Popular Internet videos featured on sites like YouTube have dominated the online social scene for years and have spotlighted a variety of artists — including some University students.
Among other campus-related viral hits, students may remember a spring finals week favorite titled “LSU lil finals week BOUNCE.”
Two student rappers, international studies junior Myles Laroux and general studies senior Logan Baudean, recorded the video sensation as a joke among friends.
“We had been circling around a video from Monster with Da Fade,” Baudean said. “He raps about random stuff like roast beef and red beans and rice, so we decided to do one about finals.”
Laroux said he and Baudean sent it to fewer than 10 friends on Facebook. Those friends tagged their friends, and the domino effect rippled to nearly 19,000 people.
“At one point I walked into the library and counted 17 people watching it on their computers,” he said. “The same day I got 20-something friend requests and was a thread on TigerDroppings.com.”
The duo later saw a Facebook fan page dedicated to their video and had the title added to UrbanDictionary.com. YouTube later contacted them about posting advertisements on the video.
“It was cool, but it kind of distracted me from finals,” Baudean said. “If I went to the library, people stared at me.”
The hype around the video lasted throughout the week, peaking during a live performance following the Flash Rave in Middleton Library.
“It was four days after the video released,” Baudean said. “There were people that knew it better than us.”
Baudean and Laroux said they never imagined their video would grow to the size it did.
“We just wanted to do something funny for our friends,” Baudean said. “But it was cool that people liked it and had fun watching it during finals.”
Laroux agreed, saying people still remember the video and recognize them around campus.
“As a student at a huge university, everyone wants to leave and have a legacy,” he said. “We can tell the grandkids one day that we had a video that half the student population saw.”
A similar feeling is shared among a group of freshman students who have recently gone viral with “Dougie in my Snuggie.”
The video — a parody of Cali Swag District’s song “Teach Me How To Dougie” — was recorded during Labor Day weekend and has since gained more than 12,000 hits on YouTube.
The Dougie group consists of accounting freshman Jermaine Mathis, economics freshman Korbin Law, international trade and finance freshman Rachel Sadberry and finance freshman De Jarion “DJ” Neely.
Neely, the mastermind behind the video and owner of the famous LSU Snuggie used in the video, said the group was bored one weekend and decided to turn an idea into reality. The lyrics were written late Saturday night, and the video was recorded via iPhone on Sunday.
“We did it 12 times on Sunday,” Neely laughed. “It took us 12 times to get it right.”
After the final attempt, the group uploaded the video to Facebook. Much like Laroux and Baudean, the group members simply tagged friends. Before they knew it, the video had expanded via their Facebook friend lists. After seeing the popularity on Facebook, they decided to create a YouTube account and post it.
“But we didn’t expect 11,000 views in three weeks,” Sadberry said. “It’s crazy.”
From students to professors and employers, the Dougie crew has been bombarded with responses.
“We even performed it on Campus Transit,” Neely said.
Mathis said he has enjoyed the recognition and said many students have asked if they could join or help with the next video.
“Videos like this are cool because you can show that you really have fun in school,” Mathis added.
Both video teams said they never expected something so small to grow to such magnitude, which is the mentality behind most viral videos.
While these videos are harmless, Brian Voss, vice chancellor of Information Technology and CIO, said students must be aware of the risks they are taking when posting material online.
“We must be more aware today that anything we say, record or do where it can be observed as fair game or spread via the Internet,” Voss said.
Laroux said the majority of most-watched videos are candid.
Watch Students’ popular YouTube videos:




 
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Contact Sydni Dunn at [email protected]