On their official blog YouTube ranked the most viewed videos and most searched words on YouTube in 2009. The segment of Susan Boyle’s beautiful voice featured on Britain’s Got Talent (120+ million views) was number one this year, but the next most watched video, “David After Dentist” on YouTube was actually this year’s most “viral” amateur video with over 37 million views. If you’ve been living in a cave this year and haven’t seen it, then here it is:

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The video of Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie spliced to look as though they were rapping M.O.P’s popular hit “Ante Up” became a global viral hit with over 4 million views on YouTube. I mean, you really haven’t lived until you’ve seen this puppet (are they or aren’t they) couple boast:

Things that we need, money, clothes, weed indeed.
Hats, food, booze, essentials, credentials!
Code of the streets, owners who creep!
Slow when you sleep, holdin the heat!

Well, the Yip Yips have ante’d up and thrown their interplanetary hat into this song’s ring to answer Bert and Ernie’s challenge with their own performance of “Ante Up.”

Andy Baio isolated the backgrounds of famous (or infamous) videos or photos that went on to become Internet memes and legends by removing the subjects from them. This brilliant exercise if anything validates their seat in the pantheon of viral Internet memes. Can you name them all?

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Full disclosure: You’re about to watch a “viral” video to promote a free Beyonce concert sponsored by Trident. That said, who doesn’t want to watch 100 girls in London’s Piccadilly Circus mimic Beyonce’s music video for her hit song “Single Ladies,” which has been hilariously parodied.

This is a template for how to create a successful viral video:

1. Take an existing pop culture phenomenon.
2. Make it BIGGER and perform in public (after obtaining permits, natch).
3. Millions of online views.
4. ???
5. Profit!

[Via]