YouTube takes off

Andy Warhol once said, "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes." For some, even a mere 15 seconds on the World Wide Web is enough.
YouTube is the popular online video entertainment company that allows users to post and view original videos on the Internet. Since the official launch of the site in 2005, the small start-up has become a media empire in its own right - over 100 million videos are viewed daily and more than 65,000 videos are uploaded each day. Many students surf the site, browsing other users' uploads for particularly amusing clips. Some Blazers, however, post their own videos, whether as a creative outlet or just for laughs.

Numa Numa dance

When Gary Brolsma first filmed himself lip-syncing to the Moldovan pop song "Dragostea Din Tei" in 2004, the video quickly became the stuff of an Internet legend. The "Numa Numa video" was a huge underground hit. And so, in the spirit of silliness, senior Maura Druhan and her friends decided to record themselves doing their own interpretation of the Numa Numa dance. In her video, Druhan and two friends stand outside, humming "Dragostea Din Tei," mimicking the goofy expressions and spastic dance moves immortalized by Brolsma. It's just one of Druhan's many posts. "They're all quite embarrassing," she says.

The urge to Herbal

Herbal Essences might be better known for its commercials than for its hair products. The scandalous advertisements, featuring young women moaning in the shower while washing their hair with the product, are famous for being highly suggestive.

Now, Herbal Essences is back and just as outrageous as ever in senior Ele Rubenstein's YouTube video. Rubenstein and a friend decided to tape a commercial of their own, mocking the risqu" dialogue and suggestive noises of the original ads. In their video, Rubenstein stands in the shower wearing a pair of swim trunks, washing his hair and gyrating.

Sleazy '70s music plays in the background of the short film clip for comedic effect. Rubenstein says that he and his friend didn't intend to post the video on YouTube, but it was too easy to resist. "When we filmed it, it seemed like the obvious thing to do," he says. Rubenstein has since taken the video off YouTube because he did not want people watching it after reading this article.

An online r"sum"

For senior Robert Garner, YouTube isn't just a means of posting mock videos and silly skits. Garner, who hopes to pursue a career in videography, says that he uses YouTube to showcase work that he has done on his own and for school projects. One of Garner's videos currently posted on the site is for the Postal Service's song "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight." It tells the story of two strangers whose lives revolve around each other and inevitably collide, only to be yanked apart in the end. Garner says that he recieves helpful feedback on his work from viewers through YouTube. This video has drawn some especially interesting comments because the story behind the music video was left open-ended. 'I asked a few different people what they thought the storyline was, and I've gotten a lot of different responses," he says.

Backstreet's back, alright!

The Backstreet Boys were once hot stuff. There was a period of time when Nick, AJ and all the rest were such a hit with the pre-teen set that whenever a Backstreet single would play on the radio, every 10-year-old girl in the general vicinity would stop in her tracks to perform a full choreographed routine, just the way the Boys did it in their videos. But now it seems that BSB is on an indefinite hiatus, and that's where Matt McClain and his brother Ron come in. Earlier this year, senior Matt McClain and his brother recorded their own music video for the Backstreet Boys' "I Want it that Way and posted it on YouTube. In their video, the two lip-sync and bop along to the song, exaggerating gestures and staring soulfully into the camera for effect.

McClain finds the entire experience a little embarrassing. "Random kids came up to me in the hallways and said they saw my video," he says.