Joey Primiani | Pioneering the New Internet Revolution

If you check out today, April 10, 2007, you will see my little face on the front page of EbaumsWorld.com for the second time. Thanks Becky for telling me! OK, there is a story behind this. This is taken from my blog post from “Becoming a Semi-Famous Internet Star: Part I” about a year ago:

I was going though my old VHS tapes of when I was younger and found a hilarious memory of my childhood. My mom said she submitted this same tape to America’s Funniest Home Videos in 1991, but only to be rejected weeks later.

I thought since viral media was becoming huge on the internet video clip database websites such as Ebaums, YouTube, etc; I thought I could have a shot of it with this one.

After editing and adding the effect quickly in Windows Movie Maker, I posted it to a list of sites to see how far it would go. The list includes YouTube, iFilm, Web Junk 20, Myspace, MuchoSucko, Digg, Break, and a few others.

People at first on YouTube picked it up and commented how funny it was. At first I was a little reluctant because I wasn’t getting many views or popularity as I hoped for at first. Then I noticed it started to spread on other minor sites and people began posting duplicates all over.

It wasn’t until about the third week a friend of mine called me up and noticed my video I showed him on the front page of Ebaums World. Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t deny the outstanding amount of traffic the site gets.

And there in all its glory Ebaums infamously placed their watermark on my video without my approval whatsoever, which they probably picked up from another site. I wasn’t upset or anything, I was actually happy the video spread onto the homepage and then placed in the extreme section. I did receive royalties and won a $500 March Funny Video Contest.

In school, people that have known me for a long time and recognized me when I was younger, would call me Ebaums World kid, and even strangers couldn’t believe it was me.

Then, on May 9th, G4 2006 E3 Coverage featured a television advertisement for Ebaums World with my video in the main commercial. (If anyone has a clip of this, please let me know!)

I don’t usually post these type of articles, but I just wanted to let you readers know how easy and extremely fast a idea can spread around the internet, just in this first month. I know this is nothing new, but until you experience something like this personally you have no idea.

The viewer count absolutely amazes me, and little things like finding it on peoples MySpaces and Blogs all over the world with people posting it around saying “Hey, I thought you would find this funny” makes me happy to this day.

Therefore, I encourage everyone to post anything you think is worthwhile to the net, you never know, it might even make you too an internet star…

This is the original Big Wheel Wreck Video.

This is the new edited montage of Bad Day featuring my video. Until today I had no idea Ebaum’s Staff collected it.

I found that others have spread the joy of my face plant, Google Video Mirror, Metacafe Mirror, YouTube Mirror I II, III, IV, V, VI, VII and more. Love you guys!

PS – No I am not a girl, or someone’s niece, or my dad didn’t post it to the internet (I did), or in that case I wasn’t ugly. 🙂 I don’t think my dad knew when he was filming it what actually happened at that time, but he saw that I was fine and got up… haha.

[UPDATE] In order to prove it is my video, Ebaums emailed me this:

Congratulations! Your content was recently featured on eBaumsworld.com. This automatically qualifies you for our payout structure.

In order to ensure proper delivery of cash prizes, we must verify your mailing address and that you are the original creator of the material. There are several ways to accomplish this.

The first is to send us an extended version (2-3 minutes longer) of the clip you submitted or other footage that will prove you were involved in the original creation of the clip.

Also, if your face is displayed in the original submitted video clip, you can send a new clip of yourself on camera speaking your name outloud and claiming ownership of the video. We can verify your identity by comparing the two clips.

Lastly, you can send original VHS, MiniDV, Hi8, or other media to our PO Box. The address is:

eBaum’s World
**** Brighton Henrietta Townline Road
Rochester, NY 14623

If for some reason you can not provide any of the above methods, please contact us with details of your problem and we will come up with an alternate method. Thanks!

I posted the extended (unedited) version with my name watermarked on it. This version can be viewed here. 🙂