The Greatest Viral Video Never, Pardon Me
The lessons of virality and online communities from a semi-hit
Going viral, as I’m sure you have desperately tried to explain to your boss/dad/your dad and your boss in some sort of nightmarish collision of worlds, is not an exact science. You can’t simply rely on sticking a bunch of GIF-able moments, lingering shots of breasts, or even lazy attempts at controversy to drive traffic or increase views.
Much like a religious experience, virality can often be ineffable, intangible; so hard to attain and even more difficult to recount. However, like a religion itself, it requires a dedicated community of people who have latched onto an idea (anything from a fully-developed thought to a fortuitously-taken photograph), working hard to further the initial genesis far beyond the bounds of expectation, even those of the originator.
Some people are born viral, some people have virality thrust upon them. This particular example is covered by no part of that imperfect Venn diagram, and instead falls off a cliff somewhere on its way to join the party: the attempted meme that you probably didn’t see.
“But,” you say aloud to your screen, alone in your house, startling your cat. “I’ve seen every video on YouTube!”
Have you seen Pardon Me?
Look, I get it. Music is hard. I’m not going to turn this article into a diss-track to take down this woman (Maxine Swaby), God knows the YouTube comments alone do that job quite handily. For a start, we should applaud anyone with the creative gusto to put together a song, record it, and then film a music video.
What makes this song special? Is it the keyboard playing in reverse? Is it the square wipes between scenes? The 15 seconds in the church? It’s the 15 seconds in the church, right?
Well actually, it’s what happened afterwards…
The original has all the knuckle-cracking potential of a blank canvas. It’s unashamedly lacking in irony, oddly filmed,and actually quite a touching song about heartbreak told through the lens of ‘being a little bit sorry’. It’s the sort of song you could see Tim and Eric making.
But if you widen your focus from it to the follow up videos made by dozens if not hundreds of YouTubers, Pardon Me takes you on a linear journey through the thought process of community-builders on the internet. The original captured the attention of one person in particular, and then in turn theirs captured another’s, and another from that, and so on.
Far from being another pointless entry in the trend of “X reacts to Y” videos, this intrepid group of disparate strangers took it upon themselves to establish a whole format: standing awkwardly in front of the previous video and singing along with whomever preceded them, all the way back to Maxine herself.
Let’s start from the beginning, or at least, the second video…
This violent-eyed maniac is the hero we need, the St. Paul to Maxine’s Christ figure. His left-field swing at an already left-field video spawns a series of consequences that I don’t think anyone could have seen coming. Played to perfection, it gives us the template, and the focal point of our laughter (rather than just a derisive snort all the way through).
A few years ago Derek Sivers gave a very short, very good TED talk about how to start a movement, that I that personally believe is required viewing. Over the course of a three minute video of a dancing man who is eventually joined by others, he explains the first steps:
“[A man is dancing wildly at a festival, alone in a field] A leaders role is to stand out, without being afraid of being humiliated. But what he’s doing is so easy to follow, [another man joins to dance in the same way] so here’s his first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow.”
Not only has this man shown everyone how to follow, he’s able to follow everyone with his eyes.
It’s so easily replicable. It’s not a straight shot-for-shot parody, nor do you need to re-record a backing track with funny lyrics. It only requires three things: you standing still, the video in the background of your shot, and about 10 minutes of your time.
Here’s the second one, the Eve to his Adam if you like:
Back to the TED talk; as the momentum of the wild dance gathers, Derek Sivers discusses the importance of the second follower as well:
Here comes the second follower: now it’s not a lone nut and it’s not two nuts, three is a crowd — and a crowd is news.
And that news is spreading. The rules have never been set out officially, and yet everyone abides.
What’s so absolutely absurd and wonderful about this entire thing is that you can literally see all of your favourite characters in the background; Maxine herself is but a speck, an honoured memory of a memory as people build upon ideas which have in turn already been built upon.
Derek Sivers again:
It’s important to show not just the leaders but the followers, because you will find that new followers will emulate the followers, not the leader.
Strap in, we’re going down the rabbit hole…
“Oh my goodness,” you say again under your breath to the now darkening space that your living room has become. Your coffee has gone cold and you have missed work to watch every Pardon Me video you can find. Your cat meows hungrily in the background. “Well, why did this fail? What caused this ladder of human ingenuity to collapse? Was it too long, too proud, an affront to God in it’s Babel-esque stature?”
That’s a very fitting question, for you see when something gets too big there are inevitably schisms (see: every religion ever), and at some point, the original line of succession, the path down which the forefathers have trod — is obscured. When there are too many people scrambling to make their mark, to be the next link in the “RE: RE: RE: RE: PARDON ME” chain, the tree grows too many branches and become top-heavy. Without diligent new video-makers going back to find the original chain of path, many end up lost in the woods without legitimate successors or ancestors call their own.
Still, it’s not all bad, this adorable little girl managed to find her way through:
And at the end of any good rabbit hole, of course:
Despite not really every gaining the internet fame it deserved, Pardon Me remains my favourite example of absurd, unspoken community-building. It required an original idea that was both great and terrible (and 100% attention-grabbing), and then for some initial geniuses to latch onto one key element of it, and formulate the process through which we view it — a process that is as bizarre as it is mesmerising. Its downfall — the proliferation of videos, and the confusion of the pathways in its later days, is something I find equally interesting.
Pardon Me, we hardly knew ye…
The “tunnel” (as it was later known) of videos continues almost up until present day, with latecomers managing the heady heights of nearly 10–20 views on their efforts. That pretty much means this thing is officially over and their belated offerings are wasted on deaf ears. But if we can count on at least one person to see all and know all, it’s probably this guy…
