Viral videos of the week: tornado destroys playground, homeless man gets home and a confused cat

11 May 2014

We take a look at some of the most-viewed and most-shared videos on the web. This week features CCTV footage of a tornado taking place, a homeless man’s life is changed by generosity, and a clueless kitty has an unfortunate run-in.

About 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, 500 years of video watched on Facebook every day, and more than 700 YouTube videos 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.

Tornado tears apart US playground

The American mid-west is quite familiar with the natural phenomenon of the tornado, but very rarely does any footage emerge of how it can turn a seemingly peaceful setting into something resembling the aftermath of a bomb.

This week, raw footage of a CCTV camera in St Luke United Methodist Church’s playground in Oklahoma showing in the course of five minutes, the scale of destruction that left much of the town expecting a hefty clean-up bill.

And no, that’s not a dog running away at the 2.55min mark as one commenter suggests.

 

Uploaded: 07 May 2014

Rick Grimes vs Walter White. Epic rap battles of history [TEXT]

It’s the battle of the AMC airwaves as Rick Grimes of The Walking Dead takes on Walter White from Breaking Bad in a pretty well-written rap battle that makes you think whether the shows could have done with a nonsensical cross-over?

Littered with references to those who’ve seen them – no spoilers thankfully – they manage to pull off a pretty good job on something that could have ended with a cringe-factor of 11.

 

Uploaded: 05 May 2014

Homeless man gets a home

After raising US$40,000 following an internet campaign for a homeless man in the US called Eric, the team behind this video wanted to give him perhaps the one thing he would have wanted more than anything: a home.

Understandably pleased, Eric is a little more than pleased with his new abode and the US$22,000 he now has to start a new life for himself.

All you can say about this video is, go internet!

 

Uploaded: 07 May 2014

Champagne Sabre Time

Interesting and engaging science material online is all the rage right now (just look at how well the ‘I F**cking Love Science!’ blog is doing) and I for one welcome any more editions to get people interested in the subject.

Step forward Alton Brown who, in his video, explains and shows how someone, with the helpful addition of a sabre sword, can knock the top of a Champagne bottle clean-off.

Best not drink it straight from the bottle afterwards though…

 

Uploaded: 07 May 2014

Matt Hunter going around a corner on his bicycle

Everyone loves a bit of slow-mo footage. In this case bicycle enthusiast Matt Hunter goes around a corner at 90 degrees…really slowly. Look at that hand hit the dirt, oof.

 

Uploaded: 06 May 2014

Look Up

This might seem strange coming from a site that loves everything to do with technology and gadgets but in this case, the people have spoken with their clicks! In Gary Turk’s spoken word monologue, he talks about the fear that people are becoming too obsessed with technology and the social sides to our lives are becoming more and more through the screen, rather than face-to-face.

Speaking for myself, I would actually agree with Turk in this case as I’m sure we’ve all come across the friend sitting across from you with their smartphone not paying attention to what’s going on around them.

Although if I’m honest, it tries a little too hard at emotional manipulation, but I’ll let you make your mind up.

 

Uploaded: 25 April 2014

“Ew!” with Seth Rogen and Zac Efron

People love Jimmy Fallon. They love Jimmy Fallon sketches even more. Film companies love Jimmy Fallon because his videos go viral almost every week and make great publicity for upcoming films. This week we see Seth Rogen and Zac Efron of upcoming flick Bad Neighbours pretend to be prissy teenage girls. Mean Girls accents ensue.

 

Uploaded: 06 May 2014

Cat headshot

If there’s one thing that French cats don’t understand, it’s glass doors as this Parisian feline finds out on the French cooking show, ‘La meilleure boulangerie de France’.

As an American reality TV narrator would say: “That cat got served a double helping of pain right there!”

 

Uploaded: 07 May 2014

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Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com