In 2007, Tay Zonday's song "Chocolate Rain" went viral. The keyboard-driven song and Zonday's deep vocals rocketed "Chocolate Rain" to YouTube viral stardom.
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He's racked up almost 100 million views on the original video, and Zonday has appeared on late night TV shows. He's also provided voiceovers for the Adult Swim show "Robot Chicken," appeared on America's Got Talent, and was in a 2009 video for Weezer's song "Pork and Beans." The 33-year-old, who is still making YouTube videos, has done commercial work for companies like Dr. Pepper and Comedy Central.
In early 2011, Rebecca Black became infamous for singing and starring in a YouTube video with ridiculous lyrics, "Friday," produced by ARK Music Factory. Black removed the original video, dubbed by many as "the worst song ever," when it had 167 million views, but later reuploaded it. Today, the reuploaded "Friday" video has 71 million views and counting.
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Black was bullied by her peers after the video went viral, prompting her to drop out of school. Today, the 18-year-old is still making music and she's still on YouTube, singing and offering life advice to her followers — which, if Twitter is any indication, number more than a million.
When David DeVore uploaded a video of his 7-year-old son David to YouTube in 2009, he didn't intend for the video to be viewed by millions — he just wanted to share it with family and friends. The video famously showed a dazed and anesthetized young David sitting in the car after a dental procedure, asking questions like "Is this real life?"
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In 2010, DeVore told us that he had made almost $150,000 since the video went viral. The Devores became YouTube partners, meaning they allowed YouTube to air ads before their video in return for a cut of the money. In August, David started high school.
His name is Gary Brolsma, but he's best known as the "Numa Numa" guy. In 2004 Brolsma uploaded a video of himself lip-syncing to the song "Dragostea din tei" by Moldovan pop group O-Zone to the website Newgrounds. From there, the hilarious video spread to other websites — including YouTube — and has now been watched 700 million times.
Since then, Brolsma has starred in a 2009 Geico TV commercial and showed up in a 2010 Super Bowl ad for Vizio. No stranger to performing in front of a captive audience, Brolsma is a pianist and vocalist for a Saddle Brook, New Jersey-based band called The Backroom Deal.
"Charlie bit my finger - again." uploaded in 2007, showed a one-year-old boy named Charlie biting his brother Harry's finger. The video was never meant to be made public, Charlie's family says, but the file size made it too big to share via email.
The family behind the video has reportedly made more than $500,000 through advertisements. In 2012, Ragu featured Harry and Charlie in a commercial. The two brothers recently filmed a remake of their famous video.
Liam Kyle Sullivan is most famous for his viral video "Shoes," in which he plays Kelly, "a girl who is going to get what she wants, no matter what," and spends a lot of time talking and singing about shoes. "Shoes" now has more than 54 million views, and helped propel Sullivan to internet fame.
Sullivan went on tour in 2007 and 2008, performing live and screening new videos in cities across the country. He starred in the VH1 series "I Hate My 30's," appeared as Kelly in FCKH8's anti-gay bullying videos, and he's still making comedy videos and music.
In 2002, 15-year-old Ghyslain Raza recorded a video tape of himself in his high school wielding a golf ball retriever like Star Wars Jedi knight handling a light saber. Raza never intended for the video to be seen publicly, but a classmate found it, converted it to an electronic video file, and shared the video. One estimate claims the video had been viewed 900 million times by November 2006.
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Raza left school to be privately tutored because of the bullying he received as a result of the leaked video. Since then, he's graduated from law school at Quebec's McGill University. He went public about his identity in the video, hoping to help other young victims of cyberbullying. Raza is also the president of a heritage conservation society in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec.
In his video "Leave Britney Alone," Chris Crocker tearfully and passionately defended Britney Spears after the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. The original video has more than 45 million views, and though he's uploaded scores of videos since then, he's still best known for the original Britney video. "Yes, I did Leave Britney Alone," Chris Crocker says in his Twitter bio.
Crocker recently starred in a documentary about his life, vlogging, and social media called Me at the Zoo. He's been involved with other endeavors too — Crocker released several singles between 2008 and 2013. And of course, he's still making YouTube videos.
Antoine Dodson became an unintentional internet sensation back in 2010. The Gregory Brothers, a comedy group, autotuned a local TV news broadcast featuring Antoine Dodson, who spoke passionately about a home invasion that happened to his sister at the family's home in the Lincoln Park housing project in Huntsville, Alabama. His catchphrase "Hide your kids, hide your wife" is just one of many soundbites that made it into the Gregory Brothers' autotuned version of the interview, called "The Bed Intruder Song." The song sold thousands of copies on iTunes and even hit the Billboard Hot 100 list.
Since becoming a viral star, Dodson was reportedly working on a reality TV show, but that seems to be dormant. Dodson has also endorsed the sales of "Bed Intruder" costumes and the Sex Offender Tracker app for iPhone and Android. In 2013, Gawker reported that Dodson claimed to have become a Hebrew Israelite, renouncing his homosexuality because he wants a wife and a family.
In 2006, Judson Laipply uploaded a six-minute video from 2001 of himself dancing to popular dance songs to YouTube. He named the video "Evolution of Dance." The rest is history: The video went viral and received 70 million views in less than 8 months.
Today, Laipply is still dancing (he released a sequel to Evolution of Dance in 2009, and is rumored to release a third installment). But he's also a motivational speaker and comedian, and even performed at halftime at an NBA finals game.
Stephen Voltz and Fritz Grobe are the "scientists" behind the "The Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments" video.
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