The Viral Spiral: Zebras, Tacos & Backflips

Each week, Magnet’s “resident Internet culture expert,” Debbie Saslaw runs down her picks for the best viral videos of the week. We call it “The Viral Spiral.”

Best Surprise Meme-Revival

I honestly dare you to watch this without smiling. And if by some strange chance you get bored of this oversized dancing zebra, keep watching for the sake of the reveal.

Best Hipster Mockery (In A While)

This indie cover of “Ice, Ice, Baby” is pretty good, but the mini-doc surrounding its inception is genius. This writer is biased, however, because some may place her in the category of “hipster.”

Best Party Feeling for Your Friday

This one comes by way of my colleague/partner in crime Sara Kinney, who sent this last Friday at approximately 11am. We may have watched it every hour, on the hour, until we left the office.

Best Way To Ruin Your Political Career

When asked what he can do for the town’s latino community, this budding presidential candidiate says that he might “eat tacos for dinner.” And then he proceeds to spiral down the political shame spiral for 4 whole minutes.

[ View video at Hartford Courant website ]

Best Apocalypse

Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel “The Road” gets the sad panda treatment.

Best Random Act of Internet Kindness

One of our interns here at Magnet came over and claimed he was making a submission for this week’s Viral Spiral. Not only had I seen this video two days prior, but I had already put it in my spiral queue. Try again next week, David.

Best Reason To Flee This Country

I try to refrain from posting segments from reality shows, but I need to make a rare exception for Alana, the “Toddlers and Tiaras” sensation. Technically this meme has been lurking around the Internet for a while, but this “best-of” compilation is too much for words. All I can say is: this girl was born to go #viral.

– Watch More Funny Videos

Best Real-Life High School Musical

Unfortunately, Lady Gaga has not released a video for “Hair,” an anthem for anyone who has ever been bullied. These high schoolers took matters into their own hands and made one themselves, and the results are pretty epic. To make things even more awesome, this video supports the “It Gets Better” project, which is one of the most inspirational viral videos in Internet history.

Best Winner

A dad tells his son that if he does a blackflip every day for one year, he will give him $100. Not only did the kid document his quest via tumblr, but he created this music video set to a dubstep remix of The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.” Take that, Dad.

Best Kitty

Speaking of dubstep: I realize everyone loves to hate on this genre of music, but try hating on dubstep after seeing this cat DJ.

See any other great videos this week? Let us know in the comments and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. And stay up-to-date on the latest from the blog with our free newsletter.

Debbie Saslaw makes up 1/2 of Magnet Media’s post-production staff and doubles as the company’s resident expert on Internet culture. She also edits a weekly supercut for Slacktory and her viral videos have garnered more than 1 million hits after appearing on sites such as Buzzfeed, HuffPost Comedy, Uproxx, MSNBC.com, and The Daily What.