The virility of Syracuse University in the past year can be attributed to several factors. There might be something in the water of Central New York. Maybe it’s a reaction to the possibility of the world ending Dec. 21, 2012. Or it could be a testament to the social media prowess of the university’s population.

Whatever the reason, SU went viral in a huge way in 2012. With students hopping on the bandwagon, it was a big year for SU on the interwebs.

#ThingsIdRatherDo

Before University Union announced the 2012 Block Party artists, Ben Glidden sat in front of his computer awaiting the news. A concertgoer who thoroughly enjoyed last year’s Block Party, Glidden was excited to hear about the show. The decision came as a disappointment.
‘I had no idea who either of the artists were, which was upsetting,’ said Glidden, a sophomore broadcast and digital journalism major. ‘So, jokingly, I tweeted out.’
Glidden asked his followers what they would rather do than go to this Block Party and saw the potential for a hashtag. At 12:30 a.m. on March 26, #ThingsIdRatherDoThanGoToBlockParty was born. By 1:30 a.m., the hashtag was the No. 1 trending topic both worldwide and in the United States.

The extremely public level of the phenomenon concerned Glidden at first, but the concern quickly gave way to excitement.
‘I had a huge paper due the next day, and I didn’t even get started on it till like three,’ Glidden said. ‘I was running around the room excited.’

Go viral, maybe?
Doing a video project for class is not an uncommon assignment. Plenty of students wait until the last minute, spending the day holed up in a graphics lab. It is a pretty regular practice.  However, one of these videos hitting the 20,000 mark for views on YouTube is a little more irregular.

Hailey Temple made the video ‘Call Me Maybe Syracuse University’ as her viral video project for IST 486: ‘Social Media and Enterprise.’ She said the increasingly popular song ‘Call Me Maybe’ by Carly Rae Jepsen seemed like a good choice for the assignment.
She wanted to do something that catered to different groups. Incoming students could see it and look forward to going to SU, current students could be reminded what they love about school and alumni could check it out for a glimpse at their past professors or spots on campus they frequented.

‘It was like my baby. I had my camera strapped to my hip for a couple weeks,’ Temple said. ‘I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll be happy for like 100 (views).”

It got 300 in one day.

Humor Whore is Cray

A girl with a bright blue wig and a pillow stuffed into her skirt, blood coming out of her side. Male students surrounding her, throwing Keystone cans in a circle. A lot of dancing.

These are the things passers-by may have seen if they drove down Ostrom Avenue the two weeks leading up to MayFest. Humor Whore, an SU comedy group that specializes in sketch comedy videos, filmed the video after senior television, radio and film major Seth Crockett fell in love with Jay-Z and Kanye West’s ‘N****s in Paris’. The group currently has 17 members, and while ‘Cuse is Cray’ was not their first video,it is their most famous. In just ten days, the video received 75,000 YouTube views.

‘People either love it and are obsessed with it, or they want to tar and feather us and feed us to Otto,’ said Kelsie Testa, a senior television, radio and film major who is featured in the video. ‘Bring it on. I love that.’

The fame has spread across campus, evidenced by the song blaring through the speakers at Chuck’s Cafe. Dan Powell,a senior English and textual studies major who helped with production on the video, has a message for critics who felt that the video misrepresented SU.

Said Powell: ‘I think SU alumni and students making incredibly misogynistic and hateful, ass-backward bigoted comments about other SU students in a public open forum is a much worse way to represent the school than making a video to have fun.’

cedebais@syr.edu

Published on May 8, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Chelsea: cedebais@syr.edu | @CDeBaise124