Abstract

In a nondescript bedroom, four friends (three males, one female) sit together in front of a computer screen and wait for a film to begin. Expecting to be scared by what they’ll see, the quartet film themselves with a web-cam. Music plays and the friends begin to squeal and exclaim, offering a shocked commentary on what they are watching. One young man excitedly walks in and out of frame while another stares wide-eyed at the computer screen in front of him. He doesn’t move even when the young woman tries to pull his face towards hers. After a minute and a half, the film ends with much laughter and the exclamation ‘Oh.My. God!’
The above describes Cougarguy222’s Spankwire Reaction video on YouTube – a clip which has been viewed more than 480,000 times and is described as ‘friends watching the HORRIBLE video, “Spankwire”. It’s the worst video EVER!!!!’ This is one of more than a thousand YouTube postings which record the reactions of viewers watching ‘Spankwire: One of the Scariest Videos Out There’ – a two and half minute video montage primarily accessed via the Spankwire.com porn hubsite (hence its title) which went viral sometime in 2007–8. Viral videos are a feature of internet communications, tending towards the spectacular – at the ‘softer’ end exemplified in the display of a celebrity caught in an awkward moment, a household pet doing something out of the ordinary or a politician filmed ‘candid camera’ style.