December 28, 2015

Hilbert and Hopper Have Gone Viral!

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We can file this post under “personal indulgences,” but something funny happened to me over the weekend: my YouTube video of Hilbert and Hopper play-fighting went viral. Not Kardashian viral, mind you, but it’s had over 100,000 views.1

Why? Beats me. Apparently it somehow landed on Google’s trending list and took off from there. That’s what I gather from comments, anyway, which have been flooding my inbox because I can’t figure out how to get YouTube to stop sending me email every time someone leaves a comment on the video.2 Still, it’s been…educational. As bad as comments can get here, even the trolls are basically literate. They write in complete sentences and sometimes their insults are entertaining. But YouTube comments are crazy. A big portion were indecipherable (example: “that ending got me XD (slap!) did u.. oh…oh hell naw!”); some were concerned that this was a real fight and wanted to report me to the ASPCA; others were calling the former idiots and explaining that it was just mock fighting; others were outraged that this stupid video had somehow gone viral; and yet others were outraged by the clunky titles at the beginning. At least two people have outright stolen the video and reposted it on their own accounts.3

On the other hand, the guy who left the comment #CatLivesMatter was pretty clever.

Anyway, there you go: my first viral video. I’m so proud.

1This compares to about 20 or 30 for the average cat video I put up—though I notice that all of my videos are in the thousands after the breakout success of Ultimate Cat Fighting.

2I turned off the setting that sends email every time someone leaves a comment, but the emails keep on coming anyway.

3I would pretend to be outraged, but…you know.

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A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

With only days left until December 31, we've raised about half of our $400,000 goal—but we need a huge surge in reader support to close the remaining gap. Whether you've given before or this is your first time, your contribution right now matters.

Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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