At the beginning of the video, I started to get a bit bored, and I only continued watching it for the sake of the assignment. As it progressed, it became pretty interesting, even though it still made little sense. The video basically consisted of a nonsensical, extreme, racist rant by a British woman on the tram. It showed her argument with strangers, along with the reactions of other bystanders. Some people were just frantically texting…one can easily guess what they were texting about.
I feel like the reason why this video attracted so much attention was because it consisted of extreme confrontation. People seem to be captivated by drama, especially when it is real. Although the vast majority who rated the video had a negative response, the video still gained attention nonetheless.
It is perplexing to think about how videos like this spread so quickly. Millions of people across the world saw this video within a few days, while many videos of greater substance likely went unnoticed in comparison. It says a lot about what people are interested in viewing these days, whether they would readily admit it or not.
This video also reminded me of the type of instant, random fame that we talked about in class a few weeks ago. This woman who was otherwise unknown to the public just 2 days ago was viewed by millions of individuals, despite any lack of merit. The constant viral nature of content on the Internet creates temporary pseudo-celebrities that would otherwise never exist. I think this contributes to our recent shortage in attention spans, and ultimately to our overvaluation of content that contains little or no substance.
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