Nov 6, 20263 min read

Today in Viral Internet: November 6

One tiny sneeze, one very serious cat, one three word tweet and one repeat escape artist. November 6 kept the early internet fed.

OMYGOTTI

Toronto hip-hop artist | 730K+ Facebook

2006

A Baby Panda Sneezes Into History

On November 6, 2006, a short clip from the Wolong Panda Breeding Centre was uploaded to YouTube. A mother panda munches bamboo while her cub sleeps at her feet, then the cub sneezes, hard, startling its mother for exactly one second before she calmly returns to lunch. The whole thing lasts seconds.

Those seconds became one of the defining videos of early YouTube. The clip passed 106 million views by 2011, reached more than 162 million by August 2013, and was named number ten on Urlesque's list of the 100 most iconic internet videos. It was parodied on South Park, listed among YouTube's best videos by Time, and eventually inspired a mockumentary feature built around its fame.

My take: My take: before algorithms decided what viral meant, a sneeze did. Sixteen seconds, no hook, no strategy, just a moment everybody wanted to send to somebody.

2009

Standing Cat Stands Up

French YouTuber DaisYannou uploaded a 37 second video on November 6, 2009, showing her tabby cat Rocky standing upright on his hind legs on a bed, staring intently at something off camera. Within France the clip spread quickly on Facebook, gathering half a million views in its first four months.

The wider world caught up in April 2010, when the video was reposted to BuzzFeed and took off globally. Paired in edits with Cats on Mars from the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack, Rocky accumulated more than 7.2 million views over the following eight years and inspired a wave of copycat standing cat videos, including a Freddie Wong remix that reimagined Rocky as Puss in Boots.

My take: My take: the early viral era ran on animals doing one human thing for a few seconds. Rocky standing there like he pays rent is still a perfect example.

2012

Three Words Break The Retweet Record

On election night, November 6, 2012, minutes after Barack Obama secured re-election, his campaign posted a photo of the president hugging Michelle Obama with three words: Four more years. The post smashed the all time retweet record, previously held by a Justin Bieber message, within roughly 22 minutes.

Twitter later confirmed the tweet passed 800,000 retweets across more than 200 countries, making it the most retweeted post of 2012 and, at that moment, of all time. Election night generated more than 31 million tweets in total, peaking at 327,452 tweets per minute when networks called the race, the most tweeted moment in the platform's history to that point.

My take: My take: this was the night a tweet became the victory speech before the victory speech. Three words and a photo did what a press conference used to do.

2019

Quilty The Cat Keeps Breaking Out

Quilty, a rescue cat at Houston's Friends For Life Animal Rescue, went viral in late October 2019 for one repeat offence: letting the other cats out of their rooms at night. The shelter separated him, posted his story, and the internet adopted him instantly, with the first post drawing tens of thousands of reactions, comments and shares.

On November 6, 2019, the Free Quilty Instagram account posted fresh video of the cat working on his next escape, pulling thousands of likes within days. CNN tweeted about him, The Daily Show featured him, and a cat whose only crime was opening doors became the most famous resident the shelter had ever housed.

My take: My take: every era gets the outlaw it deserves. In 2019 it was a cat running a one man jailbreak operation out of a Houston shelter.