An Open Letter To Everyone: Please Stop Making ‘Call Me Maybe’ Videos
We all had ourselves a good laugh, but I think it’s time to put this nutty little trend to bed. Who’s with me?
What do former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Harvard University baseball team, and a bunch of shirtless Abercrombie & Fitch models have in common? They all need to stop what they’re doing. Right now. They’re responsible for three of the now-ubiquitous interpretations of Carly Rae Jepsen‘s infectious hit “Call Me Maybe” that have taken the internet — and my brain — hostage. What will it take to stop these from happening once and for all?
Like most online phenomena, we have Justin Bieber to thank for getting this ball of insanity rolling. In an effort to raise awareness of Carly Rae’s single — she’s signed to School Boy Records, which is run by Justin’s manager Scooter Braun — Justin enlisted a slew of celebrity friends, including girlfriend Selena Gomez, to lip sync the song and post the video online. Tens of millions of views later, that video has probably been seen as many times as the official music video for Carly Rae’s song.
And because everybody wants to be like Justin — I swear, he’s the new Michael Jordan or something — an endless parade of copycat videos quickly flooded the web. They ranged from weird (Colin Powell serenading Gayle King on live television) to adorable (a corgi crooning in dog-speak) to just plain desperate (Katy Perry and her friends trying to convince us they’d be fun to hang out.)
The latest video, released by Abercrombie & Fitch, features an army of their trademark shirtless models lip syncing all over the world — and while I won’t discredit its excellent visual aesthetics, I do feel the need to point out that almost none of the guys actually know any of the words. Nor do they seem to care. But that won’t stop it from going viral!
Human to human, I beg of you all: Can we just stop with these videos already? Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but in this case, it’s also the quickest road to insanity. The joke is over, the dead horse has been beaten, and the gods of originality are weeping in their fluffy golden beds.
If you’ve got a little bit of time — and a lot of brain cells — to kill, check out a few of the aforementioned “Call Me Maybe” videos below:
Abercrombie & Fitch models:
Click here to view the embedded video.
Colin Powell:
Click here to view the embedded video.
Harvard Baseball Team:
Click here to view the embedded video.
How do you feel about these “Call Me Maybe” videos? Do you still like them, or have you had enough? Vote and comment below:
— Andy Swift
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