Pop singer Avril Lavigne’s army of fans are amassing online with one goal in mind…take down Judson Laipply and his Evolution of Dance as the most-watched YouTube video of all time.
As of today, Evolution has 89,589,770 views. But the music video for Lavigne’s Girlfriend is nipping at Laipply’s moonwalking heels with 88,787,747 plays, leaving just 802,023 plays between them. All the more impressive, Laipply’s video was released April 6 2006, while Lavigne’s was released February 27, 2007
So why is Lavigne’s camp is resorting to less-than-bubblegummy-pop tactics to try and take the crown?
To fire up the all the Sk8ter Bois and girls for this web video battle royale, the somewhat-creepily titled AvrilBandAids.com has set up a “refresher” page to try and game the system. Keep the page open and it will refresh the Lavigne video page on YouTube every 15 seconds.
Come on, Lavigne-iacs! This is something Team Britney would do! Don’t sink to their level.
Stats-goosing is nothing new, but Girlfriend has hovered near the top of the all-time heap for awhile on what seems like its own inexplicable merits (though I’ll admit, it is one catchy song). Just let the drama play out. The video for Music is My Hot Hot Sex was stripped of its most-watched title after accusations of gamesmanship arose, why risk it for Lavigne? You don’t want her to fall to pieces…
Back here at NTV HQ, we’ve been trying to figure out what makes Girlfriend so popular. Was it the release date? The abundance of bathroom humor? The undying appeal of mini-golf? Others have pondered this very same question.
Hat tip to Golden Fiddle who has the most awesomest of headlines: “Hey, Hey YouTube.”)
After Andy Baio called “bulls**t” on CANSEI DE DER SEX Music is My Hot Hot Sex, there’s been renewed interest in stats-gaming on YouTube. The video is still online at 91,195,785 views and counting, but it’s no longer listed as the most viewed all time. Creator Clarus Bartel denies any shenanigans, but fair or foul, he should get a job offer or three out of it. YouTube knows that tales of fraudulent stats can and will scare away advertisers. But hey, Google’s been battling click-fraud and link-spamming for years; the networks sell time based on numbers from sweeps months (when they trot out their best — and sleaziest); and more than a few fishwraps have been known to boost circulation in less-than-honorable ways. As John Lawrence explains to Roddy Piper in They Live, “It’s business, that’s all it is.”
What you will find atop the leaderboard is, well, advertising. “It’s like low-quality MTV from the days when they showed music videos,” Marshall Kirkpatrick pointed out on Read Write Web. What sneaked through the commercial cracks, and how (besides Evolution of Dance)? At number twelve, a C-Pop video with karaoke subtitles titled xxx! Click through for links to motivational posters! Wait a second, that’s just another commercial…
At #10, between Sean Kingston and Rihanna? A laughing baby! What could possibly be cuter? Hahaha has bested dozens, if not hundreds, of laughing babies with 39,957,827 views– maybe the little tyke is laughing at the pretenders in the “related videos” sidebar, with their piddling seven-figure view counts. But wait, Kazakhstan’s BlackOleg happens to have posted an ad for a bank, where he says that he works. But the link watermarked over the laughing baby points to geekProject.com from Kjell- ke Andersson, who posted posted an earlier copy of the same clip. Is a laughing baby being used to promote a bank in the former Soviet Union?
Currently at number three, Lo que tś Quieras O’r is actually a beautifully produced short film with an apparently legitimate website. And it is in Spanish, the second-most popular language worldwide (ahead of English, but behind Mandarin), so that’s something. But even if the 62,531,601 views were achieved au naturel, the spammers have taken over in the comments. I’d dig further, but I was won over by the video’s “copyleft” tag and I’m already worried I’ll have nightmares of Avril Lavigne and a creepy baby doing the twist while laughing at me from a motivational poster tonight.
SUM 41 concert April 16th was amazing met the Guys after the show and Fuck there so sweet i LOVE them all and Deryck so nice
Previous Avril show 6th April 2005 bonez tour Challenge stadium. aswell as 6th may 2007 logies red carpet the best days of my life
My Mommy is Christina Avril Whibley,My Cuz is Yiota My Aunts are Nat and Sylvia then whos my Dad??ALL I WANTED WAS FORGIVNESS ALL I GOT WAS PUSHED AWAY YOUR ALL TO BLAME NOW"I FEEL THIS BURNING INSIDE A FEELING THAT NO ONE SHOULD KNOW" HAHA YOU WISH YOU KNEW KEEP DREAMING YOU WILL NEVER KNOW
The video for Music is My Hot Hot Sex was stripped of its most-watched title after accusations of gamesmanship arose, why risk it for Lavigne? You don’t want her to fall to pieces…
Ok I get it now , this is a plan to get AvrilBandAids.com name out every where ?
sneaky
Lol I have no clue if Sharifa intended that, but there seems to be a media storm. Someone said that they mentioned the Avril YouTube thing (not Bandaids) on ET Canada yesterday. Same thing happened back in September when I posted what Deryck got Avril for her birthday, they mentioned that on ET Canada as well .
EVERYONE CHECK THIS: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=QHyScb1PGAc
CALLIE is my best damn TWIN!!!!!!!!!!! love ya so much <3 Hannah is my best damn mommy <3<3<3
Iva is my best damn croatian girl =) JORIEKE my best damn dutch girl!!!! love u so much!!! MA'L is my best damn singapourian girl !!!!! u r so cute!!!! Patricia is my awesome US-Brazil girl !
Madina is my best damn russian girl!!
Sydney is an awesome friend !!! Canada rocks!
Danny is my best damn german boy =)
Tomaz is my computer genius!
<a href="http://media.fastclick.net/w/click.here?sid=44373&m=1&pageid=1" target="_blank"><img width=468 height=60 src="http://media.fastclick.net/w/get.media?sid=44373&m=1&tp=1&d=s&v =1.0c&pageid=1" border=0></a> Avril Lavigne might have dropped off the face of this Earth, but she might still be able to conquer something other than her battle with crabs. It seems that Lavigne's 2007 single "Girlfriend", is only one million views away from becoming You Tube's most watched video of all time. This of course would beat out the extremely exciting video "the evolution of dance." In other news American Children are illiterate, and have the lowest test scores in history... I am just saying.