Hello friend, and welcome to Belated Blogging Week! Usually, I do my best to post a blog about each video of mine that goes up on YouTube, as a little companion for anyone who wants to know a bit more about how the video came to be, and also just about what I’ve been up to. However, as you may of noticed, I’ve been slacking a bit recently, falling behind on my writing duties, so I’ve taken it upon myself to catch up. You’re going to be seeing at least FIVE bloggy-wogs appearing before your eyes over the next week, starting right here, right now, with numero uno: My American Accent.
It’s probably a good thing that I’m getting the chance to write this blog post with the hindsight of the video having been up for a bit, because before, to me and my friends, it was just an alright video which Charlie made because he was strapped for time -- a video in which he did nothing but talk in a slightly painful American accent for three minutes. I always do my best to show a new video to some of my friends before it goes up, to gauge their reactions, because when you’ve sat in front of a computer for a few hours laboring over a video, it can be quite hard to tell if it’s actually entertaining at all. Alex, for example, said that “it was actually better than I thought it would be!” and so, with that, I deemed it good enough and put it up onto the internet. However, what I thought would be a brief blip, a video to fill a gap, turned into something, well, yeah. Needless to say, I didn’t expect the reaction that it received.
Over two million views in just a month with, surprise surprise, over half of those views coming from the good old United States. Before it went up, I do remember showing the video to one American friend of mine and thinking that man, this girl really seems to be laughing at it more than anyone else I’ve shown it to. But it was only after sitting in front of the computer screen for a while, gaping at the number of views that the video had received, making no audible sounds but the odd “buh?” that I started to understand what was going on. If you’re from over the pond then I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, but it seems to me that American viewers found it fascinating to watch me, not just fail to do a very good imitation, but to realise that the accent I’m trying to do is an approximation of how I think they actually sound. “Do you really think that we sound like that?!” came up time and time again, much to my amusement.
If you’re one of the lovely people that enjoyed this video and started spreading it around, thank you so much. There definitely seemed to be a sudden influx of new viewers that came on board after it (at least for The Alex and Charlie Format!) which I really appreciate. I still can’t quite believe it happened, it can be the case sometimes that the videos you least expect to do well are the ones that “go viral” as it were, but I’m much more appreciative than I am confused. You guys, as always, are the best.


