Virality — it’s something that content creators crave. The best kind of advertising, as they say, is free advertising. Nothing is freer than people sharing your video on their own time.
Making a video that will spread like a wildfire is, by some, considered a craft. Some have tried to chop it down to a science. For example, the channel HEILBrice tried explaining this through Karen X. Cheng’s 10 ways to go Viral.
Some of these ways include telling a story and writing a viral title. However, these things don’t explain the phenomenon of cute videos.
Cute videos don’t particularly tell a story and typically don’t have a title that is especially interesting. So what makes people go nuts over them?
Take a look at Facebook. Many people became annoyed with the personal nature of Facebook — namely, the fact that people think everyone cares about their personal lives. Some popular YouTube videos are even simply about annoying Facebook posts. For example, Cian Twomey discusses the most annoying things on Facebook — things including Candy Crush invites and asking others to share posts for popularity.
These kinds of “clingy” notifications can annoy others who honestly just … don’t really care.
But cute videos — take a look on your Facebook feed. It’s likely that a quick scroll will show you a cute cat or dog video. Funny enough, this is the kind of content that goes viral. Does it have a story? Is it relatable? No, it’s none of these things. But is it cute?
Take this video for example — "Cute Baby Kitten Talks Too Much." The title is straightforward. It’s not clickbait at all — it tells you exactly what the video is, without particularly hiding anything. It doesn’t have any kind of story line or inspirational message — it’s just adorable. And it has over 22 million views.
These cute videos are often short, especially on social media — a person can quickly be adored and continue scrolling. There are literally almost no cons to this transaction. Watching it gives the viewer happiness, barely takes any time, and costs absolutely nothing in terms of money. It seems pretty obvious why these things go viral.
And some companies have quickly taken advantage of this. Buzzfeed, often a company considered a master of virality, has created a series called “Puppyhood”— of which the first video has reached over 13 million views on YouTube alone.
The formula for this is easy — a funny guy with an adorable puppy. This isn’t even close to the first formulaically cute video Buzzfeed has concocted. Ever seen a video with a name similar to “Cat Lovers Get Surprised By A Box Of Kittens?” What about “Drunk Girls Get Surprised With Puppies” or “People With A Fear Of Dogs Meet Pit Bull Puppies?” These videos have 10 million, 9 million and 6 million views, respectively.
So adorableness wins. It doesn’t seem formulaic at first, but maybe it is — just in a different way. Is this a bad thing? Not really. Is it quality content? Not exactly. But what’s wrong with that? It’s cute — and that’s what people want.
Marco Omta is a sophomore studying music production. What do you think about viral animal videos? Email Marco at mo183714@ohio.edu.
