OPEN

A: None of them was an advert (if you don’t count movie trailers).

I’ve taken to bookmarking excellent viral videos when I see them. Reason being, whenever I’m asked which viral videos are my favourite (journalists, conference panel moderators and analysts seem to ask this most often) I can never seem to recall one.

Maybe my recall for “virals” is like jokes – I’ve basically got three slots in my long term memory and once they’re full, I’ve not got much to go on.

This obsession with “viral videos” is a legacy thing, a hangover from the channels model of media. People projecting their wish that the world were still simple eneough that a 30-second video (easy concept to understand, recall, make money out of) still sat at the centre of it all.