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Gangnam Style video now the most 'liked' ever on YouTube

A sweet, innocent Korean dance video now holds the Guinness World Record for YouTube likes. How very moving.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read
PSY/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

Gangnam Style is neither ganglike, nor Vietnamese.

It's more of a Korean Macarena for those who think cocktails should be green and jackets should be white.

And yet it has become immensely popular. It seems only some understand that it is meant to be just a little satirical.

Indeed The Verge breathlessly tells me that PSY's Gangnam Style video has become the most liked video ever on YouTube. Yes, ever. Yes, the most liked.

Not only has this video enjoyed almost 243 million views at the time of writing, but it has been adorned with more than 2.2 million likes, according to Guinness World Records.

The previous champion, should it have slipped your cranium, was LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem," which now must feel obliterated, as it only had 1.5 million likes.

I know this will cause dancing in so many of the world's streets. I know that tonight, even more people will spend their evening emulating these scintillating Gangnam Style moves in order to attract members of their target sex. (Or perhaps talent agents.)

However, it is surely worth pausing to consider who bothers to "like" things and what sort of people hang out on YouTube.

It is a curious habit, this insisting on telling the world what you've liked today. There's a certain odd onanism about it, as if you want to make sure your drapes are never drawn and your habits hang out for all the world to see.

And then there's YouTube itself. It is something of a motley crew that hangs out in its nooks and crannies.

Anyone who has perused the comments section, for example, will have been moved to note that it is not merely America's education system that could use a little polish. The rest of the world is down with it too.

Moreover, there will always be speculation that those who work for musical artists occasionally marshal their faithful in order to create records so that they can sell, um, more records.

I wonder which video will break Gangnam Style's record. It is so exciting to think about.