Everyone knew the followup to PSY's massive (if unlikely) international hit "Gangnam Style" would draw lots of attention. But considering the assumption-defying nature of PSY's breakout popularity and massive anticipation, it was hard to predict just how big that spike in interest would be. One week and around 200 million views later, the results are in.
PSY already holds the record for the most viewed video of all time -- Gangnam Style now has an incredible 1.5 billion views -- but now he also set the record for the most views ever in a single day with the over 38 million "Gentleman" achieved on April 14th. Here's a chart of the incredible daily viewership so far:
Not surprisingly, PSY's new single quickly became April's top rising search on YouTube -- with worldwide interest first peaking on Monday April 15 and remaining high since -- and debuted at #1 on YouTube's music chart, bumping his previous hit to #2.
From a stats perspective, it's one of the biggest music video launches the web has ever seen. For some added perspective, "Gentleman" was seen 100 million times in less than 4 days in regions all over the world, a milestone that it took "Gangnam Style" nearly two months to achieve:
Pranking and prank videos have been a part of online video culture from the start. For YouTube, the popularity of some classic videos -- Rickroll anyone? -- was entirely based around prank behavior. Jimmy Kimmel helped bring crowd-sourced video pranking to the masses and fads like coning spread from one country to the next.
But over the past few years, we've also started to see another trend emerging: prank channels. Entire channels devoted to terrorizing and harassing innocent people. Here's a chart of the monthly viewcount for just the top 10 of these channels.
So what are the top 10? By our rough estimation, we'd designate these 10 channels -- whose videos have been watched around 3.5 billion times combined -- as the heaviest producers of consistent popular prank videos:
Want more? Check out this playlist for a selection of 10 of the top trending prank videos of all time. Watch them all below or click here to see the list.