Many’s the time that I’ve gone to Youtube, wanting to watch, or to post on Facebook, a short clip of a film or TV programme that I already have on DVD. Surprisingly, I often come up short. A couple of times, I’ve gone to the trouble to rip the short clip I was looking for from the DVD and uploaded it just so I can share it with a friend.
One such example is this clip from the brilliantly funny film “Office Space” where a character named Michael Bolton laments the popularity of his namesake:
When I first posted the video, I decided not to turn off comments or require approval because it’s not a contentious video. I thought that if anyone even watched it that any comment would be to show approval or parrot Office Space quotes, as people are wont to do. What didn’t occur to me, for even a second, was that it would eventually attract fans of The Lonely Island and cause them to parrot lines from the popular SNL skit Jack Sparrow (which features Michael Bolton.) Now, I love The Lonely Island and think that skit is funny, but what psychological dysfunction prompts these idiots to post comments on every single Michael Bolton video on Youtube?
The only positive thing is that at least these comments are vaguely apropos when compared to the deluge of comments about Justin Bieber on any and every video on Youtube. (Yes, even the video above. Sigh.)