So by now, if you have an internet connection, you’ve seen the black and white video of beautiful people awkwardly kissing over an acoustic indie song. It’s awkward, and cute, and thought provoking, and totally an advertisement for WREN, but we’re not going to talk about that right now. However, for purposes of narrative symmetry, here’s the video that’s been all over every single one of your feeds.

The video itself has just shy of 60 million views, and it’s always increasing. The reasons for the virality of the content are hard to pinpoint. Some reasons could be the inherent desire that people have to see intimate and personal moments captured on video, the fact that all the people in this video are very very pretty, the vague subversiveness of including gay, lesbian, mixed-race, mixed-age couples in addition to the young heterosexual couples, or any number of things related to those reasons. Whatever the cause, the video strikes just the right resonant note with many, if not all who watch it.

And almost everyone is tired of it. The purity of the video has come and gone, the parodies have come and gone, the analysis of the video has been beaten into the dust by feminists, sociologists, and advertising apologetics and haters. That’s the trouble with highly viral campaigns. There is a huge amount of interaction in the first days of the campaign, and then interest slackens off and dies. But hey, we’re talking about it, so maybe it’s working more than we think.

Here’s a video of puppies.

What Sparks Our Fire: We like viral videos, but we like it more when they go away.

What do you think made this video go viral?