Gangnam Style topped YouTube’s list of the most attention-grabbing videos this year, as other professionally produced works outshined the amateur clips that had originally made the Web site famous.
“Almost everything on the list this year was created by professional or creative talent for an online audience,” YouTube trends manager Kevin Allocca said before the results were released on Monday. “It’s different from years ago, when homemade videos or random, funny stuff from smartphone cameras were the hits.”
Music video Gangnam Style by South Korean pop star Psy became the most viewed YouTube video of all time and was on pace to log 1 billion views by the end of this year. The view count on Monday was slightly more than 971.5 million.
Second place was a Walk off the Earth music video, a rendition of a hit Gotye song featuring five people simultaneously performing on one guitar.
A Kony2012 video that was part of a viral campaign to bring accused Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony to justice was the year’s third-most attention-getting YouTube video.
The White House had praised the campaign, while a string of celebrities weighed in by tweeting links to the video and promoting the initiative by California-based non-profit group Invisible Children.
Kony2012 was reported to be the first cause-based video by a nonprofit to make YouTube’s annual list of top videos.
Fourth place on the YouTube list went to a Call Me Maybe video in which stars, including Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez, ignited a lip-synching rage.
An Epic Rap Battles of History series episode that pitted an impersonator of US President Barack Obama against a pretend Mitt Romney in a rap-powered debate came in fifth.
Rounding out the top 10 were a stunt in a Flemish town square to promote a TV channel; “dubstep” violin by Lindsey Stirling; comedian Emmanuel Hudson; a father’s reaction to his daughter’s Facebook post; and Felix Baumgartner’s free-fall from about 39km above the Earth.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was