10% Luck, 20% Skill

You name it, there's a superfan community for it. Sports teams, bands, television shows, all of them have massive cult followings with their own rules and politics. I myself have, since getting AOL in the 9th grade, been a part of many online communities: The Phantom Menace, X-Men, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and The Features. Under the best circumstances, these online communities only peripherally involve the topic of obsession. The Features message board rarely discussed the band, instead acting as an intelligent forum to discuss the happenings of Nashville and popular culture. The scarier ones I've been to involved making complicated signatures (o-[[[[[]]]\=========================) and creating fan fiction placing the more veteran members of the board into roles in television series (like a Jedi spin off of X-Files).

Online fandom has always fascinated me and, as a recovering MB addict, I can relate to the crushing feeling of importance that the poor souls involved feel. Seriously, if you've ever demanded someone's IP address looked up to determine whether or not they were a real person, I'm proof that there is hope for you.

A couple months ago, my co-worker Todd stumbled across this video. The owner disabled embedding. Wisely, because this would surely be linked everywhere in an attempt to spread the joy of the cheetah. The video is even better when you imagine that it's actually a cheetah rapping about spitting fire, women wanting him, not needing his name up in lights, and knowing the code. It's all about making some noise when you're a cheetah.

But the animal madness does not stop there.

Seriously. People. There is a community of people who get joy out of editing nature footage together to techno/rap songs, celebrating their favorite animals. The comments range from people restating the facts from the video as a compliment to wondering where the music came from. Apparently, the video above is "one of the best cheetah videos out here." Did anyone think there was more than one cheetah video on youtube, let alone many for this one cheetah fan to declare that this is just one of the best?

But vitalioness14 did not stop there.

This is one of the best videos about cheetahs wanting people and/or things to get off of their backs. The author herself (?) writes "These cheetahs are tired of being bothered and they just want us all to get off of their back! This was SO fun to make, and I worked really hard on it, so please keep your comments and ratings friendly!" All that is perfectly encapsulated in the Bryan Adams song playing over it.

Cheetahs aren't the only animal that get immortalized by Windows Movie Maker. Here, experiment900 tells it like it is. He wants people to stop hating on hyenas and start jamming to some P.O.D. Yet again, hilarious if you picture the lyrics from the hyenas point of view.

So, you're welcome for being introduced to this truly fascinating subspecies of YouTube user. Feel free to click around and browse their other videos. I saw some videos about lions that I may need to take a gander at.

In the mean time, I'll be stockpiling my footage of meerkats to combine with "Life Is A Highway."