KEN’S CAT LOG
▤Today's Viral Videos

Daily Viral Video — 2026-09-23

Today’s “viral videos” looked very different from platform to platform, with YouTube’s sports breaking news and rapid clip uploads the only clear example of video virality.

Today’s Viral Videos — 2026-09-23

Bottom line: rather than an obvious, easy-to-read viral moment where “everyone is excited about the same video,” today saw very different levels of activity across social platforms. YouTube was the one place where videos clearly stood out: sports moments paired with same-day clips, such as Yusuke Oyama’s walk-off homer for Hanshin and breaking news about Chunichi acquiring a Dodgers player. X, by contrast, was barely a video-focused search at all and mostly surfaced image and text posts. Bluesky and Lemmy had videos, but view counts are private, so their yardstick for what counts as “viral” differs from other platforms. On Reddit, threads clustered around a single video of a mob assault in Bihar; it was arguably Reddit’s biggest topic today, but it had a very different feel from the usual “fun viral video.”

Across platforms

  • The pattern of breaking news or on-the-ground footage paired with rapid clip uploads gaining traction quickly appeared across several platforms. YouTube’s Yusuke Oyama walk-off homer (with more than a dozen videos of the same game from different angles) and the breaking news of Chunichi acquiring Ward, along with Reddit’s Bihar Jamui incident (seven threads concentrating on the same event within 48 hours), all follow the same pattern: multiple posts about the same topic appear immediately after an event or game occurs.
  • Political and current-affairs topics are driving video virality in several places. Around half of Bluesky’s top 12 videos involved politics or social movements, including Dave Matthews criticizing the president, a punchline video involving candidate Mamdani and Norway’s prime minister, and eviction protests in Spain. The Bihar incident on Reddit also falls broadly under social news. Posts gaining traction on X likewise leaned toward current affairs, such as historical satire and frustration with England’s national team.
  • Japanese-language searches for “viral videos” largely came up empty. Reddit (“バズってる動画,” “話題の動画”: zero results), Bluesky (only three videos even in a Japanese buzz-extraction feed, two without captions), and Lemmy (zero Japanese-keyword results) all produced the same outcome. Among the platforms examined, conversation about Japanese video virality appears limited mainly to Japanese YouTube and X accounts.
  • Mass-produced and self-referential clusters appeared in several places as noise that looks viral but is not. Examples include three X accounts posting “ABEMA CHANCE & CHANGE” simultaneously with zero likes, repeated posts from the $SONG memecoin community, and one Lemmy user, Ajuy, accounting for 40% of posts during the period. In each case, a small number of sources were artificially inflating the apparent activity.

Platform by platform

Reddit: Today’s biggest flashpoint was a video of junior-high-school girls being harassed by a group while returning home from school in Jamui, Bihar. Seven threads concentrated more than 1,300 points and 400 comments on the incident (for example: r/IndianFocus, 685pt, https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianFocus/comments/1wm6jgm/). There was even an entertaining “armchair investigation” thread in r/bihar attempting to identify the vehicle from its license plate. Still, this was less a case of “a fun video going viral” than intense focus on a serious incident. The only notable entertainment item was a video of actor Aaron Pierre mispronouncing something (r/DC_Cinematic, 1,670pt). Japanese searches returned zero results.

X: Frankly, this was mostly a miss as a video search. What surfaced came from posts based on 10 standard Explore trends, and the list was skewed because the connection was treated as Croatia-based. The largest post by far (@korbinian_vogt, 46,191 likes and roughly 1.4 million views) was a still photo of a Greenland glacier, not a video. Only about two Fanatics ad videos could be identified with confidence, and neither gained traction, at around one like each.

YouTube: This was the platform that most clearly felt like videos were genuinely going viral. The lineup included Yusuke Oyama’s walk-off homer for Hanshin (bottom of the 11th, with more than a dozen videos from multiple angles on YouTube), breaking news of Chunichi acquiring a Dodgers player, Kiyo’s first playthrough of the horror game “Okugafuchi Shopping Street” (roughly 1.28 million views), Nijisanji’s Yu-Gi-Oh! Festival Day 2 (roughly 930,000 views), and a performance video for Snow Man’s new project. However, many view figures came not from official YouTube pages but from the third-party site buzzweet.com, and like counts could not be obtained for any video.

Bluesky: Videos are not the centerpiece of Bluesky virality; only 11 of 30 posts in the official trending feed were videos. The leaders were heavily political and current-affairs-driven, including a video of Dave Matthews criticizing the president (16,160 likes) and a punchline video in which Norway’s prime minister appears behind a child speaking with candidate Mamdani (10,535 likes). Spanish news outlets eldiario.es and publico.es also ranked highly with videos from eviction and tuition-fee protests. View counts are private, so likes, reposts, and replies are the available metrics.

