Christmas” and “Dancing Baby”.