Viral Videos — Illustrated collage of viral video references including Nyan Cat, Chocolate Rain, and Rickroll on a weather forecast template

Viral Videos

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Published November 14, 2026

Viral Videos names the practice of online clips spreading by email, forums and social sharing, with the earliest widely passed example, the Dancing Baby, dating to 1996. The term itself was popularized in 2009 after David After Dentist blew up on YouTube, and by 2011 the canon included Chocolate Rain, Double Rainbow, Bed Intruder and Friday.

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Overview

Viral Videos cover a wide range of clip types: music uploads, scripted sketches, candid gaffes, shock footage, amateur home videos and news interview moments that got reposted everywhere1. More editable clips often spawn parodies, remixes and YouTube Poops, with Numa Numa by Gary Brolsma and the Technoviking clip offering textbook cases of a short video getting rebuilt by fans in dozens of forms4. Dial-up speeds in the 1990s meant most early viral material actually circulated as animated GIFs rather than proper video files4.

Music uploads make up a separate strand. Early YouTube hosted large volumes of unofficial song rips that later vanished under copyright claims, after which labels set up official channels. Many famous artists upload music videos through VEVO, a joint venture originally formed by Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and EMI2. VEVO uploads such as Justin Bieber's "Baby" rack up views on brand power rather than organic sharing, so they occupy a different slot from clips like Chocolate Rain or Bed Intruder4.

Origin & Background

Platform
Email chains / YouTube (viral spread)
Date
1996

Clips passed widely online trace back to the mid-1990s4. The Dancing Baby, a 3D rendered toddler shuffling to Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling," was the first widely distributed example, forwarded through email in 1996 when video file sizes were still too heavy for most connections4. For nearly a decade, email attachments, personal webpages and Flash hubs like Newgrounds carried most of the traffic.

YouTube launched on April 23, 2005, when co-founder Jawed Karim uploaded a 19-second clip titled "Me at the zoo" from San Diego Zoo's elephant enclosure3. The site hit 120 million videos and 300 million accounts within five years1. The specific term "viral video" only caught on in 2009, after booba1234's clip David After Dentist, filmed in the summer of 2008 and posted on January 30, 2009, broke out on YouTube4.

How It Spread

Before YouTube took over, dedicated hubs like Newgrounds, Funny or Die and Nico Nico Douga did most of the heavy lifting4. Jonti Picking's Flash short Badger Badger Badger landed in 2003, the Star Wars Kid clip spread through Kazaa the same year, and Gary Brolsma's Numa Numa lipdub, posted to Newgrounds in 2004 to O-Zone's "Dragostea din tei," gathered countless remixes once it jumped to YouTube in 20064.

After 2007, YouTube absorbed most of the action. Tay Zonday's Chocolate Rain spread out of 4chan that year, Keyboard Cat went wide in 2009 via Brad O'Farrell's "Play him off, Keyboard Cat" mashup, and David After Dentist pushed the term itself into common use4. The Guardian noted in April 2010 that advertising revenue sharing, announced by then-CEO Chad Hurley in 2007, let people like Zonday turn hobby uploads into actual careers, with Zonday telling the paper "you could sooner herd cats than plan for the public to like or dislike something"1.

A second wave of clips arrived around 2010 and 2011. Hungrybear9562's Double Rainbow caught on after Jimmy Kimmel shared it, Antoine Dodson's Bed Intruder interview went up on Reddit in July 2010, and schmoyoho turned both into autotuned songs that charted on their own4. Rebecca Black's Friday, posted in 2011, drew mass ridicule and set the YouTube downvote record at the time. In March 2012, Invisible Children's Kony 2012 documentary cleared 43 million views in 72 hours on YouTube, one of the fastest climbs recorded for any upload up to that point4.

Timeline

1996

The Dancing Baby begins circulating through email chains, counted as the first widely distributed video clip.

2003

Jonti Picking releases the Flash animation Badger Badger Badger; the Star Wars Kid clip spreads via Kazaa.

2004

Gary Brolsma uploads Numa Numa to Newgrounds, which later jumps to YouTube in 2006.

2005-04-23

Jawed Karim uploads "Me at the zoo" to YouTube, the site's first video.

2007

Tay Zonday posts Chocolate Rain; YouTube begins sharing ad revenue with creators.

2009-01-30

YouTube user booba1234 posts David After Dentist, after which the term "viral video" enters common use.

2010-07

Bed Intruder, featuring Antoine Dodson, hits Reddit and gets autotuned by schmoyoho.

2011

Rebecca Black's Friday draws record downvote counts on YouTube.

2012-03

Invisible Children's Kony 2012 clears 43 million YouTube views in 72 hours.

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