A YouTube video reaching the almost two and a half billions views mark, as the Gangnam Style video did, pretty much spoils things for all the rest. It's hard to compete with that degree of exposure. Extreme viral status makes it hard to relate to a video that (only) breaks the one million views barrier as even approaching virality. So when David Kernohan, on his “The Followers of the Apocalypse” (a blog that deals primarily with education but happily also veers onto numerous other subjects), commemorated the tenth anniversary of the Yacht Rock videos by remarking:
Combining cultural history, highly quotable dialogue, moderate production values and the sweet sounds of late 70s/early 80s marina rock, it remains the grandaddy of all youtube viral hitsI found myself scratching my head a bit. Yatch Rock is great fun, but more an in-joke for people who remember early 70s soft rock. I'd be hard-pressed to call it the grandaddy of anything, and with less than 900,000 views on the first episode, and considerably fewer on the following eleven, conferring viral status upon it seems quite an exaggeration. What probably caused, or perhaps permitted, Kernohan to make such a claim was a healthy dose of nostalgia, and the fact that eight and a half years ago when the first video in the series showed up on YouTube the web was a very different place than it is today. Yacht Rock went "viral" because it spoke to many of the people who saw themselves as the proper (should that be "self appointed"?) custodians of web culture. But it's been ages since they last filled that role, if they ever really did.