The Youtube audience works in mysterious ways.

I have a few videos on Youtube, promoting my work within the performing arts, acting, voiceover and standup comedy, and none of them have any real large number of views.

For example my 6 standup comedy videos have 1341 views in total.

But one video sticks out with over 12 000 views and 4 pages of, occasionally quite passionate, comments.

It’s the mindless clip “Cutting up my air mattress“.

Back story:

I happened to have a leaking air mattress that I was about to trash, at the same time that my camera was mounted on a tripod in the living room, after filming an audition clip the previous day. I thought to myself, why not inflate the mattress, slice it open while lying on it, and film it? And then I put it on Youtube. No one will find, let alone watch it, anyway. Right?

I ask myself:

• How do you even find this video?
• What are you looking for when you come across a video of a moron cutting up an air mattress?
• Why do you watch it to the end?
• Why do you bother to comment?
• How does it elicit any emotion whatsoever?

I’m still trying to figure out how the Youtube audience works.