Lemmy: Frankly, it is not a place where content goes viral. Even the top video for the period, showing firefighters routing a hose through an illegally parked car, reached only 68 upvotes and 25 comments—a scale one or two orders of magnitude below other social platforms. Moreover, one user, Ajuy, supplied four of the 11 posts from the period, and the content was mostly reposted from YouTube and X. Japanese keywords returned zero results, suggesting Lemmy has almost no Japanese-language user base.

What to watch

  • YouTube: Chunichi Dragons breaking news about acquiring a Dodgers player — a breaking-news item posted on 9/23 that is worth watching for the growth of follow-up reaction videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpR2nTybG8Y)
  • Reddit: Follow-up coverage of the Bihar Jamui incident (an r/IndiaTodayLIVE thread reporting the arrest of alleged ringleader Nandan Yadav, 171pt, 2026-09-22) could gain further traction depending on the investigation’s progress (https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaTodayLIVE/)
  • Bluesky: The punchline video involving candidate Mamdani and Norway’s prime minister (acyn.bsky.social, 10,535 likes) is a snapshot while it is still growing, so tomorrow’s numbers are worth checking (https://bsky.app/profile/acyn.bsky.social/post/3mw57ajir6i2r)
  • YouTube: Nijisanji Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel Festival 2026 Day 2 — team competition was introduced for the first time this year, and clips are appearing simultaneously; track how the series grows later on (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNfeViA9maE)
  • YouTube: “Chiikawa” clip of announcer Ito’s reaction — watch whether the pathway continues in which a brief TV facial expression becomes a topic on X, then prompts mass-produced YouTube reaction compilations (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbUc5TrPvPU)

Recommendations

  • To track “today’s viral videos” across platforms, center the analysis on YouTube, where video view counts are available, and use Reddit/Bluesky/X to supplement the background behind events and topics. That best fits what the data shows this time.
  • For the next X investigation, redesign the search to use video-specific queries such as “viral video” and “バズってる動画,” instead of relying on standard Explore trends.
  • Bluesky’s “What’s Hot” and Japanese buzz-extraction feeds are weak at surfacing videos, so if video-first tracking is the goal, there is room to consider another collection method, such as cross-hashtag searches.
  • Lower expectations for Lemmy as a source for detecting viral videos, and check it only when major events occur rather than through daily fixed-point monitoring.
  • Since Japanese-language searches on Reddit, Bluesky, and Lemmy all returned zero results, prioritize deeper research around Japanese YouTube and X accounts when targeting video virality in the Japanese-speaking sphere.
  • A filter to exclude noise such as the ABEMA clip cluster and the $SONG cluster—where multiple accounts post the same content simultaneously but receive virtually no response—would improve the next aggregation’s accuracy.

Data quality

YouTube video links, uploaders, and content were confirmed, but many view counts came from the third-party site buzzweet.com and no like counts could be obtained. Because X collection began with standard Explore trends, it was not video-specific; only a very small number of posts could be confidently identified as videos (effectively two or three), falling short of the 10-item completion threshold. Bluesky does not publicly expose view counts through its API, leaving only likes, reposts, and replies as metrics, so direct comparison with other networks is not possible. Lemmy yielded 11 videos, but its top score was only 68, too small to qualify as meaningful virality. On Reddit, seven of 12 threads focused on the same Bihar incident, leaving only about six or seven distinct viral-video topics in practice, while Japanese searches returned zero results.

Platform summaries

Reddit

Reddit — Daily Viral Video

Where

The 12 collected threads came one each from 12 different subreddits.

Subreddit Members Collected threads
r/DC_Cinematic 547,734 1
r/TeenIndia 554,493 1
r/bihar 238,128 1
r/TwentiesIndia 341,756 1
r/IndianFocus 66,122 1
r/founder 73,863 1
r/IndiaTodayLIVE 31,095 1
r/IndiaPulse_ 20,842 1
r/Patna 9,094 1
r/Unislamicmemes 7,686 1
r/ViralPodcast 4,367 1
r/WAGtalk 3,907 1

India-related subreddits (r/bihar, r/TwentiesIndia, r/IndianFocus, r/IndiaTodayLIVE, r/IndiaPulse_, r/Patna, r/TeenIndia) accounted for seven of the 12 threads, all concentrated on the same real-world incident video described below. The rest were scattered one each among entertainment topics: movie clips, podcasts, TikTok-creator discourse, a viral TikTok featuring an NFL player, and anti-Islam memes.

