I’ll be among the guests on the Today Show Wednesday 10/27 for a breaking! news! alert! about online videos that spread faster than H5N1 virii in a chicken coop.
The centerpiece of Wednesday’s segment is a fan-made music video for the Backstreet Boys’ I Want It That Way, performed by two kids wearing Yao Ming and TMac b-ball jerseys — while their roommate frags his butt off in the background. It’s all credited to “Two Chinese Students,” according to Google Video, and was uploaded there in July, 2005, after having been spotted on the China portal Sina.com.cn. Like AYBABTU, Numa Numa, Star Wars Kid, and the rest of its predecessors, this video now inhabits gazillions of otherwise productive desktops worldwide.
Why we love these silly homebaked videos so, I do not know. But they’re a great argument for sensible copyright reform — after all, funny though it may be, what these two kids in China created could be considered a violation of intellectual property laws. Not to mention good taste.
Link to file.
TODAY airs 7-10am on NBC.
Reader comment: Tian says,
The duo are called “Back Dorm Boys” (parody of BackstreetBoys) and they are students at Guangdong Arts Institute. After their spoof music video “Radio in my head” was released in China’s web portal, Motorola China has asked them to endorse their new mobile phones.
In the video (one is wearing yellow tee, and the other white ringer tee), the duo’s song was interrupted by one girlfriend called to complain about being neglected. The boy hangs up on her and continue to jam. I have collected all their work on my site: Link.
Radio21 China has a large website dedicated to this duo: Link. The site is in Chinese, but there are plenty of photos.
Sina China has all BDB’s videos roster posted on their site: Link
Reader comment: James says,
I guess lipsyncing backstreet boys is pretty popular. Here’s a few other videos of asian lip syncers. Link, (Same students), Link.
Reader comment: Pat says,
Here’s another lypsync act — In this one, they’re lip-syncing to R. Kelly’s “Ignition.” Plenty of mirrors if you search by filename on Google. Link to mpeg.