Tuesday, August 21, 2007

It Really Seemed Like a Good Idea At The Time

You know how on Youtube at the top they have a rotating bar with "What People Are Watching Now"? Well today I guess someone was watching Chocolate Rain. I was intrigued and curious by how many views it had by now and it was upward of 6 million, but even with that number it was still only the 9th Most Viewed of All time. Number one was The Evolution of Dance,which is a pretty amazing piece of video and a really funny and well executed concept. I had seen it some months back and I thought it was really cool, but after that initial viewing I don't think I've watched it ( 6 minutes is a lot of time to invest; I'm far too busy.) I was a little awed by that number but even more awed when I got an idea. I saw that there were other uploads of the same video, some with views in the millions, so I wanted to try to get a full account of how many people had watched that footage on youtube.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
There were far far more uploads than I had planned and I hate math; it was so painful. Among the countless "recreations" I found so many exact uploads of either 5:59 or 6 minutes in length ( please don't make me count) but in total there were 62 million 133 thousand 9 hundred and thirty two views (and this was only among the first 1000 entries; apparently there were 3400 entries when I searched "evolution of dance" but they won't let you past page 50.)
62133932 views. That is insane. And far far more people than see 95% of Hollywood blockbusters. If that many people saw any movie at an average ticket price of, let's say $8.50 it would gross $528138422! Which would make it the 2nd highest grossing film of all time (domestically, not accounting for inflation. Adjusting for inflation it's number 16-worldwide it's 39th) And easily blows away any primetime telecasts. Those numbers just blow my mind. St. Isidore of Seville must have been watching over him. And even though millions upon millions of people have seen him I know I couldn't pick him out of a hat. He is a star though and he'll always have his place in history...at least until bored college kids find something else amazing to watch over and over again.
So here it is ( if you haven't seen it; gawd!), with over 55,904,591 views as of 3:45 p.m. (pdt) August 21st, the most watched video on the Internet; the Evolution of Dance

Yeah it's still really really good. Now for a follow up...

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