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I thought I'd write down some of my thoughts on the recent viral video we had to share the experience from my point of view as creator and admin. At time of writing the vid has 20.1m views, 3.4k comments, 188k reactions, 34.5m reach, 10.3k shares.
On Monday 27th December 2021 I was hanging out on Buchanan street at TGIs. Ally Rennet was playing in the background. I had just recorded him and posted him on the page. I had also just recorded Daniel Ladds so I had two excellent vids and didn't need anything else. I was hanging out chatting to Rickshaw Tom and Chris Craighead (The Balloon Guy).
Lorna and Charlie came up to get a balloon from Chris. I stepped back so Chris could deal with his customers. While Charlie was asking for a blue dinosaur which Chris couldn't do as he didn't have enough balloons, I asked Lorna if it was okay to film Chris making Charlie a balloon dino. I made this decision as animals are often quicker to make than characters and I thought a short video would play better on the page. In the end Charlie asked for a brown dino (didn't want a green one).
I started filming and right away I could see that Charlie was a great kid and an enthusiastic and engaged audience. This really brings out Chris's performing side and he warms right up to Charlie. They have this incredible double act going on in seconds. Chris and I did a video once before that got 10K views which we were pleased with and Chris has said that it completely depends on the personality and engagement level of the kid if the vid is a success or not.
That day when I went home I cut out the last 10secs or so of the finished balloon and Charlie's reaction to it for tiktok which lends itself to short vids. That vid was fairly popular but not wildly so despite the Jurassic Park music I put over the top of it.
On Thursday 30th December 2021 I came up the town to collect content. However it was very quiet and I thought I would have no one to film. I posted Chris's video at 10am. By lunchtime I had got some content and when I checked the page I was stunned to find that Chris's balloon dino vid had 20k views. Normally if a vid has 10k views by the end of the day I feel it's doing very well. This had 10k views in an hour. This is unprecedented. I messaged Chris with the news. By the end of the day it was at 1million views and Chris and I couldn't take our eyes off it.
I started to monitor comments intensively. When a video goes worldwide and viral a lot of very weird people suddenly come out of the woodwork and they are often very ignorant or just nasty. The reason we think this vid went viral was because of the engagement and I didn't want to disrupt that too much. But I also didn't want Charlie, Lorna or Chris to be made to feel bad in anyway. We had the following comment threads:-
Most people being very positive about how lovely it was. How great Chris and Lorna are with Charlie. How great Charlie is. How clever, funny and engaging Chris is and how generally great the video is. That's the vast majority of the comments.
One guy said the vid was too long, he was bored and I should have made it 30s. That generated about 90 reactions alone and 40 odd replies about his short attention span. I even told him that there was a 10s version on tiktok if that was suitable. That was a fairly common comment even though the vid was literally 5mins long. TBH I'd've been a bit ashamed to admit that especially in public.
There were a lot of enquiries about where the vid was shot and I answered everyone of those as it's neutral. One woman actually argued that it was Paisley which was pretty funny. Why can't people see that it's posted by BuskersofGlasgow and work out where it is from that? There was also a bit of debate about which street it was on and once again people actually arguing with me about it.
Some people asked about the music playing in the background and that was an opportunity for me to tag Ally and add to the engagement.
One person complained that it was a very low resolution video and I responded with the make and model of device I was using and one person responded with three pics of how to change the resolution on their device for better viewing.
A number of people asked what Chris was making as they hadn't/couldn't read the title. This prompted another argument about whether velociraptors had wings and feathers and could fly with someone responding with links to wikipedia articles to set them right.
There were a fair number of people commenting on the price of the balloon and an equally large number of people pointing out that it's Chris's job and why shouldn't he get paid and that a fiver was pretty cheap for that experience and that amount of enjoyment.
There were a lot of people complaining about the lack of masks or the presence of masks. I left all of those as it's neutral and not about the people in the video and it can be good to let those sorts of arguments rage. It's all engagement.
There was even a fire engine in this video which I had actually forgotten about in all the excitement.
The comments I had to delete were about Charlie being an annoying kid. He's not, he's adorable. There were a few about Chris needing to get a "proper job". There was a small amount of what I call negative yapping such as "shit" or "crap". Not much of that. I deleted quite a lot of spam posting where people would post a link to their unrelated videos on youtube. I just deleted all of that.
The messages I got to the page were mostly yapping "hi, hi, hi". One woman was trying the befriending technique on me. This happened a previous time to me too where they try to work out who I am by asking personal questions. Or by flattering me saying what a nice person I am (?). And when I decline to answer those questions they ask things that they can easily find the answer to if they just look at the about section on the page or watch some of the videos. That's what alerts me to that fact that they are some kind of scammer who is looking for a deeper connection to later tap me for money. Also a bit of incomprehensible copy paste spam where they don't actually ask me for money but you know that's eventually where it's going. And someone who comments repeatedly on stories in a language that google translate has problems with. That's an unsolved mystery.
So far Chris has a few hundred extra likes on his page and some enquiries about gigs and stuff. I've had about 10K extra followers, 2k additional likes. Nothing from the press. We don't know if this will lead to anything else. The vid has slowed a lot and is no longer actively viral. Still getting a few views on it though and sometimes you get a resurgence. I'll update if there are any developments on this later.
