"The first man's name was Kiki."
"The first man was Kiki."
"He wore such little pants."
"He was wearing tight little pants."
"His brother was a champion."
"His brother was a boxing champion."
"But Kiki loves to dance."
"But Kiki only loves to dance."
"The second man was Chuchu."
"The second man was Chuchu."
"A master of romance."
"He was a romantic youth."
"He loved Damsels In Distress but not as much as dance."
"He liked to rescue damsels in distress, but he liked dancing even more."
Harvard University, Psychology Department Dormitory.
The famous actress Natalie Portman was studying here; she was filming "Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace" while also not wanting to neglect her studies.
Even in Hollywood, with its multitude of actors, very few top stars have high academic qualifications, which is a bonus point.
At noon, after spending the morning reviewing notes obtained from a professor, she had just returned from the library, preparing to rest for a while.
Before she even reached the door, she heard dynamic music coming through it and into the hallway.
"Hmm? What are they doing?"
Muttering in confusion, Natalie Portman pushed the door open and entered the dormitory.
What met her eyes was her roommate, Portia, and two female classmates from the next dorm, all strangely twisting their bodies.
How to describe that twisting? At first glance, it felt very silly.
But combined with the song and background music, looking again, it felt very hypnotic and extremely eye-catching.
The frequency and amplitude of their twisting, combined with their swaying hips and waists, and especially their exaggerated facial expressions, made it impossible to look away once you saw it.
"Portia, what are you doing?"
"Dancing, the Shoulder Dance, don't you know?"
"The Shoulder Dance? What kind of dance is this? It's my first time seeing it; you guys are dancing so strangely."
"Natalie, it's not that we're dancing strangely, it's because this dance is supposed to be danced this way. Haven't you seen this video?" Portia pointed at the computer screen.
"What video?"
"Oh my goodness! You've been reading so much you've gone silly. You can't spend all day in the library; you should surf the internet more to get the latest information."
"This video is now going viral across the United States. My brother recommended it to me; he's at Yale, and the guys there have already fallen for it, all vying to imitate this dance."
A girl from another dorm said, "Natalie, you're a big star; you must know these actors, right?"
Hearing this, Natalie Portman leaned in to watch, and the content of the video immediately struck her like a bolt from the blue.
"One day inside a station."
"One day by chance."
"In Amsterdam perchance."
"In a station in Amsterdam."
"The man was dancing side by side by a man with quicker glance."
"The two of them danced shoulder to shoulder, attracting other men to watch."
"They turn to face each other."
"They turned to face each other."
"It was just happened to dance."
"Everything just happened by coincidence."
"That these two men would meet that day and do their favorite dance."
"These two men met that day and danced their fated steps."
"WOW! You can really dance!"
"Wow! You dance so well!"
"WOW! You can really dance!"
"Wow! You dance so well too!"
"They said we both been dance all this time oh what a coincidental dance."
"They both said, 'So we've been dancing this dance together for so long, what a coincidence!'"
"Chris Evans and Ryan Reynolds? Why would they make a video like this!" Natalie Portman's eyes widened.
"That's not all; there are so many stars participating in this video. We just counted, there are at least a dozen."
"Isn't it fun? The best part is coming up, don't blink."
Amidst the hypnotic background music, Chris Evans, Ryan Reynolds, and Jack Black, who played the chubby guy in "the hangover," performed the classic phenomenon of person-to-person transmission and dancing with one's own shadow.
Portia and her two classmates laughed and started to shake again along with it.
"And then they dance together."
"Since they started dancing together."
"Like no one dance before."
"As if no one had ever danced before."
"The diplomat were dancing."
"Even the diplomats started dancing."
"They canceled all of the war."
"They canceled the orders for war."
"The whole world celebrated."
"The whole world was singing and dancing."
"There was no more violence."
"Everyone no longer had violent tendencies."
"And all because these men cross path."
"All of this was because of the meeting of these two men."
"What a coincidental dance!"
"This truly was fated by heaven!"
Shao shao shao shao shao shao shao… shao shao shao shao shao shao shao… "Robert Downey Jr.! Why is he in it too!"
Seeing the notorious drug addict, Natalie Portman felt very surprised. This guy was currently embroiled in negative news, a character one would be afraid to even brush against on the street for fear of trouble.
