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How stealthy, ‘nightmare’ octopus became a viral sensation

And before the YouTube age, people needed to pay for a website and bandwidth usage. Since that time, YouTube has helped shape the cultural face of society by allowing musicians and other performers to spread awareness of their efforts.

Additionally, comical videos featuring everything from pranks to animals have lit up the online world. One of the latest YouTube sensations features an octopus eating a crab, and its popularity is an important indicator of how little the typical person knows about either of these creatures.

YouTube user Porsche Indrisie was filming a crab on some rocks when she was surprised by the sudden appearance of a hungry octopus. Unfortunately for the crab, the octopus apparently won their encounter and took the crab underwater to finish its meal. The video “Octopus gets crabby in Yallingup” featured below provides an intriguing look at the eating habits of octopi, but marine biologists were surprised by how quickly the media picked up this story.

When a video begins to go viral, it is not unusual for media sources to run a piece about it. However, the media actually helped create the buzz around this particular upload, and many of the articles that have been published have overly sensationalized headlines that do not have any basis in scientific fact. A quick timeline of the octopus video makes it easy to see exactly how this video went viral.

On February 18, 2015, the video was uploaded to YouTube, and Indrisie also posted it publicly to her Facebook page. The instant popularity of the video cannot be denied because it gathered approximately 17,000 views within the first day based on word of mouth. It is likely that the upload would have continued to be shared by amused or intrigued YouTube users if the media had not gotten involved, but the impact of each news article and broadcast clearly pushed the video to a much higher level of viral fame.

The first mention of the octopus video appears to have taken place on February 20 when Indrisie’s local media outlet, WA Today, posted an article entitled “Octopus versus crab in Yallingup death battle.” This title was eye-catching, and it caused other media outlets from around the world to take notice.

Sadly, many other journalists began posting headlines that had no basis in reality. For example, the Irish Times ran a piece entitled “Be afraid, be very afraid: octopus filmed hunting on land.” Headlines like this helped the video accumulate more than 6.1 million views in one week, but they also misled people.

According to octopus experts, there is nothing even slightly unusual about the octopus behavior that was captured in the viral video. In other words, the scare tactic headlines are nothing more than click-bait, and they also make it clear that most people have no idea how an octopus hunts or eats.

In most cases, videos need to follow certain rules to have the best chance of becoming viral, including having clear footage and omitting anything that could be considered offensive such as profanity. The octopus video does not follow either of these guidelines, but it was able to become a hit because of the media push that it received.

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