The following is a conversation between me and myself:
Me: “Who’s Billy on the Street?”
Myself: “I’m pretty sure he’s that obnoxious guy from like 6 years ago who ran around New York with a microphone and yelled.”
Me: “Oh yeah. I remember him. Really coked up and obnoxious, right?”
Myself: “Yeah that’s him.”
Me: “Alright, why is one of his videos trending on YouTube? Did he do something controversial or different? Did he decide to be funny???”
Myself: “No no nothing like that. He got John Oliver to come on his show and stand over his shoulder like a Sith Lord while he did his shtick.”
Me: “I see. So was John Oliver participating in the video a lot? Maybe doing some jokes about the prison industrial complex in between takes while Billy took substantial amounts of cocaine.
Myself: “Umm… no actually, his contribution was really minimal.”
Me: “Okay, I feel like I have to ask… why was this video trending?”
Myself: laughs “I just told you, John Oliver was in it.”
Me: “Yeah but wasn’t his part really insignificant?”
Myself: “He could have been played by a cardboard cutout of himself.”
Me: “So it was just the fact that he made an appearance in a sweat stained, checkerboard, button down that made this video anymore significant than the thousands of other videos released on YouTube today?”
Myself: “Yes. It’s John Oliver. He’s YouTube royalty. When he releases a video late Sunday night, if its not the number one trending video on YouTube by Monday afternoon, that’s only because he released two videos Sunday night and the other video is hogging the number one spot.”
Me: “But this video wasn’t even his video, he was barely in it.”
Myself: “Doesn’t matter. Everyone loves him (Except for the gays apparently).”
Me: “So if I wanted to make a viral video, all I’d have to do is get John Oliver on it.”
Myself: “If you wanted to get John Oliver on it, all the power to you. If you just say his name Buzzfeed will probably feature you though.”
Me: “So the secret to going viral on YouTube is John Oliver?”
Myself: “Exactly!”
P.S. If I don’t get a job at Barstool from this blog I already have the start to a meta screen play.
P.S.S. A much funnier video would have been a mashup of all the straight guys who got asked if they were gay.
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