Before TikTok and vine, viral videos used to be rarer and more discerning. One would come along every couple of months and it would define culture for a little bit. We were accustomed to the phenomenon by the time Vine rolled around and the market became more saturated. We became students of the viral video and my generation is not as easily fooled. We want the perfect blend of staged and spontaneous. We want it to be relatable but a little bit better. A little too extreme in some directions but with an overall normal scene. We do not have the stomach for something that’s too long and directionless. The perfect viral video for people my age? The Sausage video.
This video is not an outlier but part of a larger trend where people would freestyle as a group, starting with the phrase “Everybody say sausage keep it going.” This video is not the first but it perfected it. The trend was mostly done by kids in high school cafeterias and parking lots. There were also a few on buses back from games. Anywhere where kids have unstructured time together. Though the point of a freestyle is to be purely improvised, these kids did some light rehearsing and it paid off.
Every person delivers their part perfectly. You think it can’t get better and then it does. They sustain the momentum and each contribution ups the ante. They never lose it and there’s no duds. It perfectly captures the feeling of being in study hall and working on something with the people in your class. Just shooting the shit with your kind of friends. Even if they are not your actual true friends, what do you call the people that you spend 8 hours a day with and have since you were all small children?
The times in my life when I have laughed hardest and felt closest to my peers are in these moments. When we are forced to be together and the normal social barriers have been lifted in some way. Once we’ve banded together against the adults and kicked out the narcs, we are free to hide away in the corner somewhere and say the funniest things we can think of. This video gives us that experience in a way that’s easy to relive and delivers with each watch. It only gets better with time. When I am nostalgic for the good times, I can watch this video and instantly be a 16 year old again.
These aren’t my memories, which makes the nostalgia more potent. This is familiar to me because I have memories that are similar. I know what this felt like but in my own life going back to watch my own versions would not be half as funny in hindsight. I can get the feeling without having to remember the actual jokes. Its polished and rehearsed fun that stands up to the invasion of time, which I cannot say is true for my own life.
Like everyone who enjoyed brief internet fame and went on to lead a more or less normal life, the kids are making a comeback on TikTok. I’m so happy for them. Some people deserve to get a second chance at monetization. It’s been long enough and they’ve brought enough joy over the years that just the reveal of what they're up to now is enough to make me go “good for them.” I’m glad to see these old acquaintances and see that they're happy or at least still alive. They put in the work that one afternoon in that classroom, they should in some way reap the benefits.