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I've really been getting into my Instagram app these days, exploring ways to manipulate it beyond the standard filters that come with it. My most recent experiment is taking pictures of things on my computer screen; the glossy reflection, depending on sunlight and room conditions make for some pretty beautiful patterns and effects. Below you'll find some shots I recently took off YouTube—a pictorial history of sorts.
1. Charlie Bit My Finger
Still my favorite online video of all time, and, judging by the number of views (it's now up to 366,792,355 as of this writing), many others' favorite, as well, "Charlie Bit My Finger" has everything a good homemade video should have: endearing subjects, little-to-no interference from the video's "director" and a heavily anticipated moment of action, in this case, the innocent chomping of a finger.
By the way, if you're wondering whether or not there's any money in posting YouTube videos, by my crude calculations, this little video has made about $734,000 for the family that uploaded it (based on a blended, average $2/CPM, which is fairly standard for YouTube partner channels). And that's just the one video! The channel has many, popular videos on it.
2. David After Dentist
As of this writing, more than 98 million people have viewed little David struggling to make sense of the world after his trip to the dentist’s office where he had oral surgery, preceded by a healthy dose of some wild anesthetic. Whether the video is exploitative and takes advantage of David for laughs is up to each viewer. But what’s indisputable is the fact that the video has earned its rightful place in the YouTube Hall of Fame.
3. Diet Coke + Mentos
If you haven't seen the crazy duo behind this experiment on Letterman or Ellen, you're missing part of the fun. Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz spent six months developing different Coke & Mentos geyser effects before they were ready to start shooting videos. The big video on YouTube employed more than 100 two-liter bottles of Diet Coke, more than 500 Mentos and was astonishingly shot in one take! To date, the vid has more than 14 million views.
4. Dorkiness Prevails
5. Evolution of Dance
6. Yes We Can
7. Me at the Zoo
8. Kittens Inspired by Kittens
What pictorial history of YouTube would be complete without a cat video, eh? "Kittens Inspired by Kittens" features an adorable 6-year-old inserting her own literal narrative to the photos in a children's book titled Kittens. It's been seen more than 13 million times as of today.
9. JK Wedding Entrance Dance
More than 68 million views later, Kevin and Jill's wedding ceremony is still going strong. The choreographed processional to Chris Brown's "Forever" has allowed them to raise more than $26,000 for the Sheila Wellstone Institute. Yep, they're putting most of the income to charity—something few of us would do. Well, then again, how many of us would create a dance like that in the first place?!
10. RickRoll'D
Rick Astley's 1987 video "Never Gonna Give You Up" got new life in 2008 when a 4Chan user promised a video-game trailer and instead linked readers to Astley's video. The trick, dubbed Rickrolling, has become an April Fools staple, racking up more than 51 million views to date.