Viral videos: Halloween costume tips, a floating football and reading mean comments with Panti Bliss

30 Oct 2015

Queen of Ireland herself, Panti Bliss. Photo by Iain White/Fennell Photography

This week in viral videos, we have been watching Halloween jokers, magic footballers, Adele spoofers and the Queen of Ireland herself.

Halloween costumes – easy to get it wrong

Halloween comes tomorrow and with it the inevitable string of questionable costumes. This skit from Third Leg Studios manages to find humour in the bad taste, piling it on as a series of downright offensive Halloween party guests decide where the line is drawn. The upload is more than a week old, but has this week started approaching 1m views, no doubt because of the timing.

Uploaded: 11 October 2015

Footballer Cesar Martinez makes ball levitate in magic goal celebration

At a Sunday fixture in Venezuala’s Primera Division, Zamora picked up a 2-0 win over Estudiantes Caracas at home, the first goal coming from Cesar Martinez. But the goal – despite being a beauty – is not what concerns us here. It’s what happens after the goal in Martinez’s celebration that is astounding.

Somehow, on camera and surrounded by his teammates, Martinez makes the ball levitate in mid-air. The footage is fuzzy, which doesn’t help our investigation into the matter, but no matter how close we look, we can’t figure out how Martinez has done it.

Some added footage at the end of this YouTube clip from ALXrecords, close-up and from a different angle, appears to show a hand holding the ball up throughout, but this is not evident in the wide-angle footage. Is it just a touch of Halloween magic? We just don’t know.

Uploaded: 27 October 2015

Reading mean comments with Panti Bliss

Irish YouTuber Riyadh had a brush with royalty this week as he joined the Queen of Ireland, Panti Bliss, to read some mean comments that had been posted about them online. Owing to the nature of nasty internet comments, this video is littered with NSFW languge – not just your usual F-bomb but the other F-started epithet directed at homosexuals, plus a collection of sexual references. If you’re prepared for that, it’s all in good fun as this video was made to laugh at the haters, and laugh they do.

Uploaded: 28 October 2015

Lionel calls Adele to say ‘Hello’

From BlendTV, the inevitable mash-up is here, and already soaring above 4m views on YouTube. Adele meets Lionel in a clash of communication: they both want to say hello, but who will be the first to bid farewell in this face-off?

Uploaded: 23 October 2015

Adele won’t stop ringing me

Indeed, if you’re wondering why Adele keeps hanging up in the music video for Hello, this video from Francis Higgins explains it. She can write and sing a cracking tune but she could do with writing telephone numbers down.

Uploaded: 25 October 2015

World’s slowest Rube Goldberg machine

Watch molasses drip, a tortoise ‘sprint’, ice pops melt, grass grow and (literally) time tick by as the world’s slowest Rube Goldberg machine is set in motion to the tune of Kanye West’s Drive Slow. This ‘Rube Slowberg’ (oh yes) comes to YouTube channel Field Day from inventor, director and TV personality Bob Partington. In all, the golf ball took six weeks, three days, seven hours and two minutes to reach its final destination (sort of), but thanks to the magic of video editing you can watch it in just three minutes.

Uploaded: 27 October 2015

Benfica safety video

Football fans gathered at Estàdio da Luz in Lisbon last Sunday were treated to a unique slice of pre-match entertainment. At the homeground of Benfica before a showdown against local rivals Sporting, Emirates air stewards took to the pitch with a unique safety demonstration. The spoof demonstration is heightened by the roars of appreciation from the crowd, who were definitely hanging on every word of these important instructions.

Uploaded: 27 October 2015

A Bad Lip Reading of the first Democratic debate

Bad Lip Reading is back doing what it does best and putting strange words in the mouths of famous faces. The latest instalment takes highlights from the first debate between the Democratic hopefuls for the 2016 US presidential race. In this version – quite like in real life, judging by reactions online – Bernie Sanders steals the show.

Uploaded: 28 October 2015

Martin’s Life: Skyping the sister

Martin’s Life is Ireland’s new favourite cartoon web series documenting all-too familiar situations between Martin and his parents. This time, we meet Martin’s sister who has emigrated to Australia as the trio at home try to Skype her. We’ve all been there.

Uploaded: 28 October 2015

Want stories like this and more direct to your inbox? Sign up for Tech Trends, Silicon Republic’s weekly digest of need-to-know tech news.

Elaine Burke is the host of For Tech’s Sake, a co-production from Silicon Republic and The HeadStuff Podcast Network. She was previously the editor of Silicon Republic.

editorial@siliconrepublic.com