The Strange History of One of the Internet's First Viral Videos

If you had an email address in the late 1990s, you probably received a video file titled “badday.mpg” at least once. It was big- 5MB, and took a while to download, if you were lucky enough to have a video player on your computer. The 26-second video was worth it, though, as we saw a man sitting in his office cubicle losing his temper at a computer. He picks up his keyboard and whacks the monitor so hard it falls off the desk! It was one of the earliest examples of a viral video, and it made Vinny Licciardi a star. Twenty years later, the video is still shared.   

That the clip still resonates is a testament to our broader cultural feelings about technology, especially vis-a-vis the workplace. “I’m kind of amazed it’s still going around as much as it is, but I think everyone can relate to that moment,” Licciardi says. “They’re so ticked off because their software is not working, or there’s some glitch, and everybody’s wanted to do that at one point in their life.”

(YouTube link)

You might want to learn the story of why the video came to be, and how it became a viral hit, at Wired. -via Metafilter


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