No video has ever generated so many views so quickly. And it’s not even because of the content – although it’s about loot boxes
1.4 billion clicks in just one day. Discord’s April Fool’s video, in which they announced loot boxes for the popular voice chat app, was extremely successful.
So successful that the video must have been viewed by around 17 percent of humanity to reach astronomical numbers. But the success was purely accidental
Why is this important? Discord has inadvertently shown how to create an extremely effective view bot. This could lead to imitators in the future or force YouTube to rethink the way embedded videos work
In detail: Discord has – like us – allowed itself an April Fool’s joke and thus accidentally created a video that has been watched more often within 24 hours than the previous record holder: the announcement trailer for GTA 6 with over 90 million views in 24 hours.
- According to X user and Discord Dataminer Marvin Witt, Discord let the video run in a continuous loop in the background.
- Every Discord user helped reach the huge numbers on the first of April.
Was the action intentional? In an X-post, the company expresses its astonishment at what happened:
oops
– Discord (@discord) April 2, 2024
A developer at Discord has openly communicated his astonishment on the API Discord server:
“how the fuck is this video getting so many views “
In the meantime the “error” has been fixed. The views are now increasing at a reasonable rate.
Reactions from the community: Discord users are largely taking the April Fool’s joke that got out of hand with humor and assume that it was an oversight.
Woofer210 writes on Reddit:
“I’m pretty sure that wasn’t intentional. But still funny “
Mielesgames has even bigger goals for the video:
“They’ve set a new world record for most views in 24 hours, lol, now they need to take over the most viewed video of all time, Baby Shark has been the most viewed video for far too long. “
What do you think of the incident? Do you think it’s funny, or are you worried that copycats will follow suit? Let us know in the comments below
