Hamster ‘Smash’ Goes Viral
You never know what will happen when surprising your teacher on her birthday. These students had no idea what was coming when they decided to give their teacher two hamsters for her birthday.
The video got more than 1 million views in a week’s time over various channels. The idea was thought of by Belgian student Astrid De Ruddere for an assignment with a group of students. Naturally, no hamsters were hurt during the making of the video 
De Ruddere is a student of Graphics and Digital Media at the Arteveldehogeschool in Ghent. The students’ group assignment was to create a digital campaign that would attract as much attention as possible. Well, they passed the assignment: the video was viewed all over the world and stirred up discussions everywhere regarding the authenticity. The teacher told them to address the question ‘When will someone forward a video?’.
In the Netherlands some research has been done regarding the forwarding of videos online. It turns out that people are more ready to forward a video when the person they got it from is familiar to them. Another (obvious) reason to forward a video is when the content is sufficiently entertaining or compelling. In this case, a teacher (someone who generally has a good-natured image in my opinion) smashing up two cuddly little hamsters is quite compelling to say the least…
It seems the Belgians really put the Dutch research results into practice. I must say no one forwarded it to me, but is there someone who got it from a friend? Did you think it was real?
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For me it was obviously fake. I don’t think my friends will pass this through to me. They could have make it more real. However it seems successful, so I think others are less critical.