Skip to content

Watch This If You Want To Smile (Pizzamas Day 3)

2015-11-11 · list · Hank · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube · mode: Personal essay · tags: calendar ritual, community lore

Hank argues that viral clips of people's uncontrolled excitement are a masterclass in being open to the wonder of nature, human accomplishment and the self, and that he wants to stop shutting such excitement down.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting: still excited about Pizzamas, not about John's mustache; teaser of the train guy

  • ★ Hank says he is still excited about Pizzamas, all of it exciting except John's mustache, which is not exciting at all. (playful) — 00:00:01 · Pizzamas

00:00:12 — Viral-video genres; epic excitement as the purest kind, and the idea of excitement as the subject

  • ★★★ Hank, calling himself something of an expert in viral-video genres (epic cutes, wins, fails, weirds), says the purest and most rewarding kind is epic excitement; watching it makes him feel wonderful. — 00:00:12

00:00:40 — Excitement clips: Rachael Nedrow's cup stacking, the train enthusiast, Aleksander Gamme's Antarctic cache

  • ★★ Hank shows Rachael Nedrow, whose voice is on a couple of Skrillex songs, reacting to her competitive cup stacking; unsure how hard it is, he is there for her reaction. — 00:00:40
  • ★★ Hank shows a train lover thrilled to see a historic engine he had waited months for, and Aleksander Gamme screaming with joy at treats he had left in his final cache while hiking across the Antarctic. — 00:01:01
  • ★ Hank jokes that Gamme put the cheese doodles there himself, so he must have forgotten, making it the most surprising bag of cheese doodles of all time. (playful) — 00:01:42

00:01:52 — Surprise as part of excitement; sharing others' excitement: John Boyega and the Star Wars teaser, Yosemitebear's double rainbow

  • ★★★ Hank suggests surprise is part of excitement: not knowing the outcome and then finding there is more, as when the train enthusiast found a second historic engine. (hedged) — 00:01:52
  • ★★ Hank says sometimes you feel others' excitement without understanding it, and other times you are right there with them, as with John Boyega seeing his part in the Star Wars teaser trailer. — 00:02:11
  • ★★ Hank closes the list with Yosemitebear, the most famous excited guy on the internet, whose double rainbow became legendary through the internet and the Gregory Brothers' work. — 00:02:43

00:02:59 — Reflection: sports as the only accepted outlet, Hank's Curiosity-landing excitement, being open to wonder; playlist pointer

  • ★★ Hank says it can feel as if sporting events are the only time it is culturally acceptable to feel such uncontrolled excitement, and he is not really into sports. (hedged) — 00:02:59
  • ★★ The last time Hank felt that level of uncontrollable excitement was in 2012, when the Curiosity rover was safely on the surface of Mars. — 00:03:08 · Mars
  • ★★★ Hank says the clips show there is so much to be excited about: these people are open to the beauty of nature, human accomplishment and their own; they are his heroes and he wants to be like them. — 00:03:17
  • ★★★ Hank says it takes work to tell himself not to shut it down and to love things, alone or with others, without fear; the videos are a masterclass in openness to wonder. (hedged) — 00:03:30
  • ★ Hank has put the clips in a playlist linked in the description and recommends watching them all. — 00:03:45

00:03:50 — Sign-off; Hank explains the screaming to his dog

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says this excitement is universal but people tamp it down after a certain age; being emotionally open to good things also means being open to bad things. (hedged) — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: viral video

Also: People: Aleksander Gamme · John Boyega · Paul Vasquez · Rachael Nedrow · Skrillex · train enthusiast in a viral clip

Projects: Pizzamas

Works: Double Rainbow Song · Star Wars · Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Concepts: moustache · sport stacking · wonder (emotion)

Places: Antarctica · Mars

Events: Mars Science Laboratory

Characters: Luke Skywalker

Only in the description or credits: The Gregory Brothers

Also centred on viral video: The #1 Tip for People Who Use the Internet · The Forgotten Viral Video that Could Never be Made Today

Later videos replying to this one