Viral videos of the week: Starbucks names, awesome nature and Mike Tyson

14 Sep 2014

This week in viral videos, Starbucks baristas purposefully get your name wrong, nature is a powerful and scary thing, and former boxing champ Mike Tyson has a problem with facing reality.

About 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, 500 years of video are watched on Facebook every day, and more than 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter each minute, ensuring there is always video trending on the web.

With so much video available for viewing, we take a look at some of the viral videos that have caught our eye this week.

Mike Tyson gets sweary on Canadian TV

Former boxer Mike Tyson does not come across as a nice man.

The former heavyweight champion was on CP24 being interviewed by news anchor Nathan Downer who, under the pretence of doing his job as a journalist, asked the question in response to Tyson meeting disgraced Toronto Mayor Rob Ford: “Some of your critics would say, ‘There’s a race for mayor. We know you’re a convicted rapist. This could hurt his campaign.’ How would you respond to that?”

Safe to say, he did not respond too well and began launching a verbal tirade.

Uploaded: 10 September 2014

Rider on the storm

“Ah sure, it’ll be grand.” This can only be the driver of this car’s thought process when he decided to go for a drive in the middle of a massive tornado.

Thankfully for viral video lovers everywhere, the spread of dashcams among drivers of eastern Europe has led to dozens of incredible you-had-to-be-there videos being recorded.

Quite rightly, after the driver reverses out of the garage, he suddenly realises the mistake he made in going out in the storm … or did he?

Check out what happens next.

Uploaded: 08 September 2014

Volcano eruption in Papua New Guinea

Behold the awesome power of nature! In another amazing natural video, Phil McNamara was able to capture the moment when Mount Tavurvur in Papua New Guinea erupted.

The most noticeable event is the shockwave that bursts from the ground as the magma is pushed upward to the Earth’s surface, about 4km away from where McNamara is standing.

I hope they had ear plugs for that sonic boom.

Uploaded: 05 September 2014

Why Starbucks spells your name wrong

Whether you find it too personal or a reason to Instagram the fact you have bought a coffee from a leading international brand, Starbucks putting your name on a cup of coffee is here to stay.

But what about the staff who have to write the customers’ names? If they don’t know how to spell the name, do they write the phonetic version?

For Paul Gale it’s a simple case of going on the most long-term wind-up campaign in retail. Bless you, sir.

Uploaded: 08 September 2014

Jeff Goldblum sings his own Jurassic Park theme

Ah, Jeff Goldblum. When he wasn’t saving the Earth from space aliens in the 1990s, he was stuck on an island populated by killer dinosaurs in the film Jurassic Park.

As he points out himself in his interview with actor Seth Myers, pretty much everyone has, at some point in their lives, seen the film.

With it being 21 years since Jurassic Park was first released, Goldblum has had time to fit some lyrics into the theme song performed by John Williams.

Frankly, they’re terrible but … Jeff Goldblum!

Uploaded: 09 September 2014

The Trio Mandili – Georgian music

There’s no denying none of us here at Siliconrepublic.com speak Georgian, but this group of girls sure know how to sing and play the mandolin.

The trio have seemingly caught the eye of those around the world, with some Americans in the comments section finding confusion with the fact other places outside of the US also called Georgia exist.

Being the internet, a Reddit user was able to locate an explanation and lyrics to the song which turns out is about a rather strange eastern Georgian custom.

Uploaded: 04 September 2014

99 Red Balloons – played with red balloons

It’s a trio of musical numbers this week, as Andrew Huang has uploaded a frankly amazing video of him playing the Nene hit 99 Red Balloons with nothing other than four red balloons and audio editing software.

Interesting fact: Despite it being a happy upbeat song, the background to the original German lyrics imagined a rather darker story, where 99 red balloons are launched and get mistaken by a Soviet early warning missile system as an attack, which subsequently launches a full-scale nuclear war.

Bit of a downer, really.

Uploaded: 09 September 2014

Cat sliding

You didn’t think you’d get through a week of viral videos without a cat, did you? This week, Rigby the Bengal cat loves wooden floors.

So much so that he loves when his owner Terry picks him up and slides him along it.

Of course there would be concerns over whether Rigby does actually enjoy this, but if it wasn’t clear to see him running back to his owner every time with glee, Terry says the cat loves it.

Uploaded: 07 September 2014

Stay informed – get daily updates on the latest happenings in technology directly to your inbox.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com