These viral videos were most delightful
From Gangnam Style to Call Me Maybe plus surprises in between
Here, in no particular order, are some of the viral videos I found to be particularly amusing/delightful/ entrancing in 2012.
When Isaac Lamb from Portland, Ore., proposed to Amy Frankel, he enlisted some 60 of his closest friends to help him create “The Live Lip-dub Marriage Proposal.”
“Thank you very much for doing this over-the-top amazing thing and making it completely impossible for others to just, you know, drop down on one knee at a nice restaurant,” said absolutely no one currently planning to propose.
“We feel your pain,” said everyone who’s been involved in a wedding since 2009’s “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” went viral: bit.ly/ IsaacDub.
The original video for Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” is great and all, but the version she did with Jimmy Fallon and The Roots and a pile of classroom instruments is so much better: bit.ly/CarlyClass.
Also super-nice is Cookie Monster’s “Share It Maybe.”: bit.ly/ CarlyCookie.
Not that other people vomiting is inherently delightful, but when Justin Bieber does it onstage it’s not not funny. The thousands and thousands of viewers who watched the various versions of the hurling video agreed: bit.ly/Biebbarfs.
Millions of people around the world watched a foul-mouthed, overly confident German dude attempt to jump into water not realizing said water was frozen. Oops. Did I spoil the ending? Don’t worry. I’ve watched it 14 times and it’s still funny: bit.ly/ thickice.
There are tons of idiotic ways to die and “Dumb Ways to Die” manages to mention most of them. The unbelievably cute, animated PSA from Melbourne’s Metro Trains also manages to come up with some you may never have considered, such as using your privates for piranha bait and selling both your kidneys on the Internet: bit.ly/dyingdumb.
When it comes to choosing the loveliest animal video of the year, there were so many cute cats, bunnies, puppies and tiger cubs that it was impossible to find the best. Which is good, really, because no animal was more amusing than the one featured in “Man vs. Canada Goose.” If you disagree without realizing that the goose is lying in wait then all your arguments are invalid: bit.ly/gooseattacks. BONUS: Another fantastic animal video doesn’t involve any actual animal. Or video, for that matter. But don’t let that dissuade you from checking out “Please Move the Deer Crossing,” in which a lady calls a Fargo, N.D., radio station and complains that deer crossing signs make the deer cross the road in inconvenient places. It’s gold: bit.ly/DonnaDeer.
When more than seven and a half million people watch a commercial voluntarily, it’s because it’s bleeping great. Like the Dollar Shave Club’s “Our Blades Are Bleeping Great”: bit.ly/shavingclub. It’s funnier than 92 per cent of all Super Bowl ads. (Note: I don’t know math.)
And while we’re on advertising, TNT staged “A Dramatic Surprise on a Quiet Square” in Belgium. Some 40 million people have watched what happened when someone pushed the big, red button to “add drama.” Spoiler: drama was added: bit.ly/belgiumbutton.
If there is a more endearing video of NASA engineers parodying LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It,” then “We’re NASA and We Know It (Mars Curiosity),” I’d like to know what it is. No, really. I would: bit.ly/ NASALMFAO.
Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” got in excess of 350 million hits and spawned almost as many parodies. But the best of them all has to be “The Star Wars That I Used To Know” by Teddiefilms: bit.ly/DarthGotye. Anything that contains the lyrics, “I don’t even need your love/ you treat me like a Wampa and it feels so cold . . .” Right, yes, OK. The Key of Awesome version is good, too: bit.ly/ AwesomeGotye.
And, finally, because I’m told I have to, I’ll mention “Gangnam Style” because the video got so many hits — like, a billion, which is a lot — that it passed Bieber’s record. PSY’s song also spawned a lot of parodies, most of them not particularly awesome, but there were some stand-outs. I very much like the mash-up with Supernatural footage, because the actors on that show are super-pretty and the ed- iting is brilliant: bit.ly/SuperGangnam. But for sheer weirdness, I think we have to go with “Deadpool vs. Gangnam Style”: bit.ly/ Dead Gangnam. Catch more viral video hits and celebrity news at thestar.com/stargazing.