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‘His Soul Shatters at About 0:23: Self-Scaring and Hyberbolic Shock in YouTube Reaction Videos’

Smith, Clarissa and Kennedy, Julia (2013) ‘His Soul Shatters at About 0:23: Self-Scaring and Hyberbolic Shock in YouTube Reaction Videos’. In: Controversial Images. Palgrave MacMillan, London, pp. 239-253. ISBN 978-0-230-28405-0

Item Type: Book Section

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.

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More Information

Depositing User: Clarissa Smith

Identifiers

Item ID: 9309
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137291998
ISBN: 978-0-230-28405-0
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/9309
Official URL: https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9780230284050

Users with ORCIDS

ORCID for Clarissa Smith: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-0046-8733

Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 11 May 2018 13:20
Last Modified: 18 Dec 2019 16:06

Contributors

Author: Clarissa Smith ORCID iD
Author: Julia Kennedy

University Divisions

Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries
Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries > School of Media and Communications

Subjects

Media > Cinema and Film
Social Sciences > Criminology
Media > Media and Cultural Studies
Social Sciences

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