Meme Research

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Merton, Freestyling Chatroulette Pianist

Last posted Mar 29, 2010 at 07:29PM EDT. Added Mar 18, 2010 at 01:24AM EDT
13 posts from 9 users

Thanks to Jamie Dubs who gave the link some days ago on IRC, I can present you Merton, who posted a video of himself on Youtube the 11th of March.
In it, he's doing some improv' piano on chatroulette:

Aside from the fact that this is an amazing video as well as he wrote that more video would follow soon, it has a somewhat great viral trend going on.

Between March the 11th and March the 16th, It's got about 930 000 views when I checked it.
We are 2 days later and the views just doubled !

Besides, many articles began to pay tributes to that talented pianist:

- http://www.billboard.com/column/viralvideos/chatroulette-piano-man-merton-sings-for-1004075827.story?tag=hpfeed#/column/viralvideos/chatroulette-piano-man-merton-sings-for-1004075827.story?tag=hpfeed
- http://www.nowpublic.com/strange/mertons-chat-roulette-funny-piano-improv-video-hit-youtube
- http://lebuzzquotidien.blogspot.com/2010/03/merton-piano-chatroulette-video.html (In French)

I'm writing it here because, while this is not a meme yet (No parodies, no trends of freestyler musicians playing on chatroulette and recording themselves), it's definitely something to keep an eye on.

Last edited Mar 18, 2010 at 01:27AM EDT

It nice to see things like this on chat roulette instead of… well pieces of brah's anatomy that I really don't what to see…

Ben Folds just did an ODE to MERTON live during one of his concerts!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfamTmY5REw

Last edited Mar 21, 2010 at 03:32PM EDT

I subbed him, because I noticed him on animecellos account. Hes awesome ;)

This guy is amazing :)

@dazzledog: Nice find. Posted to the KYM blog. http://blog.knowyourmeme.com/post/464031945/ben-folds-does-chatroulette-piano-improv-live

Plenty of re-posts of the original video, not a whole lot of derivatives yet. I've managed to find another though.

And another,

Last edited Mar 23, 2010 at 12:39PM EDT

It seems that Youtube complained for some elements present in the original video, so it has been deleted.
Merton reposted a new edited version where some people are blurred (I then suppose that they are the ones who complained here).

Here's an extract of the description:

For the record, the original video had 4,238,658 Views. At the time of its demise, it was the Top-Rated YouTube Video of All Time. No shit.

More than 4 000 000 views in a short amount of times, that's really great.

Last edited Mar 22, 2010 at 03:16PM EDT

@Tomberry. Wow. As more and more 'meme' videos disappear, our job becomes harder. I wonder if we need to start thinking about preservation next. (Time to install DownloadHelper)

I'm kinda worried that people on CR recoconise him (grammar bad, I know) when he does the next video, so that the element of surprise dissapeares, unless he made a couple of them before he putted the first one on YouTube.