He could actually participate in the filming of this video, which was full of currently popular new actors. The Olsen Sisters' momentum was almost catching up to her own.
"Robert Downey Jr.? Who is that?" Portia asked.
Apparently, the guy who had been out of the public eye for so long was already forgotten by some people.
"Who cares who he is, don't you think his expression is very sexy? That little mustache, coupled with his deep, husky voice, I think this male actor is quite handsome."
"He's just a little gay."
"That's right, but which man in this video isn't gay? If he wasn't gay, I wouldn't feel anything."
"Hahahahaha… Ryan Reynolds was a tough warrior in "transformers," a silly guy in "sharknado," and now he's gay here. He can really handle all sorts of styles."
"Hahahahaha… Shake it, sisters!"
Watching her roommates shake hypnotically along with the video again, Natalie Portman shook her head speechlessly.
As an insider, she wouldn't just look at the surface of things. Gathering such a large group of stars to film a parody video, like Saturday Night Live, clearly had a purpose behind it from the orchestrator.
Considering that all these people had made movies for MGM, and it was no longer a secret that Facebook was Eric Cooper's asset.
It was very possible that he, who innovatively created Facebook, could also innovatively create YouTube.
As a top student from Harvard, she quickly put together these pieces of information and understood that this was most likely a publicity stunt.
The goal was to make YouTube popular, and it seems the promotion has been very successful. The public's enthusiasm is high, and people are registering accounts to become YouTube users.
Even prestigious institutions like Harvard and Yale have fallen, so you can imagine the state of ordinary people.
The main reason is that the Shoulder Dance is simply too infectious. After watching it for just a short while, it's as easy to spread as in the video. I don't know whose masterpiece it is.
Although the video was posted on YouTube, it only used a virtual account, and the registration information behind it couldn't be found. Eric temporarily doesn't want to appear in the public eye.
The Shoulder Dance was only released for a few days before it spread from YouTube to the entire internet.
This time, not a single penny was spent on promotion. It's really because the participating stars are too popular; almost all of them are A-listers, except for Robert Downey Jr..
Chris Evans and Ryan Reynolds played the two male leads, and the Olsen Sisters played their girlfriends.
Hugh Jackman, Michael Fassbender, and Anthony Mackie played the older brother and the boxer.
Tom Hardy played the petty thug who kidnapped the initial girlfriend.
Jack Black played the infected traveler at the Amsterdam train station.
The yoga master was gone; Eric didn't like Indians, so it was replaced with ballet.
The ballet dancer was infected with the Shoulder Dance while dancing, and James McAvoy played the ballet master.
There were also a host of cameos from Elijah Wood, Benjamin McKenzie, Heath Ledger, and others. At most, they had one shot or played a bystander.
Even the old man Anthony Hopkins was pulled in by him for a cameo as the Department of Defense secretary, who only had one line.
If the video wasn't less than three minutes long, Eric would have made something like "The Founding of a Republic" or "The Banquet."
Now, counting how many stars appeared in it has become a hot topic among the onlookers.
Soon, and no one knows where it started, a large number of copycat Shoulder Dance videos suddenly appeared on YouTube.
Harvard and Yale took the lead in launching their student union versions, followed by other Ivy League schools releasing their own versions.
Instantly, universities across the United States seemed to enter an arms race.
Student union versions, basketball versions, football versions, baseball versions, and versions from various clubs like chess, Go, and computer science emerged like mushrooms after rain.
Then it began to spread from students to parents, teachers, professors, and even school management.
At this time, YouTube also released the behind-the-scenes footage from that day. On camera, a group of stars followed the steps to learn the moves and said funny things, which was even funnier than the video.
The release of the step-by-step breakdown pushed the trend to a climax.
By this point, it had become a trend across society, followed by nurse versions, flight attendant versions, truck driver versions, hot girl versions, and so on, all popping up.
Various stars also rushed to imitate it to gain traffic. Many of them had helped promote YouTube when it first launched, registered an account, and then stopped updating. This time, they all followed suit and instantly came back to life.
Because users became active, it meant that YouTube, like Facebook, could serve as a platform for attracting fans and promotion. Why not do something that benefits oneself?
