Why would you do it? At my wedding, no camcorders will be allowed. Yet for some reason, wedding slip-up videos have been popular since the dawn of internet-time. Let's have a look at the best and worst.

This is just agonisingly bad, a couple CONDONING the proliferation of their nauseating wedding ceremony, during which they update their Facebook relationship status:



PUKE.

Only one brand I know of has cashed in on this, Heineken with their disturbing/amusing 'Know the Signs' campaign:



Very good.

Two memes in one, I like it - Evolution of Dance Wedding Video:



And here's the granddaddy - the JK Wedding Entrance Dance which changed the history of viral video advertising (sending Chris Brown's song to number 4 on the itunes chart depite being 6 months old):



AHAHAHAAH - now THIS is the type of wedding video I can get on with:



THE BEST!

Discovered 06 Nov 2009...




6,780,105 views
19 duplicate videos
726 blog posts
10,523 comments
1,981 tweets

The latest video doing the rounds today is this spine-chiller of a drunk woman in Boston who stumbled on the train tracks seconds before the train arrived:



It's works well as a viral video because it's terrifying, heartwarming at the end, and also raises a lot of questions which encourages people to share and discuss it.

1) Why did she fall on the tracks? (in other videos you can see her stumbling around in a very drunken fashion for a few seconds first)
2) Why didn't anyone help her when she was so dangerously close to the edge at the start?
3) How the hell did the train driver manage to see her and stop in time?
4) What happens afterwards? Is she in trouble? Is she an alcoholic?

The 'near miss' video genre is a popular one, but just puts me too much on edge to watch much of:





That's quite enough of that!

Radiolab presents: Moments by Will Hoffman. This films is a celebration of life that was inspired by David Eagleman's book, Sum.

When people think 'viral video,' after gaping and scratching their head a bit they might say things like 'Durex, Pot Noodle, Burger King,' - all brands who've been given a GIFT and should be making viral videos every single month IMHO.

However, this industry is branching out. It's interesting to see finance brands and giant pharmaceutical companies dipping their toes in the water.

Pfizer, I'm impressed:

It's good to see Vodafone (albeit NZ only) embracing the power of viral video with this fabulous 'Symphonia' video, made using the sound of text messages being sent to 1,000 phones:



So I've decided to do a little top 5 of my favourite videos in this spirit, as they're one of my favourite in the viral video family. The ones that are real are the best, as they hit the "How did they do that?!?!?!?" trigger as people imagine how many hundreds of hours and planning went into the video. Either way, making music in an unexpected way is hugely viral, the bigger and more complicated the better.


No. 5 - Is it real? Isn't it? Debate over this helped push 'Bike Hero' to over 2 million views.



The original and my personal favourite, DJ Scotch Egg performing Bach with a Gameboy orchestra, loses points only because it looks too fake, but I'm a child of the 80's and this hits my 8-bit pleasure button:



No. 3 The Vodafone video must have been inspired by the success of AKQA's 'Happy Christmas' message last year, which is fine - viral video is allll about creative recycling. Jingle Bells remixed:




No.2 - a real pleasure to listen to, if stressful, I love this music made from Windows 98 and XP sounds only and with over 5 million views I can't be the only one:




Number 1: This goes straight to the top for being too clever and uber cool. Radiohead's 'Nude' - cover version wtih redundant hardware.



Runners up:

It's only a week old, by I like what these guys have done with their Stylophone beatboxes:



What do you think? Any I've missed? Please comment and send me links to any you think should be on there!

With a target audience of about 4 people, this particular one isn't going to go viral but wow! What a fantastic idea. As soon as I have a spare hour I'm going to be making lots of these:

So now I understand the hype behind JibJab, after all this has had 3 million views!