Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Big Eyes

One million YouTube views in ten days!
It never ceases to amaze me the kind of thing that can become a hit in the Internet age. I don't know what to think about this one, except it's a funny and fascinating little thing.

It's interesting, though, that the Japanese, the most severe people on Earth, also has Cuteness down to a fine art.



Reminds me of another Internet phenomenon: Happy Slip. She has some talent and humor, but I wonder if she would be in the millions-view range if she was not so dang gorgeous. Of course you can say that about many.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is many things, but cute, it is not.

Anonymous said...

She is pretty, no doubt. But having her eyes so far apart is borderline abnormal! Gives her a fantastic expression "tool".

Of course, the most striking part are the numbers you cite: 1 million views... in 10 days? I wonder how easily this can be achieved, in the Japanese context? I know that, outside Asia, many advertising agents would kill in order to get the recipe to achieve such results on zero budget.

It would be interesting to know what "got the ball rolling", though. I mean, if the spot appeared on national TV, then the instantaneous widespread interest would be easier to understand...

It certainly speaks a lot for YouTube, in any case. Just a few years back, this would have been simply impossible.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Exactly.

It's an "idea virus". You can download a book about it for free at ideavirus.com.

Anonymous said...

Amazing. How does she do it?

Cliff Prince said...

Weird. Very cute, to me. But oddly ... inhuman. The rhythm of her motion is off in a kind of non-connected way. Like a performance slave under pressure to make a good product, or like a younger person who doesn't know what he or she's doing but just goes through the motions because an adult said so. Then you see her manicured nails and you think, "Oh, SHE'S the grown up in the room." Very weird.

Because of how my internet pages happened to be set up, I immediately jumped from looking at this to looking at the Beauty of the Day at DOMAI. Shazam! Utterly different kind of "cute."

Cliff Prince said...

Further thoughts:

This young lady is ripe for the porn industry.

Does she have a moustache?

Why can't I see more of her body?

We used to call an "idea virus" a "meme." The thoughts about "memes" were circulating the internet a few years ago, IIRC. Is there a distinction?

Anonymous said...

final identity said: "We used to call an "idea virus" a "meme." The thoughts about "memes" were circulating the internet a few years ago, IIRC. Is there a distinction?"

It seems after Richard Brodie and Susan Blackmore had rode the meme horse with Virus of the Mind and The Meme Machine respectively, and many others had followed, the word no longer was fresh enough for Seth Godin. So for Unleashing the Ideavirus Mr. Godin had to come up with a new word to talk about essentially the same thing.

It's all about marketing about marketing. You can't market your version of marketing the same way the others marketed their marketing.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Indeed, F.I. In other videos you can see that she is quite buxom, definitely not the kid that her voice and face might indicate.

But it seems this is often the case with Japanese women/models. You'll see many who look to western eyes like adolescents, but turn out to be in their twenties.

Cliff Prince said...

There's something in the heterosexual male mind about an adult child, isn't there? The Pygmalion story, the fascination with young women just on the verge of full sexuality, the disinterest in "mature" women despite the many greater charms we should understand that they offer. This weird little Japanese experiment -- does she perhaps have thyroid trouble, making her eyes bug out? -- just addresses a similar thing to what some animated pornography addresses, by depicting acceptable aspects of childishness in the same wrapper as acceptable aspects of adulthood.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

"but turn out to be in their twenties."

Or even in their thirties!
Yes, the Japanese are often considered in the West as being borderline pedophile, based on the graphic codes of their hentai for instance, while essentially it's an ethnic type thing: their women just have a markedly more juvenile aspect than what we are used to.
Which is by no means a denial of the very real Lolicon phenomenon.

Anonymous said...

Oh my, Cousin Lyoko, what big eyes you have!

Anonymous said...

I don't know what's supposed to be so great about her. Just another butt ugly chink.

Anonymous said...

Oh my, Anonymous, what a big mouth you have!