What people say
  • Thread 5 (r/IndianFocus, 685pt, 191 comments, 2026-09-21, https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianFocus/comments/1wm6jgm/) was the most heated “viral video” on Reddit today. In Jamui, Bihar, a group harassed male and female tenth-grade students returning home from school; footage showing a female student being touched spread on social media, reportedly leading to an FIR and an investigation. The top comment (u/Genjutsu00, 132pt) calls for severe punishment: “These men should be left in jail to rot to de@th.”
  • At least six other threads covered the same incident, making Reddit a textbook case of users clustering around and discussing one video: Thread 2 (r/IndiaPulse_, 108pt, 2026-09-21), Thread 3 (r/Patna, 80pt, 2026-09-21, with an angry post saying “Bhai ye kya jhatu state hai apna Bihar”), Thread 8 (r/bihar, 62pt, 2026-09-21), Thread 9 (r/TwentiesIndia, 197pt, 2026-09-21), and Thread 7 (r/IndiaTodayLIVE, 171pt, 2026-09-22, reporting that alleged ringleader Nandan Yadav was arrested after a shootout with police).
  • Thread 8 (r/bihar, https://www.reddit.com/r/bihar/comments/1wm50b6/) shows Reddit’s characteristic “armchair investigation” phenomenon: the poster enlarged and color-corrected the license plate visible in frame 480 of the video, attempting to narrow it down to “BR 46 181__.” In the comments, u/White_beast8966 (4pt) even identified the vehicle: “This is a Toyota Rumion... 1-2 month old car.”
  • Thread 7 also drew plenty of cynicism about the arrest itself. u/Upstairs_Pirate_5972 (10pt) asked, “why put all that fake drama of that staggering walk?”, suggesting the suspect may have been pretending to be injured.
  • On the entertainment side, Thread 6 in r/DC_Cinematic (1,670pt, 66 comments, 2026-09-19, https://www.reddit.com/r/DC_Cinematic/comments/1wkdrxe/) had the highest score. It was a video of actor Aaron Pierre, from the film ‘Lanterns,’ reacting to a pronunciation slip in his own clip. u/Fuzzy_Ant_6447 (233pt) described it as a fandom response that enjoys mistakes rather than insulting him: “the fandom has kind of rallied around enjoying his slips rather than insulting him.”
  • Thread 1 in r/founder (328pt, 122 comments, 2026-09-17, https://www.reddit.com/r/founder/comments/1wj87uq/) was a long growth-hacking guide claiming “123 million TikTok views in three months.” But u/HereToKillEuronymous (4pt) called out the exaggeration: “This is one year. Not 3 months,” reflecting the skepticism often seen in comments on viral-growth advice posts.
  • Thread 4 in r/ViralPodcast (47pt, 72 comments, 2026-09-20, https://www.reddit.com/r/ViralPodcast/comments/1wl5n44/) was a clip of a squabble between podcast participants. Comments such as u/bennieboy22’s (44pt), “She tries to act so unbothered but she's the most bothered person,” drove the conversation by live-commenting on the participants’ performance.
  • Thread 10 in r/WAGtalk (14pt, 41 comments, 2026-09-16, https://www.reddit.com/r/WAGtalk/comments/1whk61w/) concerned an NFL player Tyreek Hill TikTok filmed with his new wife that went viral. Comments focused less on the video and more on gossip tangents: “He got remarried?” and “At the beach without a helmet?”
  • Thread 11 in r/Unislamicmemes (111pt, 13 comments, 2026-09-16, https://www.reddit.com/r/Unislamicmemes/comments/1wi8xeq/) was a purported video of a three-year-old child being sold as a “bride” to a 60-year-old man in Afghanistan. There were no fact-checking comments; discussion instead flowed toward religious criticism.
  • Thread 12 in r/TeenIndia (8pt, 8 comments, 2026-09-19) was a short post whose entire body read “Memes.” Its content could not be identified, but comments were positive, including u/commyslayer01 saying, “LOve the slow mo.”
Signals
  • Surging: The Bihar Jamui incident overwhelmingly outpaced everything else on Reddit today, with seven threads, more than 1,300 total points, and over 400 comments focused on the same event within 48 hours. The story unfolded on Reddit in real time, from the incident on 2026-09-21 through arrest coverage on 2026-09-22.
  • The visible trend of armchair investigations by ordinary users is distinctive, as seen in Thread 8’s license-plate identification. It is interesting less as a “pattern in viral videos” than as a pattern in reactions to viral videos.
  • A structure that rewards skepticism and callouts: Both the r/founder growth-hacking boast (Thread 1) and doubts over the staged-looking arrest sequence in r/IndiaTodayLIVE (Thread 7) had highly rated comments exposing exaggeration or performance. On Reddit, responses that examine whether a viral video is being overstated often score better than simply taking it at face value.
  • A surprising finding: The Japanese search terms “バズってる動画” and “話題の動画” returned no hits at all; all 12 posts came from English-language, primarily India-related, subreddits. On Reddit, discussion of today’s “viral videos” was not taking place on a short-video platform like TikTok or Instagram, but in news-oriented discussions of serious incidents.
  • Conflicting reactions: In r/DC_Cinematic, an actor’s pronunciation slip was consumed positively as a lovable meme, while r/founder’s growth-hacking boast was read negatively as possible exaggeration. Even under the same label of “viral,” the emotional temperature toward the people involved differed completely from thread to thread.
Limits
  • The completion criterion was “10 each, with links, posters, and numbers,” but Reddit’s collection produced only 12 threads total, seven about the same single incident in Bihar Jamui. Therefore, there were only about six to seven independent topics that could count as “today’s viral videos” if the Jamui incident is counted as one item. It did not reach 10 diverse videos.
  • The Japanese queries “バズってる動画” and “話題の動画” both returned zero results. No Reddit discussion of viral videos in the Japanese-speaking sphere was found this time.
  • The “poster” for each thread is the Reddit account that created the thread (u/…), not necessarily the uploader of the original video itself, such as a TikTok or Instagram creator. Only r/DC_Cinematic, which included an Instagram link, and r/founder, which involved the poster’s self-report, provided clues to the original uploader. For all other threads, the original video’s uploader, views, and likes could not be identified from Reddit-side information.
  • Under the playbook’s restrictions, Reddit itself could not be browsed or fetched from the web; only collected files (reddit.threads.md / .json) were used as sources. Additional threads could not be searched for.

