Trending This Week: Love for #DearMe; Miracles at 4,000 Feet

March 06, 2015

GUY HAS SEIZURE WHILE SKYDIVING


22 year-old Christopher Jones was skydiving 12,000 feet over Western Australia when, at around 9,000 ft, Jones began having a seizure. Free falling unconsciously through the sky, Jones was intercepted by his jumpmaster, Sheldon McFarlane, who managed to grab a hold of him and deploy his parachute, allowing him to float safely to the ground (at around 3,000 feet, Jones regained consciousness and was able to navigate his own secure landing). On Monday, Jones posted headcam footage of this terrifying fall - "possibly the scariest moment of [his] life" - and it immediately became one of the top trending topics of the day. Within the first 48 hours, the video received more than 9m views, 10k comments and hundreds of press mentions (and earned Jones an interview with Anderson Cooper, to boot).

Diversity & Inclusion - Love Has No Labels

Filmed on Valentine's Day in Santa Monica, CA, this touching PSA from Ad Council struck a chord this week - spreading the simple message of love, diversity and inclusion to more than 28.5m worldwide viewers in less than 3 days.  Set to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis's Same Love, the ad features partners and friends of different backgrounds, genders, and ages expressing their appreciation for one another - openly and proudly - and demonstrating that love doesn't have, or need, any labels. The video was the top viewed non-music video of the week, coming in 4th overall behind Taylor Swift's "Blank Space".


Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars - "UPTOWN FUNK" (Sung in CARTOON Voices!)

Adding to the 60k+ parodies, covers and other tributes to Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars's hit "Uptown Funk," voice impressionist Mikey Bolts lent his voice (and a dozen or so others) to his own version of the song this week, amassing ~2.7m views in just three days. Bolts, whose channel has seen nearly 170m views and more than 1.8m subscribers since its 2008 debut, assures his fans in his comments section that this video, though seemingly complicated, was but a single day's effort: "Started recording at 3am, filmed at noon, edited til 9. Tuesday vid." (A well spent day, we'd say!)

#DearMe - What Advice Would You Give Your Younger Self?


Tuesday saw the launch of #DearMe, our campaign aimed at inspiring and empowering girls around the world by asking them to answer one simple question: "What advice would you give your younger self?" This 2 minute spot features encouragement and words of wisdom from some of our biggest creators, including Hannah Hart, Laci Green, Michelle Phan, Grace Helbig, Gigi Chao, and Lilly Singh. The video received a 90%+ positive sentiment (likes vs. dislikes) and reached more than 2m people in three days.

--Christine Huang

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