I hate you like I love you

By now if you aren’t aware of Dhinchak Pooja and her “Selfie maine le li aaj” song, you’re probably living under a rock. The young “singer” rose to fame with her recent single on her YouTube channel that clocked no less than 10 million views in only a week. And, her popularity is only rising by the day.

Essentially, the video is a compilation of her singing about her selfie-taking expedition around Delhi, featuring four awkward boys as backup dancers. In the video, Pooja goes around in a car; occasionally she stops somewhere to take a selfie. Forget melody or music or even lyrics, the YouTuber’s editing skills do not even come up to the basic level – yet, the desi internet loves it.

Well, it’s the kind of love one has for things one wants to hate, such as the phenomenon called ‘It’s so bad, it’s good’. It gives the viewer a feeling of superiority over a “popular” figure on the internet. While for others, it’s a guilty pleasure – you really cannot look away.

This isn’t the first time though that something so cringe-worthy took over the internet. Taher Shah attempted the same, almost four years back with his ‘Eye to Eye’ video. Dhanush famously gave us a viral one with ‘Why this Kolaveri Di?’ And, closer to home Wilbur Sargunaraj brought out the gem, ‘Love Marriage’ in 2010.

What stands out in these songs is the repetitive tune and nonsensical lyrics that are memorable only after one listen. Your brain keeps going even after the song has ended. Here’s a look at some of the mindless entertainment over the internet in the recent past…

The 42-year-old YouTube star, born and brought-up in Dhankuta moved to England for his high-flying banking job. A fan of Mohammed Rafi, Anup Jalota and Kishore Kumar, Niroula first tried his hand at classical music. After dabbling for a while in Nepali music albums, he ventured into English music videos.

Niroula's first attempt, 'Sunday Morning Love You', had an impact on his viewers that was beyond his wildest imagination. A badly photoshopped version of the singer is superimposed over a high-definition video of foreign women dancing as he sings in a heavy Nepali accent.

So, technically this is not an artiste. It’s a Facebook comment sticker and meme designed in 2016, with a large eyed Purple pigeon. The sticker set had a most notable animated gif in which the bird trashes its head up and down vigorously.

On February 7, 2017, a Thai Facebook page posted a video that included a fusion of the headbanging dove from the sticker set, and a dancing cat. The video garnered over 3.5 million views in a few days and its cringe took over the internet for two weeks.

This Pakistani middle-aged woman, who abused their government while giving an interview to a reporter, went viral in a matter of hours. In the span of 11 seconds she used every swear work known to humankind. In no time, social media users started making memes on the video and circulating them.

Some went as far as making an EDM remix of the video where the beat drops each time aunty drops a cuss word. Her phrase, ‘ye bik gayi hai gormint’ now has a cult following of over 70,000 followers on Facebook alone.

This 20-something music artiste rose to popularity with her songs “Daaru”, “Swag wali topi” and “Selfie mene leli aj”. Her latest video was uploaded on May 14 and received no less than 7,976,503 views in three days. It stands at more than 10 million views today. The video is a badly edited compilation of her singing about her selfie-taking expedition around Delhi, featuring four other boys as backup.

Ashraful Alom Saeed aka Hero Alom is a Bangladeshi hero and social media sensation. Don’t widen your eyes; this is a truth that girls go mad over Alom. His videos on YouTube have millions of views. Alom is also an owner of a cable TV shop and reports also say that he was a roadside vendor before he started making his own videos. He has over 500 music videos in which he acts with beautiful models dancing around him.

No one can forget the grand-daddy of them all. The one that made cringe cool. Psy’s Gangnam Style is still the world’s most watched video, inching ever close to the three billion views mark. Because there are only seven billion people on this planet and not many of them have access to YouTube, it’s obvious that many of us watched Gangnam Style more than once. Well it sure is weird, but the dance moves make a great argument.

The Pakistani singer grew to fame with his first song and the “pop sensation”, as his own website puts it, ‘Eye to eye’. With lyrics like “without your eye, I’m like butterfly”, his “music” is known for all the wrong reasons, at least by any one you has even the faintest sense of music, but that’s not reason enough for the Pakistani singer to stop. With over 44,000 followers on Twitter, there is no denying the popularity of this “mankind’s angel” as he calls himself in his latest creation.

By Suresh Y