X

X — 24–48 Hour “Viral” Check (Conclusion: a mostly empty result for video discovery)

The conclusion first: the worker collected 40 X posts based on 10 standard Explore trends (#chance, England, #sweepstakes, Grok 4.7, #giveaways, $SONG, GitHub, Superman, Lauren, and Greenland), rather than conducting a targeted search for “viral videos.” Six of those 10 trends were labeled “Trending in Croatia,” while the rest were categorized as Technology, Entertainment, or Politics. In other words, this is not a global snapshot; it is a skewed list shaped by the Croatia-assigned server used in the session. On top of that, each post lacks a flag distinguishing videos from images; only hasPhoto is available. Accordingly, only posts that can be confirmed as video are identified as such below; the rest are simply described as image or text posts.

Accounts
  • @korbinian_vogt (Korbinian Vogt) — A single post with 46,191 likes and roughly 1.4 million views. The one-off breakout hit by a huge margin among the collected posts.
  • @old_pgmrs_will (いにしえ@高信頼AIニュース) — Three posts totaling 27 likes, all modest. An AI-explainer account posting continuously about “Grok 4.7.”
  • @EAjdarovic (MEDO) — Two posts totaling seven likes, consisting only of the $SONG Cardano-related memecoin ticker.
  • @Amateraspi0x / @noanya93 / @junglearchive06 (Jungle Channel / Digest / Archive) — Three separate accounts posted near-identical text about ABEMA’s “CHANCE & CHANGE.” All had zero likes and only one to 11 views, resembling an insular network mass-producing clips.
  • @CSharp66427821 / @Louisavillain — Posted nearly identical wording for Fanatics’ sponsored “Quad Goals” videos. Around one like each, with no spread; they resemble templated brand posts.
  • @songoncardano / @LapuhAndrej — Promotional $SONG posts. The first had 64 likes and 38 reposts, the second 32 likes and 15 reposts; they appear to be circulating within a small community.
  • @Rusia_HD / @743Dharper / @diplomatmujeeb — One-off general-user posts, each gaining 2,000–4,000 likes and more than 150,000 views.
  • @DCFilmNews / @SammyJReacts — Fan and news accounts focused on Superman/Lanterns. Even their single posts had roughly 2,000 likes.
  • @shinshin86 / @so_ainsight — Japanese-language AI developer accounts. Their GitHub-trend-related posts received roughly 500 likes and 20,000–50,000 views.
Posts
  1. #38 @korbinian_vogt(https://x.com/korbinian_vogt/status/2102326699006287901) — 46,191 likes, 934 reposts, 204 replies, and roughly 1.4 million views; posted 2026-09-22. A Greenland glacier photo accompanied only by the words “Icefjord, Ilulissat, Greenland.” It had by far the largest numbers of all collected posts, but it is a still landscape photo and cannot be confirmed as video.
  2. #34 @LusFigu77743191(https://x.com/LusFigu77743191/status/2102036172897657060) — 1,310 likes, 23 reposts, roughly 222,000 views; posted 2026-09-21. A Portuguese post with an image saying “supreme being of R&B is named Lauren Hill.” It is unclear whether it is a video, but it was the biggest Lauren-related post.
  3. #7 @Rusia_HD(https://x.com/Rusia_HD/status/2102142368497451266) — 2,651 likes, 914 reposts, 352 replies, roughly 163,000 views; posted 2026-09-21. A long image-supported post that satirically swaps country names in the phrase “Russia killed 300,000 people in Japan...” It surfaced through an England search but is effectively political satire.
  4. #6 @743Dharper(https://x.com/743Dharper/status/2102014765740536099) — 551 likes, 96 reposts, 164 replies, roughly 162,000 views; posted 2026-09-21. A lament about a player continuing to be left out of England’s national team.
  5. #5 @diplomatmujeeb(https://x.com/diplomatmujeeb/status/2101965061036163347) — 4,379 likes, 864 reposts, roughly 151,000 views; posted 2026-09-21. An image post about the familiar experience of earning money in Canada and converting it to naira.
  6. #32 @DCFilmNews(https://x.com/DCFilmNews/status/2101840244584718710) — 2,198 likes, 155 reposts, roughly 39,000 views; posted 2026-09-21. An image-supported quote post from ‘Lanterns’: “We all saw what happened in Metropolis...”
  7. #31 @SammyJReacts(https://x.com/SammyJReacts/status/2101840481928032702) — 2,058 likes, 84 reposts, roughly 18,000 views; posted 2026-09-21. An image-supported analysis post connecting Superman and The Suicide Squad foreshadowing.
  8. #28 @so_ainsight(https://x.com/so_ainsight/status/2101871551255830529) — 573 likes, 75 reposts, roughly 49,000 views; posted 2026-09-21. A primarily text-based roundup of “10 AI repositories that surged on GitHub this week.”
