1224: Council of 300

2013-12-27T15:43:56Z

Kwpolska: The worthless {{incomplete}} tag was for the lack of definition of “viral”. There is a Wikipedia link, which is good enough.

{{comic
| number = 1224
| date = June 12, 2013
| title = Council of 300
| image = council_of_300.png
| titletext = 'And hypnotize someone into thinking they've uploaded it and passed it around.' 'But then won't the uploader get suspicious that it pauses at 301+ for a while? Why don't we just forge the number entirel--' ::BLAM:: 'The Council of 299 is adjourned.'
}}

==Explanation==

{{w|YouTube}} (a video sharing site) has an odd quirk in its view counter. When a video hits 301 views, the view counter briefly stops updating. This means that YouTube is checking the views to make sure that no foul play is going on. (The choice of the number 301 is due to a harmless off-by-one error; Numberphile produced a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIkhgagvrjI video] that explains all this very well.) At times the number 301 catches some YouTubers off guard — for very popular videos, it may appear that the video has more likes than views!

More recently YouTube added a "301+" to indicate that the video has reached the 301 point and is awaiting review.

The author plays with the near coincidence of this number, and a conspiracy theory entity known as the {{w|Committee of 300}}. In this case, the video's first 300 views come from each of the Committee's council members who determine if the video will go {{w|Viral_video|viral}}. The video is then released to the public by sending it to a regular person ([[Cueball]] in this comic) making the total number of views 301.

The title text elaborates on this by explaining that the council also hypnotizes somebody to make him think they uploaded and shared that particular video.

The counsel does not seem to tolerate contradiction, because the member that suggests changing 301 to a random number to avoid suspicion is silenced (permanently?) and removed from the counsel.

==Transcript==
:[A secret society meets in a darkened chamber; a kitschy video involving two people and an RC helicopter is projected onto the background.]
:Master: ..then it is settled. We the 300 members of the Secret Council decree that this video meets our standards and shall "go viral".
:Master: send it to one of our agents to be leaked to the common folk.
:Steward: Some of them are noticing the number.
:Master: ..add a plus sign to throw them off.
:Steward: very well.
:Soon...
:[A communication sent to Cueball, one of the many unsuspecting plebeians of the world.]
:Email: Ooh! check out this great video I found!
:[Zoom in on the viewer count of a YouTube video.]
:301+

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Internet]]
[[Category:YouTube]]

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1224: Council of 300