It’s probably pointless for me to post the link due to the brief, albeit unbelievably prolific popularity of the video, but here is the hyperlink to the David After Dentist Youtube video, a clip less than two minutes long that has been viewed by more than 100,000,000 people. A CNN article, posted on March 18, 2010, exemplifies the acknowledgement of the video’s viral success by the major cable news network; an action usually considered to signify that the phenomenon being examined has seen the extent of its stay in the ever-changing arena that constitutes viral culture. The article can be read here, and serves to map out the rapid rise to popularity and subsequent come down that the family experienced throughout the time that has elapsed since the video went viral. I ended up finding this article as a result of going back over Bill Wasik’s idea of what he terms the nanostory in his book, And Then There’s This. In attempting to think about a nanostory that I have knowingly witnessed the rise and fall of, I instantly recalled the first time I saw David After Dentist, and began to wonder what had become of the internet phenomenon since. After a google search, I realized that CNN had gone about answering my question for me, a year and a half before I thought to ask it. The boy in the David After Dentist video unknowingly provided his father with nearly two minutes of media that has earned his family “in the low six figures,” according to the article. He also set himself up for a meteoric rise to the forefront of viral culture, a rise that precipitated a fall from relevance of similar proportions a short time later. David After Dentist portrays an example of a nanostory that was able to outlive the average viral video’s lifespan, but could not escape the fate that distinctly defines the nature of the nanostory itself.
