I’m constantly amused and amazed by the ways things go viral on the internet. For instance, today there’s a video making the rounds — the one embedded above — that’s a trailer for Harry Potter re-cut as if it were to be marketed as a teen comedy. It is, in fact, quite hilarious and illuminating, in that it shows how savvy advertising/marketing people can present something as something it’s totally not to consumers — like a chef taking a sirloin steak and successfully presenting it as a Caesar salad to a diner in a restaurant.
But what’s particularly amusing/amazing about this is that when watching it I thought, “Wait…I could swear I’ve seen this before.” So I went back to the YouTube page the video resides on and, lo and behold, it was originally posted in 2009 and had went viral back then, though not to the degree it seems to be going today. A host of sites — Buzzfeed and the Daily What among them — have posted it without noting that it already went viral two years ago. It’s even on the front page of Reddit as of this writing. THAT’S NOT HOW THE INTERNET IS SUPPOSED TO WORK, YOU GUYS!
Yes, Troll Gaze Emma Watson, I am mad!
With all of that said, the video is pretty flippin’ funny if you didn’t see it the first time around, or if you did and feel like watching it again, for that matter.