I didn’t say that Numa Numa was the first viral video, merely the first viral video to really make the rounds on YouTube. And then, with the help of YouTube, thousands of people proceeded to make their own versions of Numa Numa, creating their own community. That’s the real phenomenon that happens when a single video get popular.

Do a search for Numa Numa and you’ll find over 100,000 videos. It’s pretty trippy.

I have to say that I never saw the two videos you mentioned. They both sound really gross though. I don’t think anyone tried to recreated those videos, that’s for sure.

If you recall, back in the 90’s, videos would be uploaded to a persons FTP server, and the URL would be sent via email. You must recall getting tons of email forwards from people with “YOU GOT TO CHECK THIS OUT” and such. With the click of a link, you’d be either watching a MOV file through the web browser, or MPG or AVI files through Winamp, Media Player and others. And this was back in the 90’s, not 2001 with that 405 “movie”.

Examples are endless, but ones I would receive multiple times in the spam of a year back in 1997 were:

Monkey Drinking His Own Pee
Beached Whale Exploded on Beach

“The film shows a DC-10 jet making an emergency landing onto the 405 freeway in California, with the front part of the plane pinning a man’s car to the road, forcing him to be pushed along by it until it comes to a stop. In the process of slowing down, the plane and the man’s car almost hit an elderly woman driving slowly in her car, though she is oblivious to this fact and extends the middle finger as she cruises past.”

But you’re right about the viral impact. It was a seed version of YouTube. Wikipedia again, citing IMDB:

“with little promotional effort the film soon reached millions of online viewers through widespread internet access. By July it was featured on the site iFilm where it had received two million viewers.”