eHarmony’s cat lady now tearing up the YouTube charts

“I love cats,” cries Debbie. “I just love them, and I want them, I want them in a basket, and in bow-ties, I want them to be on a rainbow, and in my bed, and I just want a house full of them.”

It may not be the best way to introduce oneself on a dating site, the ostensible purpose of “eHarmony Video Bio,” a clip on YouTube that’s already approaching 1 million views. But to those in on the joke, “Debbie’s” tear-soaked homage to felines shows every sign of being a gag. And her message is now becoming its own medium, with dozens of YouTube users posting their own tear-soaked introductions in homage to “Debbie.”

Originally uploaded on June 3 by YouTube user hartmanncara,  “eHarmony Video Bio” got its big break after being posted on Reddit, the news-discussion site, on June 8. Views of the video jumped from 660 to over 9,000 in under three hours.

Media outlets from CBS, Huffington Post, Fox, Mashable and The Frisky linked to the video, but they didn’t seem in on the joke. The Daily Dot knows better: “eHarmony Video Bio” is just one of many performance-art pieces on YouTube.    

Besides the “eHarmony” clip, hartmanncara has other funny videos on her YouTube channel, including one where she imitates someone with motor neuron disease while singing Katy Perry’s “Firework”, which was incidentally removed from  YouTube yesterday for “hate speech.” And if there’s any doubt,  hartmanncara’s videos are also uploaded on Will Ferrell’s comedy video website Funny Or Die. That should put to rest any notion of her “eHarmony Video Bio” being real.

As performance art, “eHarmony Video Bio” is laden with layers. The online dating service eHarmony has been the butt of Internet jokes for years, and by parodying a woman seeking a soulmate, hartmanncara provides commentary on Internet users who lack the social tact to not reveal their deepest emotional oddities on the Web. hartmanncara’s “eHarmony Video Bio” is a lesson in what not to do or reveal: Viewers may be laughing at how crazy she is, but how many of them are guilty in their own way of oversharing?  

The video also taps into the Internet’s zeitgeisty obsession with cats — think of I Can Has Cheezburger, the funny-cats-with-captions site. “Debbie” even references a popular cat meme in her video when she says she wants cats “to be on a rainbow.”

Like the original LOLcat, “eHarmony Video Bio” has spawned dozens of spoofs, some mimicking “Debbie” word for word, all complete with fake crying.  

YouTube user TheFellowsBearded cries about loving—yes—cheeseburgers; KrispiBean really loves monkeys; thenewhot899 freaks out over how much she hates cats; adster2000 really likes pizza; discordiachaos is nervous and horny “all at the same time” (and loves bacon); “modern man” richnfamous59 goes off about canines; Ryankibby403 sobs over his love of dogs; and on and on.  

Alas, hartmanncara was not available for comment. Which made us cry a little.