All Posts Tagged With: "viral video"
10 years later, ‘Star Wars Kid’ speaks out
Ghyslain Raza now a proud law school grad
Ghyslain Raza (Mathieu Rivard/L’actualité)
Almost a billion viewers across the planet know him as the Star Wars Kid, but they’ve never heard him speak, until now.
Ghyslain Raza was a normal high-school student in small-town Quebec back in 2002, a shy 14-year-old who liked to make videos. In 2003, classmates posted one of those videos on the Internet without his knowledge–in it, Raza wields a makeshift light saber, clumsily imitating a Star Wars Jedi knight.
The video went viral, and the Trois-Rivières teen became one of the earliest and highest-profile victims of a massive cyberbullying attack, one that played out among classmates and strangers online.
“What I saw was mean. It was violent. People were telling me to commit suicide,” the now-25-year-old recalls.
What is the Harlem Shake?
Canadian university students go crazy for dance meme
The Harlem Shake, a dance move popularized by New York DJ Baauer, may be the fastest-spreading meme on Canadian campuses… ever? The copycat YouTube videos have been made by everyone from a father-and-son duo to Norwegian soldiers, but few groups have moved for the cameras more than our own university students. Canadian students’ videos are racking up tens of thousands of views per day. The jig is simpler than Gangnam Style: one person, usually wearing a mask, flails around unnoticed until suddenly, through the miracle of editing, everyone joins in. So far Western University is leading in the competition for clicks at 170,000. But they’re about to face some challengers. More than 1,000 have signed up on Facebook for Wednesday’s taping at Brock University. More than 450 say they’ll attend at the University of British Columbia on Friday. At Queen’s University 1,200 have accepted the invitation. At the University of Toronto 700 have. At McGill it’s 500.
Western University’s, posted on Sunday, had 170,000 views by Monday.
The University of Guelph’s, posted Saturday, had 160,000 views.
This one, from Wilfrid Laurier University, has 100,000 views.
This response, from the nearby University of Waterloo, has 88,000.
McMaster University’s Deadmau5-featuring version was at 30,000 and climbing.
Wendy’s rap, a drug warning & women get raises at UBC
What students are talking about today (January 31st)
Mister B on YouTube
1. A pizza-faced Tennessee college student who rapped his order at a local Wendy’s restaurant has seen his video go viral, just as planned. Astonishingly, the fast-food restaurant staff get the entire order right and then give him and his buddies the food for free. It seems suspiciously well-choreographed—could it be a stealth ad? Nope. Blake Mankin, who goes by the name Mister B. told ABC News his intention was to promote his upcoming album “What the Funk.”
2. An acne and birth-control drug may be linked to the death of at least 11 Canadians, eight of them under 30 years old, according to Health Canada records reported on by the Toronto Star. The drug, Diane-35, is being suspended in France after deaths there. Health Canada told The Star that the department is “reviewing the available information to determine the appropriate next steps.” Eleven women and girls who took the drug experienced severe and excessive blood clotting in their legs, sudden blockages in their lungs, bleeding in their brains and chest pain before death, according to the adverse reaction reports reviewed by The Star.
3. Not every First Nation group in Canada is at loggerheads with the government over treaty rights. The Chippewas of The Thames First Nations settled their land claim and are now looking for strategic areas to build an economically sound reserve with the 5,120 acres the Government of Canada owes them, reports Western University’s The Gazette. “If we’re going to become economically self-sufficient, then we have to have an economic base,” chief Joe Miskokomon told the newspaper. He says they want to build near a city like London where they could develop the land quickly.
4. In a nod to pay equity, every female faculty member at the University of British Columbia is getting a two per cent pay raise. The money is due because multiple studies have shown women at UBC are underpaid on campus by that amount even when other factors have been controlled for.
5. The crisis in Mali, where a weak government is fighting off Al-Qaeda-linked extremists with the help of international soldiers, has been getting coverage in student newspapers across the country. “Extremists cannot be allowed to gain the upper hand and impose an oppressive regime upon the innocent people of Mali. While much of the world has been throwing off the chains of tyranny or fighting for freedom as in Syria, Mali risks going in the other direction, backsliding into violence and terror,” writes Spencer Fernando in The Manitoban. Meanwhile, students writing in The Concordian debated how involved Canada should get. Not to be outdone, Maclean’s world correspondent Michael Petrou put together this video that will bring you up to speed.
York University student gets down Gangnam Style
Video goes viral
David Kim, a biology student at York University, has been watched nearly 200,000 times on YouTube doing his impersonation of Korean pop star Psy’s Gangnam Style dance. Kim crisscrossed the Toronto campus earlier this week dancing through lectures, getting down atop a Tim Hortons counter and at one point bouncing around a police car. “I really like the dance,” Kim told the Toronto Star, explaining that he played the song from his iPhone during the shoot. Check it out:
Fake Queen’s University advertisement plays up sterotypes
Entertaining, if you don’t take it too seriously
Most universities get stereotyped—most unfairly.
Guelph is thought of as the cow college, even though agricultural students comprise only a tiny fraction of the student body.
The University of Victoria has a reputation for attracting laid-back hippies, even though it’s a research powerhouse that ranked second in the 21st Maclean’s University Rankings.
And Queen’s University? Well, its stereotypes are multiple… and legendary. Queen’s has a reputation for being an upper-crust, primarily-Caucasian institution where students drink to excess, have a lot of sex and think very highly of themselves.
Continue reading Fake Queen’s University advertisement plays up sterotypes
