The catchy Korean pop video catapulted the artist Psy and his signature dance moves to fame in and two years later, Gangnam Style is still the video most watched on YouTube. At the time of writing, it has had 2,,, views - which is actually a bit of a problem, as YouTube's view counter could not count beyond 2,,, The phrase "bit integer" is significant because it refers to how big a number a computer's memory can store.
Computers work in binary code - a system of zeros and ones. Every number we use has to be turned into a series of binary digits or "bits" so that a computer can understand it. It can help to think of 32 bits as a row of 32 boxes. The boxes can have either a one or a zero in them and every box corresponds to a different number, each of which is double the number for the previous box.
For example, the first box corresponds to the number one, the second to the number two, the third to the number four, the fourth to the number eight and so on. The video is "a satire about Gangnam itself but also it's about how people outside Gangnam pursue their dream to be one of those Gangnam residents without even realizing what it really means," Kim explained to me when I got in touch with her.
Koreans "really wanted to be one of them," but she says that feeling is changing, and "Gangnam Style" captures people's ambivalence.
The whole video is about him thinking he's a hotshot but then realizing he's just, you know, at a children's playground, or thinking he's playing polo or something and realizes he's on a merry-go-round.
If you're wondering about the bizarre episodes in the elevator and with the red sports car, as I was, it turns out that those are probably just excuses for a couple of cameos by TV personalities, which is apparently common in South Korean music videos.
None of this commentary is particularly overt, which is actually what could make "Gangnam Style" so subversive. Social commentary is just not really done in mainstream Korean pop music, Hong explained. It's really been limited. But it's more than that. Maybe not coincidentally, he attended both Boston University and the Berklee College of Music, graduating from the latter. His exposure to American music's penchant for social commentary, and the time spent abroad that may have given him a new perspective on his home country, could inform his apparently somewhat critical take on South Korean society.
Kim seemed to feel the same way about the video, though it's so cheery on the surface. On her blog, she suggested the video portrayed the Gangnam area, a symbol of South Korea's national aspirations for prosperity and status, as "nothing but materialistic and about people who are chasing rainbows. I think the young people are finally realizing that. There's a genuine backlash. You're seeing a huge amount of resentment from youth about their economic circumstances.
There are no special effects or expensive camera tricks involved. Also, the places shown in the shoot are no extravagant locations.
They are just different parts of a city — parks, roads, trains, and even toilet seats! Psy himself seems surprised at how the video became so popular. YouTube has joined the celebrations along with the rest of the world. After all Gangnam Style is the first video on the website to reach two billion views.
They are displaying two small icons of a dancing Psy next to the view counter as shown in the screenshot below. If you will click on either of these icons, the screen would display the two billion number, as shown below, composed of dancing people.
It all started in February when some South Korean music industries along with YG Entertainment, the agency which represents Psy, announced that they want to enter the American market. Even before Gangnam Style went viral, YG Entertainment had millions of subscribers to its YouTube channel and its different artists had huge fan following on Twitter.
Also, they must have had a large number of email subscribers, the data on which is inaccessible to us. Such numbers are necessary to kick start any marketing campaign. They knew that because of their large following they will get huge number of views right from day one. His voice, his dance moves, his expressions of the face — they all show off his enthusiasm towards music.
In order for the video to be an international hit, it first had to be a hit in South Korea. So they decided to bring in three popular personalities of the country into the video, apart from Psy himself. Then the second one was Yoo Jae-suk , a popular comedian and TV host of the country, who appears in a dark yellow suit in the video. And the third one is No Hong-chul , the person who has been famously called the elevator guy as he appears in an elevator in the video.
He too is a comedian and a show host of South Korea. As far as my research shows, Gizmodo was the first mainstream news site to run a story on the video on 26th July, , 11 days after it was launched.
Kat Hannaford of Gizmodo wrote just a few lines about it, embedding the video in the article, and linking to the English translation of the lyrics. Then on the 30th of that month Gawker wrote a small article on it. This article got 18 thousand Facebook likes!
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