Do you ever just stop and think about how amazing the Internet really is? More often than not, people tend to become so used to having all the necessary (and unnecessary) information right in the palm of their hand and don’t stop and think about just how incredible it is, but it really is fascinating. Think about it, if you are trying to figure out the words to a song, you can google it. If you need to figure out how to pronounce something, you can search for the phonetic pronunciation. If you’re struggling to figure out how to decorate your room, you can open up Pinterest. We are living in an era where you literally have an entire library’s worth of information in your back-pocket, and that is something that no other generation has experienced before. Much like most of this technology-driven generation, I truly forgot the power of the Internet and the way it speeds up our lives, but that quickly changed when a video of mine completely blew up.
Over the summer (in July, to be exact), I decided to attend the Indiana Black Expo with my family. We walked around for hours exploring all of the different activities that the expo had to offer, until we finally stumbled across this one area that looked like any child’s dream. The giant room was filled with bounce houses, obstacle courses, blow up slides, and tons of other inflatable wonders, but nothing compared to Meltdown.
In the middle of the room, there was this Wipeout-style-thing that had the word “Meltdown” written in the center of it. The blowup had these giant foam arms that would spin around and children would attempt to jump or duck underneath the arms when they came around. Upon seeing the strange thing, my nine-year-old brother took off running and climbed in for a turn. My dad soon noticed how great of a job he was doing and asked me to film him. I took out my phone and started recording when I noticed another child on the blowup that was so much funnier than my brother and I ended up filming this boy instead. I know it sounds terrible for me to film someone else’s child because he was funnier, but he was so funny! He kept getting hit by the mechanical arms (both accidentally and on purpose) and would knock over every time he stood up. The longer I recorded, the funnier it got, which is why the last six seconds that I recorded became such a hit.
Towards the end of the video, the little boy looked back, saw the arm coming towards him, and then just took a free ride to the other side. Everyone who saw it was dying and I knew that I had to post this video somewhere. As soon as I got home, I opened Vine and uploaded the video.
For nearly a month, the video got little to no attention. I was slightly disappointed in the lack of interest in the video because I thought it was so funny, but I just accepted it. On the 21st day of the video being posted, I went to bed and woke up to thousands of notifications. I have no idea how it happened or what changed, but for some reason, my video completely blew up overnight.
While having a famous video was cool, it wasn’t really that big of a deal because no one really cares about Vine fame, but then it got even cooler. Suddenly there were sites like Buzzfeed, MTV News, and even TIME Magazine doing articles on my video and using my name in them. Let that sink in: My name was in TIME Magazine. It was absolutely insane and was so much more than I could even begin to wrap my head around. And as if that wasn’t enough, after this, the contracts starting coming into play.
Suddenly, big business that specialize in Internet fame were sending me agreement forms so that they could license my video and help me (and them) make money off of it. I couldn’t believe how fast everything was happening. One minute I was recording some kid getting him by a foam arm and the next, I’m negotiating contracts. And the craziest part: All of this came from a six-second clip.
Now, the video has over 53 million loops on Vine, has been reposted and shared hundreds of time, and has generated so many remakes. My follower count (on Vine) has gone from 200 to 4000, I have gained about 60 followers on Twitter and about 40 on Instagram. Also, I finally settled on a contract and might start making money off of this clip. I still can’t seem to grasp the situation, but I do know that this is a direct display of the power of the Internet. One day, I’m pretty much irrelevant and the next day, I’m in TIME. What a time to be alive.