  9. #25 @shinshin86(https://x.com/shinshin86/status/2102163713679577301) — 583 likes, 59 reposts, roughly 28,000 views; posted 2026-09-21. A post with demo images reporting that the creator’s AI tool, “Still2Rig PSD,” had surpassed 60 GitHub stars.
  10. #9/#12 @CSharp66427821・@Louisavillain(https://x.com/CSharp66427821/status/2102355104825577475 / https://x.com/Louisavillain/status/2102148283712028689) — One like each and 22–25 views. Near-identical posts advertising Fanatics’ “Quad Goals” videos. The displayed durations of 00:43 and 01:47 confirm that they are videos, but they did not gain traction.
Signals
  • These 10 trend terms produced almost no sign of genuinely viral video. The posts gaining traction were a still image with a short caption (#38, the Greenland glacier photo) or text-led current-affairs posts (#7 historical satire and #5’s familiar-experience joke). Only the two Fanatics ads (#9/#12) could be confirmed as video, and neither spread.
  • The ABEMA “CHANCE & CHANGE” cluster (#2/#3/#4) deserves caution. Three separate accounts posted near-identical wording on the same topic at the same time, with zero likes and single-digit to low-teen view counts. This appears to be mechanical mass production of program clips, not organic virality.
  • The $SONG cluster (#21/#22/#23/#24) has a similar smell. Small accounts around a Cardano-related memecoin repeatedly posted the same ticker, creating what looks like self-referential excitement within their own community.
  • The largest post, #38 (Greenland, roughly 1.4 million views), corresponded to the eighth-ranked current trend, “Greenland,” but it was a nonpolitical landscape photo. Other posts surfaced under the same term (#37, #39, #40) concerned political debate about Denmark and Greenland and received only hundreds to thousands of views. The wildly different contexts behind the same keyword show the limits of Explore-based collection.
Limits
  • The search terms were not aimed at videos in the first place. The worker used X’s 10 standard Explore trends (#chance, England, #sweepstakes, Grok 4.7, #giveaways, $SONG, GitHub, Superman, Lauren, and Greenland), rather than video-specific queries such as “バズってる動画” or “viral video.” As a result, only a very small number of posts clearly linked to videos themselves—just the Fanatics ads in #9/#12.
  • Post data lacks a video/image distinction flag. hasPhoto is available, but whether an item is video must be inferred from its text and context. Most entries above can only be described as having images, not as confirmed videos.
  • The Explore list reflected skewed local trends seen from a Croatia-based server. Six of the 10 terms were labeled “Trending in Croatia,” not global trends.
  • Forty posts were collected across the 10 terms, but at least six (the three ABEMA cluster posts, two Fanatics ads, and some $SONG content) were almost unresponsive mass-produced or promotional material. Fewer than 10 candidates could reasonably be called genuinely viral; restricted to video, there were effectively only two or three. The brief’s 10-video completion threshold was not met.

YouTube

YouTube — Today’s Viral Videos

Channels
  • Tora-Ban ABC TV Official Channel — The official channel for a Hanshin Tigers-focused program. Highlight videos tend to perform well.
  • Kiyo. (@KIYOisGOD) — A major horror-game creator. First-playthrough videos of new horror games are a recurring viral format.
  • Nijisanji Official — The official channel of the Nijisanji VTuber group. Archives of major collaborative events perform strongly.
  • Snow Man (Johnny’s/STARTO) — Official channel currently distributing performance-video installments for the new “SnowMotion Studio” project.
  • BE:FIRST Official — Official channel for the boy group expanding internationally.
  • GLAY — Official band channel.
  • Netflix Japan — Netflix Japan’s official channel, which uploads trailers for high-profile titles.
  • “Yukkuri compilation” clip channels — multiple channels posting clips and reaction compilations of announcer Ito’s “Mezamashi TV” Chiikawa reaction.
Videos

  1. [Breaking News] Chunichi Dragons acquire a power hitter from the Dodgers!
    Channel: Breaking-news channel / Posted: September 23, 2026
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpR2nTybG8Y
    Content: Breaking news on 9/23 that Chunichi had suddenly acquired 28-year-old outfielder Ryan Ward, who was DFA’d by the Dodgers and had 168 minor-league home runs, plus a 2025 Triple-A MVP award. It was also treated as the day’s top item in Yahoo! Real-Time Search’s “SNS buzz roundup” (source, Full-Count article).

  2. [Walk-off Home Run] Yusuke Oyama’s dramatic 17th walk-off homer in the bottom of the 11th (2026/9/21 T-DeNA)
    Channel: Sun TV-affiliated sports commentary channel / Posted: September 21, 2026
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tblqnP_GgE8
    Content: A dramatic walk-off solo homer hit by Yusuke Oyama in the bottom of the 11th inning of the Hanshin–DeNA game. The moment spread widely enough that more than a dozen videos and highlights from different angles appeared on YouTube (Tora-Ban ABC TV Official highlight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y419oqEyoQg , behind-home-plate version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk_o0ZXpt0Y ). Yahoo! News also turned fan reactions such as “This is just too incredible” and “The greatest man on Earth” into an article (source).

  3. The horror game ‘Okugafuchi Shopping Street,’ set in a shopping street you must never visit
    Channel: Kiyo. / Posted: September 21, 2026, 08:30 / Views: roughly 1.28 million (according to buzzweet.com, when listed on YouTube’s trending ranking)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbAOZNki2i4
    Content: Major creator Kiyo plays the new Japanese-style horror game “Okugafuchi Shopping Street,” released in August, for the first time. Other creators, including V Cathy and Jinsei Tsumiko, have also uploaded videos of the game in rapid succession, creating a simultaneous viral moment in the horror-game community.

  4. [#NijiYuGiOhFestival2026] Nijisanji Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel Festival 2026 Day 2: Qualifying League B
    Channel: Nijisanji Official / Posted: September 22, 2026, 12:13 / Views: roughly 930,000 (according to buzzweet.com)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNfeViA9maE
    Content: A Day 2 archive of an annual large-scale event in which Nijisanji livers compete in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel. Team competition was introduced for the first time this year, and clips featuring Hanabatake Chaika, Yashiro Kizuku, Ibrahim, and others are spreading simultaneously.

  5. Snow Man 'show time…' SnowMotion Studio
    Channel: Snow Man Official / Posted: September 20, 2026 / Views: roughly 1.23 million (according to buzzweet.com)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXzpRZpF12E
    Content: A performance video for a song from ‘AMENITY,’ an album scheduled for release on October 7. This is the second installment of the new “SnowMotion Studio” series, following the first installment, “Good Time,” on 9/16 (BARKS article).

  6. BE:FIRST / WATCH ME feat. BIA -Dance Practice-
    Channel: BE:FIRST Official / Posted: September 21, 2026, 05:00 / Views: roughly 530,000 (according to buzzweet.com)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzsSnLLHx5M（MV本編、Dance Practiceも同日展開）
    Content: A dance video/MV for a collaboration with U.S. rapper BIA from “WATCH ME,” a North American debut EP released on September 18. It has received a strong response from fans both in Japan and abroad as part of the group’s international-expansion project.

  7. ‘National Quiz’ Teaser Trailer – Netflix
    Channel: Netflix Japan / Posted: September 22, 2026, 23:00 / Views: roughly 410,000 (according to buzzweet.com)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvcWAcZcECk
    Content: A wild teaser for ‘National Quiz,’ a Netflix series starring Takayuki Yamada and launching on December 17. Its provocative premise—“Is this kind of Japan acceptable or unacceptable?”—has also become a topic on social media (Cinema Today).

  8. GLAY / Dirty Hero
    Channel: GLAY Official / Posted: September 22, 2026, 11:00 / Views: roughly 40,000 (according to buzzweet.com; just beginning to gain momentum after release)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6dFiWuGEhA
    Content: The music video for GLAY’s 64th single, “Dirty Hero.” The rock track was written and composed by HISASHI, and its title’s association with the Kadokawa film ‘Dirty Hero’ has become a topic among fans.

  9. [Chiikawa] Announcer Ito gets visibly annoyed at Momonga’s usual behavior (viewer reaction compilation)
    Channel: Yukkuri-style compilation clip channels (multiple competing channels) / Posted: Recently, with videos on the same topic posted daily
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbUc5TrPvPU （関連：https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4TzcsVDwuro ）
    Content: Announcer Ito’s unguarded shock and confusion during an ‘Chiikawa’ segment on “Mezamashi TV” have become a daily topic on X, prompting mass-produced reaction-compilation videos. Example of an original X post: https://x.com/dogu219/status/2090053795141324980

  10. [The King of Local] Qwen3.8-27B arrives! Extremely lightweight, yet beats Opus 4.6 on many benchmarks?!
    Channel: AI explainer channel / Posted: Around September 22, 2026
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7DsRTj8YX0
    Content: An explainer on the Qwen4 family announced by Alibaba, including the 27B model, covering benchmarks and VRAM requirements. The news became viral in AI circles, including Yahoo! Real-Time Search’s social-buzz roundup, and multiple channels posted Japanese explainers the same day (another video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_V7ccqopzg ).

Signals
  • Dramatic sports moments paired with same-day breaking coverage: Both Yusuke Oyama’s walk-off homer on 9/21 and the Chunichi breaking news about acquiring Ward on 9/23 went viral through rapid proliferation of clips and news videos immediately after the game or announcement. More than a dozen videos covering each event appeared in YouTube search results.
  • New performance videos from idol groups and bands: Official-channel releases such as Snow Man’s SnowMotion Studio, BE:FIRST’s Dance Practice, and GLAY’s new music video all reached hundreds of thousands of views soon after launch.
  • A two-layer structure of major VTuber collaboration archives plus clips: The Nijisanji Yu-Gi-Oh! Festival spread through the main archive alongside a large number of related clips, effectively occupying search results.
  • Unscripted TV reactions becoming clipped and viral: As with announcer Ito’s Chiikawa reaction on Mezamashi TV, a brief facial expression or comment on television becomes a topic via X, then drives mass-produced YouTube reaction compilations.
  • AI tech news produces same-day explainers: The speed at which announcements by overseas tech companies, such as the Qwen4 family launch, are turned into Japanese-language explainer videos was notable.
Limits
  • YouTube’s official trending page (youtube.com/feed/trending) and direct individual video pages consistently redirected to a cookie-consent screen or returned only footer content, so view counts and posting dates could not be verified directly from the pages. Consequently, many view counts came not from YouTube itself but from a third-party site reposting trending rankings, buzzweet.com, or from web-search snippets; they may not be accurate in real time.
  • Like counts could not be obtained for any video, either because YouTube does not display them or due to the access restrictions above.
  • Because multiple channels are posting Chiikawa reaction compilations on the same topic, it was not possible to determine which one is the definitive “most viral” version. Only one representative video is listed.
  • About 10 videos were collected, but direct confirmation of view counts and channel subscriber figures was available for only some of them—the six found via buzzweet.com. For the rest, upload dates and content were confirmed but concrete figures were not.

Bluesky

Bluesky — Today’s Viral Videos

Research date: 2026-09-23 (period: the most recent 24–48 hours, centered on 2026-09-22)
Method: The official Bluesky app search (bsky.app/search) is a JavaScript-rendered SPA, so WebFetch could not retrieve its content. The public API app.bsky.feed.searchPosts returned HTTP 403 for both Japanese and English queries, apparently due to bot blocking. The method was therefore changed to retrieving Bluesky’s official “What’s Hot (Discover)” trend feed and a volunteer-run Japanese buzz-extraction feed-generating bot through app.bsky.feed.getFeed, then extracting only posts with video embeds (app.bsky.embed.video).

Accounts

Accounts with viral videos (all profile links are available at bsky.app/profile/<handle>):

  • thetnholler.bsky.social (The Tennessee Holler) — Progressive U.S. political news, with many video clips
  • acyn.bsky.social (Acyn) — An aggregator of political video clips, well known since the Twitter era
  • michaelwarburton.bsky.social — Film and music-history trivia videos
  • eldiario.es / publico.es — Official Spanish news-media accounts, posting videos related to protests and evictions
  • bluesmusic.bsky.social — Curates music-performance videos
  • mouthyrenegade.bsky.social — Shares emotional and heartwarming videos
  • brentterhune.bsky.social — Comedian posting political videos
  • weskrantz.bsky.social, unicouniuni3.bsky.social, 87sukiyaki.bsky.social, sichinotuki.bsky.social — Personal accounts posting short pet and everyday-life videos
Posts

The like and repost figures below are snapshots at the time of collection; the numbers are still rising.

  1. acyn.bsky.social — A punchline video where a child who met mayoral candidate Mamdani is asked, “Have you ever met a prime minister?” The child turns around to see Norway’s prime minister walking up.
    10,535 likes / 1,984 reposts / 351 replies — 2026-09-22 21:46 UTC
    https://bsky.app/profile/acyn.bsky.social/post/3mw57ajir6i2r

  2. thetnholler.bsky.social — A video of musician Dave Matthews saying during a live performance that he is “fed up with the president.” It had the most likes among the items collected.
    16,160 likes / 3,867 reposts / 458 replies — 2026-09-22 18:26 UTC
    https://bsky.app/profile/thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3mw4u2qqlks2k

  3. michaelwarburton.bsky.social — A video about actor Barry Keoghan’s path from moving through 13 foster homes to responding to an audition notice and eventually receiving an Oscar nomination.
    2,210 likes / 333 reposts / 78 replies — 2026-09-22 19:10 UTC
    https://bsky.app/profile/michaelwarburton.bsky.social/post/3mw4wjw6wk223

  4. unicouniuni3.bsky.social — A short reaction video along the lines of “I’m not scared!” Discovered through a Japanese buzz-extraction feed, though its caption is in English.
    1,423 likes / 272 reposts / 11 replies — 2026-09-22 00:42 UTC
    https://bsky.app/profile/unicouniuni3.bsky.social/post/3mw2ylt44nk2s