On Monday 27th December 2021 I was hanging out on Buchanan street at TGIs. Ally Rennet was playing in the background. I had just recorded him and posted him on the page. I had also just recorded Daniel Ladds so I had two excellent vids and didn't need anything else. I was hanging out chatting to Rickshaw Tom and Chris Craighead (The Balloon Guy).
Lorna and Charlie came up to get a balloon from Chris. I stepped back so Chris could deal with his customers. While Charlie was asking for a blue dinosaur which Chris couldn't do as he didn't have enough balloons, I asked Lorna if it was okay to film Chris making Charlie a balloon dino. I made this decision as animals are often quicker to make than characters and I thought a short video would play better on the page. In the end Charlie asked for a brown dino (didn't want a green one).
I started filming and right away I could see that Charlie was a great kid and an enthusiastic and engaged audience. This really brings out Chris's performing side and he warms right up to Charlie. They have this incredible double act going on in seconds. Chris and I did a video once before that got 10K views which we were pleased with and Chris has said that it completely depends on the personality and engagement level of the kid if the vid is a success or not.
That day when I went home I cut out the last 10secs or so of the finished balloon and Charlie's reaction to it for tiktok which lends itself to short vids. That vid was fairly popular but not wildly so despite the Jurassic Park music I put over the top of it.
On Thursday 30th December 2021 I came up the town to collect content. However it was very quiet and I thought I would have no one to film. I posted Chris's video at 10am. By lunchtime I had got some content and when I checked the page I was stunned to find that Chris's balloon dino vid had 20k views. Normally if a vid has 10k views by the end of the day I feel it's doing very well. This had 10k views in an hour. This is unprecedented. I messaged Chris with the news. By the end of the day it was at 1million views and Chris and I couldn't take our eyes off it.
I started to monitor comments intensively. When a video goes worldwide and viral a lot of very weird people suddenly come out of the woodwork and they are often very ignorant or just nasty. The reason we think this vid went viral was because of the engagement and I didn't want to disrupt that too much. But I also didn't want Charlie, Lorna or Chris to be made to feel bad in anyway. We had the following comment threads:-
Most people being very positive about how lovely it was. How great Chris and Lorna are with Charlie. How great Charlie is. How clever, funny and engaging Chris is and how generally great the video is. That's the vast majority of the comments.
One guy said the vid was too long, he was bored and I should have made it 30s. That generated about 90 reactions alone and 40 odd replies about his short attention span. I even told him that there was a 10s version on tiktok if that was suitable. That was a fairly common comment even though the vid was literally 5mins long. TBH I'd've been a bit ashamed to admit that especially in public.
There were a lot of enquiries about where the vid was shot and I answered everyone of those as it's neutral. One woman actually argued that it was Paisley which was pretty funny. Why can't people see that it's posted by BuskersofGlasgow and work out where it is from that? There was also a bit of debate about which street it was on and once again people actually arguing with me about it.
Some people asked about the music playing in the background and that was an opportunity for me to tag Ally and add to the engagement.
One person complained that it was a very low resolution video and I responded with the make and model of device I was using and one person responded with three pics of how to change the resolution on their device for better viewing.
A number of people asked what Chris was making as they hadn't/couldn't read the title. This prompted another argument about whether velociraptors had wings and feathers and could fly with someone responding with links to wikipedia articles to set them right.
There were a fair number of people commenting on the price of the balloon and an equally large number of people pointing out that it's Chris's job and why shouldn't he get paid and that a fiver was pretty cheap for that experience and that amount of enjoyment.
There were a lot of people complaining about the lack of masks or the presence of masks. I left all of those as it's neutral and not about the people in the video and it can be good to let those sorts of arguments rage. It's all engagement.
There was even a fire engine in this video which I had actually forgotten about in all the excitement.
The comments I had to delete were about Charlie being an annoying kid. He's not, he's adorable. There were a few about Chris needing to get a "proper job". There was a small amount of what I call negative yapping such as "shit" or "crap". Not much of that. I deleted quite a lot of spam posting where people would post a link to their unrelated videos on youtube. I just deleted all of that.
The messages I got to the page were mostly yapping "hi, hi, hi". One woman was trying the befriending technique on me. This happened a previous time to me too where they try to work out who I am by asking personal questions. Or by flattering me saying what a nice person I am (?). And when I decline to answer those questions they ask things that they can easily find the answer to if they just look at the about section on the page or watch some of the videos. That's what alerts me to that fact that they are some kind of scammer who is looking for a deeper connection to later tap me for money. Also a bit of incomprehensible copy paste spam where they don't actually ask me for money but you know that's eventually where it's going. And someone who comments repeatedly on stories in a language that google translate has problems with. That's an unsolved mystery.
So far Chris has a few hundred extra likes on his page and some enquiries about gigs and stuff. I've had about 10K extra followers, 2k additional likes. Nothing from the press. We don't know if this will lead to anything else. The vid has slowed a lot and is no longer actively viral. Still getting a few views on it though and sometimes you get a resurgence. I'll update if there are any developments on this later.
