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Urlesque counts down the top 100 viral videos in the history of the web.
numa numa gary brolsmaNot all internet celebrity is deserved -- let alone wanted. In the case of Numa Numa or it's originator, Gary Brolsma, sometimes you put it out there and have no idea how big it's gonna get.

19-year old New Jersian, Brolsma filmed himself wearing headphones and lipsyncing to Romanian pop group O-Zone's hit song 'Dragostea din tei.' The famous Numa Numa Dance comes when Brolsma earnestly begins to thrust his arms rhythmically up in the air, gesturing his head and shoulders to the music.

After he posted the video to Newgrounds in 2004 (this is before YouTube, mind you), it received over 2 million views in less than 3 months -- which has now turned into 18 million and millions more when YouTube started hosting the video after its launch.



But what does it all mean if an unwitting vlogging dancer hits the big time and isn't so sure he wants the attention? After the video was touted across the mainstream media -- from Leno to Letterman and beyond -- it came out that Brolsma wasn't really enjoying his newfound notoriety. Even his family encouraged him to enjoy the fruits of his... labor; The New York Times reported, "Mr. Brolsma has no plans to sue, his family said -- mainly because he would have to sue himself. In fact, they wish he would bask a little in his celebrity."

But maybe that was a ploy for attention (Numa Numa is quite a curious creature), because shortly after, Brolsma went on to appear in Barenaked Ladies and Weezer music videos, on TV in South Park and the Discovery Channel, as well as most recently, in an advertisement for Geico -- featuring the trademark dance (and a tiny Gecko in the background). He in fact went on to film follow up videos that never quite reached the status of his original video.

Who really knows what goes on in Numa Numa's bouncing head? Has he finally come to terms with his iconic video? Does the original even matter, now that the Numa Numa Dance has become the internet's very own dance craze -- spawning hundreds of copycat clips? I'll leave it to a piece in The Believer to explain the magic: "Brolsma's video single-handedly justifies the existence of webcams... It's a movie of someone who is having the time of his life, wants to share his joy with everyone, and doesn't care what anyone else thinks. In other words, it's a movie of a total geek." And isn't that what the internet is all about, anyhow?