YouTube’s Top Five Video Trends of 2013

Back
Jad-Ev Nasser
Oct 28 2013
Technology
YouTube’s Top Five Video Trends of 2013
Share this article

YouTube is the reason why some entertaining themes become trends we imitate in our daily lives, when it comes to singing, acting or dancing. For example, we all start dancing a certain dance style at clubs and public places because we watched a video that became famous on YouTube portraying this specific trend, then we start video taping our very own version of this trend to upload it on a channel and guess what? It will reach more than a million views too.

Audience-Relationship, humor and fun/entertainment are three main factors that attracts viewers and makes a trend out of a video on Youtube.

Here are Five YouTube hits that were considered to be trendy in 2013:

1.The Harlem shake dance

The Harlem shake, as we all know, is a video meme, where people randomly perform a repeated gesture to the song “Harlem Shake”. It all started on February 2, 2013 by five teenagers from Australia known on Youtube as the Sunny Coast Skate, they were a follow up by the YouTube vlogger called Filthy Frank. After uploading their dance, it got many views instantly, and quickly became famous by end of February when people from around the world started their own versions of harlem shakes and performed them in diverse public places from malls, concerts, dorm rooms, graduation ceremonies, parks and schools. Harlem Shake hit the 1 billion views mark on March 24, 2013, just 40 days after its first upload. By February 15, about 40,000 Harlem Shake videos had been uploaded, reaching 175 million views.

Here is the first Harlem Shake uploaded:


Here are other versions of the Harlem Shake:



2. The Gangnam Style dance

Not only is it the most popular video on YouTube of 2013, but Gangnam Style is considered to be the most watched video on YouTube with over 1 billion views.
The Guinness Book of World Records named PSY’s Gangnam Style, the most liked video in the history of YouTube, having been liked more than 2 million times.
Even though the video was published on July 2012, it’s impact on the entertainment world rose in 2013, having many people upload their own versions of Gangnam style in parties and festivals or anywhere else. Not to mention that the Gangnam style dance (“pretending to ride a horse”) was the “IT” move of 2013 in any dancing party, the song was played over and over again in pubs and clubs around the world and people would automatically start dancing to it.

Here's the original music video of Gangnam Style:

Here's an example of how people made their own versions of Gangnam style on YouTube:




3. Lip Dub

A lip dub is a type of video that combines lip synching and audio dubbing to make a music video. It’s those times when you’re really into a pop song and start lip-syncing to it wishing to be video taped and just enjoy your time. Usually it’s being done whenever friends get together and sing along to a well-known song. But when it came to uploading such videos on YouTube, people really got into the habit of Lip Dub. What’s interesting is that guys started using Lip Dub trends to propose to their girlfriends using their favorite songs while performing dance moves to the songs.

Check the links below to see how people "LipDub" pop songs in YouTube videos:





4. Music Video Parodies

People enjoy watching controversial or entertaining music videos, but it’s way more fun when you get to watch a video mocking or making fun of the original video clip. Parodies usually occur few days after the release of a well-known video, their main purpose is to over exaggerate  the meaning of these music videos portraying people who act like the original pop stars in a funny way. The latest trend of 2013 in Parodies is Miley Cyrus Herself. As we all watched Miley’s stripping videos and how they got negative feedback, many people started imitating her by showing themselves in the same context of the music videos by mocking the pop star. Therefore everyone got into the act of singing her songs and making funny movements.

here are some parody videos of Miley Cyrus:




5. Flash mobs

Probably one of the most watched type of videos on YouTube, flash mobs are known to be the anticipated-to-watch hits on the web, better yet people thrive to watch a live flash mob. Known to be an unexpected dance or musical number in a public context, flash mobs have been a Video Trend on YouTube several years ago. The main of flash mobs were advertising purposes, either to promote a product, brand, service or TV show. But in early 2013 the hit trend of flash mobs was to randomly do a dance for no reason wherever you are to a pop song you like, a nice example of such cases was the “Big Bang theory” TV sit-com crew who started their very own flashmob to the pop songs inside their TV studios or even when Random people decided to start dancing to "party rock anthem" at a public Park
Here’s a glimpse at the videos: