A couple of weeks ago, a video of two kids systematically wrapping rubber bands around a watermelon on a kitchen table until the juicy fruit exploded in chunks all over the dining room, the furniture, walls and, of course, the two kids conducting their watermelon experiment. People loved it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5X3p81cRFw
The stunt itself was actually nothing new. Variants of this rubber band watermelon trick have existed online for a while, like this video from three years ago…
For whatever reason, this watermelon stunt has been revived recently and everybody wants a slice of the… watermelon.
On Friday afternoon, the Internet flocked to BuzzFeed for a live video of the watermelon stunt from the BuzzFeed offices.
BOOM pic.twitter.com/35YBKUsN39
— Brandon Wall (@Walldo) April 8, 2016
CNBC reports the video feed from BuzzFeed reached an audience of more than 800,000 people as rubber band after rubber band was carefully placed over the melon. In all, the feed was watched more than 2.9 million times and received 318,000 comments and counting.
BuzzFeed has created a system that can easily rack up online traffic numbers and social shares that many websites should be envious of, and because this was as successful as it was, we will have to wait to see what viral video BuzzFeed reenacts in a live show again. Considering how many people try to kill time on the Internet as their work week wraps up, BuzzFeed may have a pretty good strategy here.
https://twitter.com/CatawbaPolitics/status/718520305745072128
~600k people are watching buzzfeed splode a watermelon. pic.twitter.com/0lNdInnb86
— Brad Sams (@bdsams) April 8, 2016
in all seriousness, buzzfeed’s watermelon thing is some of most compelling video i have ever seen
— Jake Kastrenakes (@jake_k) April 8, 2016
I just watched people on Buzzfeed put rubber bands around a watermelon for 12 minutes. Who allows me to keep living?
— JWhyduh (@Jwhyduh) April 8, 2016
And if you were wondering, it took 680 rubber bands and 45 minutes to get the watermelon to go boom.
I just watched buzzfeed blow up a watermelon using 680 rubber bands for 45 minutes….
— nessa (@NessaWalt) April 8, 2016
If you also have 45 minutes to kill and a bizarre curiosity, here’s the entire video:
BuzzFeed | Facebook
Watch us explode this watermelon one rubber band at a time!
Now we need an answer to the questions of how many BuzzFeed employees it takes to clean up an exploded watermelon, and how many people would watch a live feed of that online on a Friday afternoon?
