Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The Sequel You Never Wanted: Evolution of Dance 2

Evolution of Dance 2 is now UP!

OMG!



If you are a mild follower of YouTube and internet video, you may know that for over two years, Judson Laipply's Evolution of Dance, an "overlong mollycoddle mime dancing sketch", reigned as the most viewed video ever on YouTube. (Until beaten by Avril Lavigne. No comment on that.)

Well, on Monday, the "long awaited" Evolution of Dance 2 appeared, and debuted on The Today Show?!. (See Today show video - witness the crowd of .... 20!?)

WHY OH WHY is this claptrap getting press!?!?!

The video was released to the public late Sunday evening and now has about 1.1 million views, probably mostly curiousity seekers from the press coverage. Its hard to imagine it that could ever rival the 109 million views of its predecessor. The first installment hit YouTube in April 2006, when YouTube was a tiny place with a dearth of good content. It made the most viewed list, which was not a hard feat at the time, considering that one of the top channels was a booty-shaking-all-the-time chick called sexxiebabe23. Then it stayed on the most viewed list by some strange gravitational force. (E.g., NewViewer: "Hmm, I wonder what the most viewed video ever on this youtube thing is?" -click- "OMG! MY EYES! MY EYES!" View counted as viewer fumbles to close browser.)

I'm sorry, but Evolution of Dance 2 is crap.

Its inoffensive crap, but nothing noteworthy. The only positive thing I can say is that Judson Laipply gets credit for squeezing every last drop out of this "phenomenon." More power to him. Evolution of Dance DVDs, t-shirts, fast food franchises, the possibilities are endless.

As the amazingly snarky folks at youtube reviewed say:
...how many times can you go to the well of “goofy white dude in an Orange Crush T-Shirt doing booty-shakin’ moves to retro jams” before it gets old? Turns out the answer is once. You can go to that particular well exactly once. Because after that, it just comes across as tired, uninspired and, frankly, kind of annoying.

So my recommendation: RUN AWAY FROM YOUR KEYBOARD NOW! But like 2girls1cup, many will be unable to resist.