If there’s anything that makes for a kick-ass viral video, it’s guns and computers.
A recent promotional video on YouTube by Clearplex shows an elderly lady touting her shotgun and shooting at a Macbook and an iPhone. It’s trying to prove that Clearplex will handle anything, even bullets from a shotgun—but having a grandma shooting them is even more awesome.
OK, grandma shooting Macbooks and iPhones hasn’t reached the million mark yet, but it’s still an unusual fascination to many on YouTube. You can’t go wrong with 33 million viewers watching Tommy Jordan, a rural North Carolina man punish his daughter for disrespecting him on Facebook by pumping lead from his .45 into her laptop. I can understand dad calling his daughter out for making sarcastic, disrespectful comments about him to teach her a lesson, but I don’t know what she can learn from shooting bullets into her computer. Nor can I understand why it’s so awesome to know whether an iPhone 4 can blend (in a blender) or not.
Why are YouTube viewers fascinated with destroying technology? I don’t know the real answer other than the basic pleasure in seeing random stuff blown up, but what I can tell you is that destroying new technology isn’t new at all. Ask the Luddites of the 19th century, who protested the growth of industrialized looms by destroying them. Ever since, anyone who dislikes and rebels against technology is a called a “Neo-Luddite.”
However, I don’t blame the Luddites for this current wave of shooting screens and blending smartphones. I blame Elvis Presley, who was known later in his short life for shooting televisions with his pistol. Now, his antics have become bizarre copycat entertainment for everyone.
So grandmas, dads, scientists and anyone having a gripe with technology: shoot away. You just might get a million people watching.
[…] The commonly accepted cycle of a trend is that it starts out, grassroots-style, amongst the “tastemakers” on the streets. It then gets adopted by celebrities recognized for being “cool.” They make the trend mainstream, and from there it trickles down to the general populace and finally fizzles a slow, hard death back on the streets from whence it came. “Gangnam Style,” as a trend, though correctly reported as “dead,” is now in the “Tupac phase” of its life. Technically, this is a good thing, as it proves “Gangnam Style’s” worth as a resonant piece of pop culture. In the “Tupac phase,” you will see “signs of life” where you shouldn’t, and the more gullible of our herd will maintain that “Gangnam Style” is still alive and living in a cave with Elvis. […]