By: Lone Ingebrigtsen Nilssen
Paul Vasquez, aka Hungrybear9562, aka Bear, was a LA firefighter and lives now near Yosemite National Park on a farm he owns. Bear used to drive a truck but because of weight problems he was enforced to end trucking. To get his life back on track and to loose weight he started doing cage fighting again.
January 8th 2010, Bear discovered a giant double rainbow in Yosemite National Park and Hungrybear9562 uploaded his homemade video on YouTube.
This is what he wrote as the description for the video: “It was rainbowing for at least an hour on January 8th 2010. It was incredible. The camera could not capture the vivid intensity and brightness. Look into the mirror, look into your soul!”
In the video, we can hear how amazed Hungrybear9562 is over this rare rainbow. We can hear his admiring and his feelings of awe at the same time as he cries.
Bears video sat dormant in obscurity for almost a half year before talk show host Jimmy Kimmel discovered his video and linked it on Twitter July 3rd 2010, and it didn’t took long before a sport columnist retweeted Kimmel’s post. Within a day, a short article about the video was posted in The Huffington Post, and in the following days other posted the movie on YouTube, and CBS News interviewed Bear:
“That day I was finishing a note to a friend telling her I was like Noah because I’m building what seems to be like an arc here. I have greenhouses and gardens and fern trees and lots of animals here. Right after finishing that email, I look out there and the colors. I walked out with my camera. What you see in the video is what I experienced. That rainbow lasted over an hour. My camera only captured about 40 percent of the color. It was a lot brighter than you see”.
After the video was broadcast in several ways, the popularity increased from 0 to 100% from June to July. It got really popular few days after Jimmy Kimmel discovered the video and it become a YouTube hit. Today, two years after Hungrybear9562 uploaded his video, more than 32 816 867 people have seen it.
I think this movie become popular in so short time after it first got discovered because the whole situation is very strange, odd and not to mention rare. It’s not every day you first of all can see a double rainbow, and second, a double rainbow filmed by a crazy grown up man who cries, laughing and sounding like his having an orgasm at the same time. And third, he’s talking and making these noises alone, he’s not with anyone else, but he is still so unbelievably amazed and loud. This video is funny for everybody because it’s not an inside joke or a “you had to be there joke or happening” or a culturally specific joke etc. It’s a universally funny and attractive video because of his extreme reaction with so many different feelings at the same time, just for a double rainbow.
The popularity of this movie slowly decreased after July 2010 and by the end of 2010 the video had decreased more than 50%, and today the popularity for this video is around 6%. Maybe because we have “all” seen it, and one time is enough?
Other memes that have emerged from or have been influenced by this video:
Only 3 days after Jimmy Kimmel tweeted his video on Twitter, July 6th, 2010, the user schmoyoho, popular for “Auto-Tune the News”, created an Auto-Tuned version of this video, and it got a lot of hits And on September 1st, 2010, Microsoft Windows released a promotional video about Windows Live Photo Gallery featuring Paul Vasquez himself.
Hungrybear9562 also have his own web site where you can buy T-Shirts and Hoodies and other products. http://www.doublerainbowstore.com/
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