blasted blubber
The above is a video I have cited as an example of a pre-internet viral video. This brief news report on what happened when a dead whale was blasted as a means of removing it from a public beach has, for years, circulated offline via video and rumor. Now, in the era of digital, it’s all over YouTube, and the thing has such an internet presence that a site claims to be “the definitive exploding whale website.”
In an excellent bit of postmodern cultural reproduction, the recent Reno 911!: Miami movie features a scene in which the inept members of the Reno Sheriff’s Department decide to remove a whale from a Miami topless beach by blasting it. Of course, this goes horribly awry, but the result is nowhere near as strange as the original.