viral mama

Videos were shared long before even the Internet by word-of-mouth, film festivals, VHS tapes, and even to fill time gaps during the early days of cable.Perhaps the earliest was Reefer Madness, a 1936 "educational" film that circulated under several different titles. It was rediscovered by Keith Stroup, founder of NORML, who circulated prints of the film around college film festivals in the 1970s. The company who produced the prints, New Line Cinema, was so successful they began producing their own films. The most controversial was perhaps a clip from a newscast from Portland, Oregon in November 1970. In the clip, the disposal of a beached whale carcass by dynamite is documented, including the horrific aftermath of falling mist and chunks since the exclusion zone wasn't big enough.The exploding whale story obtained urban legend status in the Northwest and gained new interest in 1990 after Dave Barry wrote a hysterical column about the event,leading to copies being distributed over bulletin board systems