MAXIMILIAN PATERSON
<Arts & Culture Editor>
For those of you who are looking for a new stupid internet video fix now that those “Harlem Shake” videos have moved from the amusing category to the annoying category, there is a new trend you should take a look at: it’s called Gallon Smashing.
The concept is very simple. Walk into any grocery store, grab a gallon container of any liquid in each hand, stand in an unsupervised location, smash the gallon jugs on the floor and pretend to fall. Get your friend to videotape the whole thing and you’ve got the recipe for millions of Youtube views. Reckless, yes. Immature, yes. Messy, yes. Funny, kind of… but the “prank” gets pretty old really quickly. After a few smashes the focal point of the video shifts from people’s reaction to the liquid massacre to focus on the destruction done via the smashing. Overall, it’s the sort of thing you see once, chuckle to yourself, and hope that no one starts a trend of it. However, that’s wishful thinking at best.
The concept of Gallon Smashing was started by three teens from the United States who are part of a prank collective they call TheChaizyChannel. After releasing the video a few weeks ago, many copycat gallon smashers have popped up all over the world. This has prompted grocery stores and law enforcement officials to respond with a series of retail theft and disorderly conduct charges.
The concept of taking a mildly amusing Internet phenomenon and running with it is not novel by a long stretch. We at the Obiter will now outline the Internet video fads of the past while we wait for our lame parents to forward us an email chain asking if we’ve heard about this “Grumpy Cat” thing.
Cone-ing
Essentially you order a soft-serve ice cream cone at a drive-through, and grab it by the top, thus squishing the ice cream in your hand and startling the drive-through attendant.
If you don’t like getting your hands dirty, then this isn’t a fad for you. Basically you have to weigh the possible reaction from the drive-through attendant against your willingness to get totally sticky and spill ice cream on your clothes and in your car. As a steadfast policy, when using the Obiter’s branded Hummer2 (we ran a big surplus this year), there is a strict no cone-ing rule.
Planking/Tebowing/Owling
I don’t even want to talk about this one. It’s too stupid. Also, people have actually died because of this. Great going, Australia.
Rickrolling
This is a classic bait and switch prank. In 1987 Rick Astley released an album entitled Whenever You Need Somebody, which included the hit song “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Sometime in 2007, people on the Internet started posting messages in forums with tantalizing titles such as “Grand Theft Auto 4 Trailer!!!” or “Britney Spears Nude Pics!!!” and once a user clicked the links they would be sent to the music video on Youtube, and thus be Rickrolled. This fad got old quick, pretty soon you couldn’t trust any link that anyone sent you, and even worse, people started to listen to the song even when they weren’t being tricked. People are the worst!
Milking
Milking is something that people thought was funny but was really a personal admission of stupidity. Here’s the gag, buy a jug of milk, stand in a public place, dump the jug of milk on your head. Genius, right? It was started by a group of guys in Newcastle, England and spread from there. I don’t know want else to say about it other than it wasted a lot of milk. Who wants to smell like milk? Captain Crunch?
Mentos in Diet Coke
When carbon dioxide (found in most sodas) mixes with liquid sugar (found in the coating of Mentos), it creates bubbles around the porous surface of the liquid sugar (called nucleation). If those bubbles are contained within a two litre Diet Coke container, then the bubbles create a great deal of pressure in the container usually resulting in a foamy brown geyser. The Mentos in Diet Coke phenomenon originated in 2006 and has been embraced heavily by cool science teachers that wear cargo pants and like to sit on chairs backwards. Science Rulezzz! The Mythbusters even dedicated a segment to whether eating Mentos and drinking Diet Coke would result in an exploding stomach… it didn’t.
Swatting
Swatting is a more dubious trend amongst hackers and online gamers and is the Internet equivalent prank calling, except with a devious twist. The prank is that you get ahold of someone’s personal information, such as their phone number and address, and then place a fake 911 call and describe a very graphic crime that is taking place at their house, usually a threatening hostage situation involving guns. The police react by sending heavily armed tactical officers (usually a SWAT team, thus the name) to the pranked person’s house. Funny, right? Not really. At the risk of sounding like a responsible adult, this prank wastes valuable public resources and is absolutely terrifying for any unsuspecting person. It’s surprising that no one has gotten accidentally shot yet.
2 Girls 1 Cup Reactions (not pictured)
Watch a gross scatological video and make a disgusting face, get the whole thing on camera and that’s about it. The 2 girls 1 cup video is so gross that if you even play the piano song used as a backing track I won’t be able to sleep for a week. Despite the graphic nature of the original, these reaction videos are pretty amusing, especially the one where “Jackie” tapes his Grandma Marlene’s reaction to watching the entire thing. Sorry Grandma Marlene, it’s funny for us, but terribly haunting for you. Uhhhhh… I just shuddered thinking about it.