Korean pop sensation Psy took the world by storm with Gangnam Style. The music video instantly became viral because of two reasons, the quirky dance moves and the catchy tune. It became the most watched video clip on YouTube, the world’s biggest online streaming website, and even though the hype has died down the clip continues to rack up views. So much so that the video has actually broken YouTube’s view counter because no one would have expected a single video clip to bring in so many views.
When it racked up 800 million views, Gangnam Style became the most watched video ever on YouTube. It soon blew past the one billion milestone. As of this writing the total number of views has surpassed 2,147,483,647, and in case you’re wondering, that’s just over 2.1 billion.
It was never imagined that a video would become so popular that it would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer, but Gangnam Style changed that, which is why the folks behind YouTube are now upgrading the view counter. The video has brought in over five million views over this limit so it goes without saying that the counter needs to be updated to account for them.
YouTube is having some fun with this. Head on over to the video and hover the cursor over the view counter to see an animated math easter egg.
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