Intro
1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.
2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.
When something random, like a picture of a kitten, or a low budget movie some kids made, becomes randomly popular among millions of people on the Internet, we say it’s gone viral.
That doesn’t sound very good, right? No one wants a virus! But videos on the Internet spread like viruses, from person to person. And sometimes tastemakers, or people with really popular websites that people think are cool, can help a video go viral overnight.
No one really knows what it takes for videos to go viral. Sometimes amazing videos by famous stars like this one by Justin Timberlake go viral, and other times dumb videos like this one get popular. Listen to Devan and Mason talk about what they think it takes to become a movie star on the Internet.
Dialog
1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.
2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.
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Devan: How do they get videos to go viral? Like, where does it start, how does it spread, where do people usually…
Mason: You know, it’s kind of a lot of magic. You just…you gotta make something that’s super neat and you gotta get a hold of enough people who have influence, right. Like, if I have something I think is cool. I have maybe 20 people I can send it to who they might think that’s cool. So then it just kind of stops there. But then there’s those people who know, like, ten thousand people and they can broadcast it to their friends, right, and then it’s just viral.
Devan: And then they’ll just, like, upload it on their facebook and a bunch of people see it.
Mason: Sure. But you know, puppies and people getting kicked in the nuts is generally going to help your viral potential a lot.
Devan: Definitely. It’s just funny whenever I see some homemade funny video that some kid made in his basement in New Hampshire and then all of a sudden everyone in America has seen it within three days.
Mason: Right. The thing that confuses me is all the video blogs.
Devan: On YouTube?
Mason: Yeah, yeah, pretty much all of ‘em are. That’s the go to source, right? There’s just these people who, they bought their laptop with a webcam and they just think, like, what they have to say is the most interesting thing ever.
Devan: I know. And they have tons of subscribers too. I don’t know why people find those interesting. However, anyone hitting their head, that’s always a good laugh for me.
Grammar Point
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Discussion
Devan asks Mason how videos go viral. He explains that it’s something that can be explained exactly. People just start to like a video for whatever reason and start sending it to their friends in emails or on sites like facebook, MySpace and twitter. If enough people share the video, it becomes viral.
It’s hard to say what people what want to share with their friends. But cute videos about pets are commonly popular, as are short silly videos where someone gets hurt.
What Mason and Devan don’t understand is why some video blogs get popular. Video blogs are just like regular blogs, only instead of writing, you just talk to a webcam. It can be pretty boring, but some video blogs are really popular on sites like YouTube.
What kind of videos do you share with your friends? What do you think makes a video go viral? What’s the last cool video someone shared with you?
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