In YouTube Right Now, the Daily Dot looks at videos that catch our eyes, push our buttons, and move our dials—and that you’ve just got to watch. Right now!
Slow walkers on congested streets can be a real pain, and not just for their tardy-inducing pace. Thankfully, one Japanese man seems to have found the perfect antidote: impersonating a bike.
In a video uploaded unto YouTube on November 8, the man holds a bicycle bell while he walks down the street. He rings it when he finds himself lagging behind foot-draggers. The bell works like a charm; pedestrians immediately make way for the invisible bike.
“The Japanese are truly the most intelligent people on earth” wrote f6subaccount, in the most liked comment on YouTube.
“Try to do this in the Philippines [and] people will ask if you’re selling ice cream” wrote Vikzor30.
The video apparently shot from 5,000 views to over 250,000 today. It appears that the jump came primarily because Questlove, the drummer for The Roots, tweeted it. While large sites like Reddit have the power to make videos go viral, celebrities also occasionally create hits from their massive fan bases.
This fact was not lost on Questlove. When he tweeted the video to his 1.8 million followers he shared that he’d helped videos go viral before. “Double rainbow & “paris/HOV/ye” train performance were under 5000 views when i RT’d them,” he said. Both went on to become hits.