Once the trend formed, even major TV stations started to follow suit, reporting on the event and launching their own host versions.
Professor Kevin from the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center, stated in an interview: "The Shoulder Dance is a very good exercise that anyone can learn. Doing this movement can effectively relieve joint pain, frozen shoulder, and other ailments."
On talk shows like the ellen show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Daily Show, Good Morning America, and Conan, imitating the Shoulder Dance also became a way to open the show and liven up the atmosphere.
With just one video, YouTube attracted millions of new users, undoubtedly the biggest winner.
And when they finished watching the Shoulder Dance-related videos, they suddenly discovered many new types of videos appearing in the general section that they hadn't seen before.
For example, a video tagged "Guichu." Many people were curious about what "Guichu" meant, as it sounded a bit scary.
But after clicking in, they were immediately conquered by the sharp editing and parody style.
This video edited and spliced Eminem's MV and live concert footage, completely changing the meaning of his words.
Crude and vulgar, but the effect made people who had never encountered Guichu burst into laughter.
Eric always gets his revenge, and Eminem deserved it.
There was also a wilderness survival video, where the filmmaker claimed to survive in the wild for a week without using any tools.
Some videos, tagged as science popularization, showed a live disassembly of Sony's latest camera, educating viewers on the pros and cons of each component.
There were also talent performances; singing and dancing were standard operations.
One girl performed crushing a watermelon with her thighs. The large watermelon couldn't withstand the strength of her legs and shattered into pieces with a bang.
At that moment, who knows how many men's imaginations ran wild.
This girl was from MGM's logistics department, she loved fitness and was quite well-known in the Los Angeles circle.
There was also a girl dressed flamboyantly, speaking in a cutesy voice, looking like a "green tea bitch," whose talent was swallowing light bulbs.
She swallowed a fist-sized light bulb and then took it out, her mouth distorted, but she herself was unaffected, with an astonishing capacity.
The main theme was holding a pearl in her mouth, moving in and out freely!
All kinds of diverse video types opened up a new world for users.
Suddenly, everyone realized that YouTube had changed, it had become fun, it had become interesting.
Many viewers, in particular, had their minds instantly opened.
Housewives thought, "It's just filming food, I can do that too. My family, colleagues, and kindergarten teachers all praise my cooking."
Extreme sports enthusiasts thought, "I can totally film my sports process to attract more people to join the sport."
People who liked to sing filmed themselves playing and singing, and people who liked to dance filmed various dance styles.
For a time, videos of all kinds of styles were continuously uploaded, and the quantity and variety of videos in YouTube's general section became increasingly rich.
In this trend, the biggest winner was undoubtedly YouTube, followed by Robert Downey Jr..
This was his first public appearance after disappearing from the public eye for over a year.
The results were quite good. Although many people still disliked him, at least in the Shoulder Dance video, his performance received everyone's approval.
Acknowledging your talent and thinking you're scum are two different things.
So, Robert Downey Jr. began to appear on some interview shows and talk shows.
All of this was within Eric's expectations. Downey, as per MGM's request, temporarily didn't disclose the casting for iron man, but instead focused on his personal issues.
Simply put, he was whitewashing himself, gradually recounting how he step by step descended into the abyss, implying that it wasn't entirely his fault, and growing up in such a family, it was very difficult for him.
But he couldn't pass the buck either. If you make a mistake, you admit it; if you get hit, you stand at attention.
In the show, he tearfully repented, apologized to his ex-wife and children, and his genuine emotional outburst garnered a lot of sympathy.
Finally, he promised never to touch drugs again, to completely turn over a new leaf and be a good person.
He asked the audience and media to supervise him, stating that if he was caught with drugs again, he would immediately withdraw from the entertainment industry without anyone needing to curse him.
The prodigal son's return story is universally appealing, and many felt that Robert Downey Jr. wasn't so hateful after all.
Capitalizing on the improved public opinion, Downey began updating his daily disciplined life on Facebook and YouTube.
After some time, the casting for iron man would be announced.
People would naturally think that this was an opportunity Marvel gave Downey, and also an opportunity Downey worked hard to earn for himself.
The number of people criticizing the casting would naturally be much smaller, and it might even attract more attention.
A win-win outcome.