Support NeoGAF

[Draugoth]

Like just about every other company in the Western world, Discord rattled off an April Fools' gag yesterday about adding loot boxes to its social media platform. Fast-forward to April 2, just 24 hours later, and that goofy little clip has blown past 1.4 billion—yes, that's billion—views.

That's a massive milestone. How massive, as the Doctor once said, depends on the context: The Baby Shark Dance, for instance, currently has 10 times that many views. But it's been on the 'Tubes for seven years, while the Discord clip arrived, y'know, yesterday.

 

[AJUMP23]

A quirk.

 

[mitch1971]

Imagine being the guy who forgot to put an ad-roll on it!

 

[Grildon Tundy]

What was the software quirk that led to it?

 

[Husky]

What was the software quirk that led to it?

That's the only part I care about!

 

[Grildon Tundy]

I'm going to take a guess before looking to see if I'm right:

The short video length combined with it auto-playing on Discord for all users led to the high play count.

Am I close?

 

[Grildon Tundy]

Kinda:
"The clip apparently played in the background of Discord's toast notification, the little pop-up messages that appear at the bottom of your screen for a few seconds to let you know something is happening: You've got email, a Steam friend is playing a new game, or whatever. "

 

[jshackles]

Kinda:
"The clip apparently played in the background of Discord's toast notification, the little pop-up messages that appear at the bottom of your screen for a few seconds to let you know something is happening: You've got email, a Steam friend is playing a new game, or whatever. "

The fact that this sort of programmatic manipulation of Youtube's algorithm didn't get detected and shut down... that's kind of frightening actually.