So the internet is mysterious, you’re never really sure what you’re going to find or where your content will end up. Here is the story of a video that was put on YouTube a week ago, how it was modified, and where it’s traveled since.

SCENE 1: The Market
INT – THE MARKET – MORNING

If you haven’t seen the video “Drunkest Guy Ever Goes for More Beer“, the quick description is: A guy walks into a market. He appears to be drunk, and has the intention to buy beer, but he can’t stay on his feet. This is all filmed on the security cameras, which is then posted on YouTube, and goes viral. The rest is history.

SCENE 2: Silent Film
INT – SF APARTMENT – NIGHT

The original video has no audio because it was filmed on the security cameras. While the video is pretty funny to watch in its original state, it’s a little long and definitely silent. I grew up being intrigued by silent films and vaudeville – I think I would have thrived in the early 1900s. In the past two years I’ve written a few scripts for silent shorts, one to the amazing song Amarcord by Nino Rota. It’s not surprising then that when I saw this silent video, my first thought was that it needed to become a silent classic. The edit was easy; speed it up, make it black and white, throw down some music, make the film look old, post it on YouTube.

SCENE 3: Share your content
INT – LIVING ROOM – DAY

I create a lot of content that is put on the internet, mostly for Seesmic – the company I work for – but also some of my own personal work. Most of this I silently put online, and you either stumble upon it, or you are one of the 25 people subscribed to my blog, flickr account, or YouTube page ( I have 2). Twitter, and my friends, are my next to allies (Me on Twitter). On Twitter I’ll give my videos a little push, simply asking people to check them out. I prefer not to ask people to RT (Re-Tweet) because I know that if the content is any good, they’ll RT it on their own. I’ll post a link on Facebook and leave a message to give it a personal touch because I know my friends are going to see it. The last step is friends. Basically, I send the link to the people that I know will most enjoy the content and ask them specifically to help me spread the video. It helps when you have friends who have large online followings – whether it be through blog, Facebook or Twitter. These are the people who help you reach out to the world, they are your super-connectors.

SCENE 4: Magic
INT – INTERNET SUPER HIGHWAY – MORNING

At this point the video starts getting passed around. I’m not certain how specific blogs come across videos or articles, but I’d assume its because of the nature of their business – therefore they receive a lot of material without having to look very hard. What I do is go to a place like Technorati where they search blogs around the internet, and in this case searched “Drunkest guy ever, silent film” and see all the blogs that come up. Most notable in this particular case is boingboing.com

Yesterday it was pointed out to me that the Huffington Post had the video up, and from there you can see that (as of right now) 1,431 people shared it on Facebook and 117 people re-tweeted it. (To be honest I have no idea what Buzz Up is, but I’ve been told it’s by Yahoo!)

Using Twitter search I can see that 255 people have tweeted the words “drunkest guy ever” and “silent film”.

Finally, I can check with Bit.ly (a URL shortner that keeps statistics on links) to see how many people have clicked through a particular link. Basically I get the original URL of my video, put it through bit.ly and tweet that out. Bit.ly then keeps track of how many people go through my link to see the video, which is about 377 right now. But it also tells me how many other people using bit.ly have made a link using the original URL – In total I can see that 2,529 people have gotten to my YouTube via a bit.ly link. Cooler than that, I can see who took that link and posted it somewhere else. Oh, the glory of the internet…

Here is an interesting thought on the psyche of it all. The reason this video works is because it makes a video that is actually pretty sad, pretty funny. When I first watched the video of the alleged “drunkest guy ever”, I didn’t really laugh as much as I pitied him. The thing is, the guy looks hilarious when he tries to stand up, and you want to laugh. Really all everyone needed was an out. I changed the story from “Drunkest guy ever goes to get more beer” to “Larry goes to the market, and gets hoodwinked.” It’s okay to laugh now.

I know you didn’t do it for me, I didn’t plan any of this, it just kind of happened, but thanks to everyone who posted the video.
The Bored Ninja, Filmed Drunk, Bits and Pieces, Miss Cellania, NeatOrama, and Geeks are Sexy.

p.s. The title of this blog post is pretty obscure. “What! No Beer?” is the title of a film starring Buster Keaton, made in 1933. Buster plays Elmer J. Butts who is trying to get rich quick by brewing beer during Prohibition, thinking that Prohibition is just about to end. Hilarity ensues.