One of the hot topics on our forum this week has been a crazy You Tube video featuring an office worker suddenly going insane and beating the crap out of anyone and everything around him. It looks utterly and convincingly real, and it’s since been all over the internet. You’ve probably already seen it yourself. Well it’s a fake… I think.
The news comes from what appears to be the blog of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, who’s new movie Wanted hits theaters this summer. His blog is entirely in Russian, so I’m forced to resort to a translator to figure out what he’s saying… always a dicey proposition. But he does also offer some video evidence that the video came from him, in the form of multiple camera angels.
What’s bizarre about the whole thing is that in his blog post he appears to be saying it was created to be some sort of viral advertisement for Wanted… even though I don’t see how it could possibly advertise something when no one who watches it has any way to associate it with Wanted.
Worse, his blog post seems to be aimed at mocking his audience. Apparently in addition to being a completely ineffective viral marketing campaign, one of the goals of his video was to show how stupid and easily fooled we are. Other independent websites also claim that at one point the blog post was originally aimed at laughing specifically at the gullibility of the West. I don’t see that there now, so either that part was removed for fear of backlash or someone got their translation wrong. Either way, gee, this Timur Bekmambetov is a likable fellow. He’s made me hate the world and everything in it. Just once, it’d be nice if something, somewhere existed which was actually real. The NBA is fake, every video on You Tube is fake, what’s next… Tila Tequila is a fake? It’s Armageddon time folks. Viral marketing is screwing us all.
By way of reminder, here’s the original Office Freakout Video:
http://view.break.com/513310 - Watch more free videos
And here’s Bekmambetov’s proof that he made it:
And here’s another video with that proof set in a music video which makes fun of you:
And here’s the part where I seriously consider boycotting his movie, simply because he's kind of an asshole.