  5. sichinotuki.bsky.social — A video post without a caption. The content cannot be determined from post text alone (see Limits).
    1,479 likes / 327 reposts / 3 replies — 2026-09-22 18:31 UTC
    https://bsky.app/profile/sichinotuki.bsky.social/post/3mw4uebpbv22r

  6. mouthyrenegade.bsky.social — A video shared as “the most heartwarming father-and-son moment in internet history.”
    1,337 likes / 251 reposts / 69 replies — 2026-09-22 21:56 UTC
    https://bsky.app/profile/mouthyrenegade.bsky.social/post/3mw57rgi5sc26

  7. brentterhune.bsky.social — A topical comedy video about allegations involving politician Lauren Boebert.
    954 likes / 227 reposts / 60 replies — 2026-09-22 21:34 UTC
    https://bsky.app/profile/brentterhune.bsky.social/post/3mw56kmlmjs23

  8. bluesmusic.bsky.social — A video of the band Cascade performing Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing” on an unusual Chapman Stick guitar.
    876 likes / 212 reposts / 40 replies — 2026-09-22 18:53 UTC
    https://bsky.app/profile/bluesmusic.bsky.social/post/3mw4vlc57ds2q

  9. 87sukiyaki.bsky.social (PANAPANA) — A video post without a caption.
    848 likes / 246 reposts / 0 replies — 2026-09-22 01:32 UTC
    https://bsky.app/profile/87sukiyaki.bsky.social/post/3mw33eos2ak2x

  10. publico.es — A video of Maricarmen, a woman resisting her fourth forced eviction in Spain, appealing, “Fight for your homes.”
    458 likes / 229 reposts / 6 replies — 2026-09-22 19:07 UTC
    https://bsky.app/profile/publico.es/post/3mw4wefmru22p

  11. eldiario.es — A video from a university opening ceremony in Andalusia, where students unable to afford tuition interrupt with a protest speech.
    417 likes / 199 reposts / 9 replies — 2026-09-22 17:20 UTC
    https://bsky.app/profile/eldiario.es/post/3mw4qfacoyk2x

  12. weskrantz.bsky.social — A short growing-up video with the sentiment, “They used to be so tiny.”
    357 likes / 20 reposts / 18 replies — 2026-09-22 23:19 UTC
    https://bsky.app/profile/weskrantz.bsky.social/post/3mw5egqcyn22t

Signals
  • Video is not the main driver of virality on Bluesky. Of 30 posts in the official “What’s Hot” trend feed, 11 had video embeds, about one-third. Of 31 posts in the Japanese buzz-extraction feed “Nihongo Post,” only three were videos. Images, quoted text posts, and threads remain the center of viral activity; Bluesky does not appear to be a platform where video itself takes center stage in the way it does on TikTok or X.
  • Politics and current affairs are central to viral video. Roughly half of the top 12 were U.S. or Spanish political/social-movement items: Dave Matthews, Mamdani and Norway’s prime minister, Boebert allegations, two Spanish eviction videos, and a university protest. This remains a strong part of Bluesky’s overall atmosphere.
  • Strong visibility for Spanish-language media. Two Spanish news outlets, eldiario.es and publico.es, entered the upper ranks with videos from housing-eviction and education-cost issues. This suggests that the “Habla Hispana” migration since 2024 has retained meaningful influence on Bluesky.
  • Japanese buzz-extraction feeds are weak for video. Of the three videos found in the “Nihongo Post (buzz extraction)” feed, two had no captions and the remaining one had English text. This time, no clear example of a viral video originating in the Japanese-language community was found. Another feed, “Today’s 10k Buzz” for posts exceeding 10,000 likes in 24 hours, was also tested, but videos remained a minority.
  • View counts are private. Bluesky’s API does not expose video play counts, leaving only likes, reposts, and replies. These cannot be directly aligned with the view-count-based comparison used for platforms such as YouTube and X.
Limits
  • The public search API app.bsky.feed.searchPosts rejected both Japanese queries such as バズってる動画 and English queries such as “viral video” with HTTP 403, preventing direct keyword-based discovery of viral videos. Instead, the official “What’s Hot” feed and buzz-extraction feed-generating bots—Today’s 10k Buzz and Nihongo Post (buzz extraction)—were retrieved through app.bsky.feed.getFeed, then filtered for posts containing video embeds.
  • Post pages on bsky.app are JavaScript-rendered SPAs, and WebFetch could not retrieve post text, likes, or any other information; even <title> and og: metadata were empty. Public API JSON responses were the sole information source.
  • Video view counts do not exist in the API, so likes, reposts, and replies alone were used as the measure of growth. Direct side-by-side comparison with view counts on other social networks is not possible.
  • The video posts by sichinotuki.bsky.social and 87sukiyaki.bsky.social had empty captions, and the videos themselves were not played, so it was not possible to identify what exactly was going viral; only their figures and posters are listed.
  • No viral video clearly originating from a Japanese community with a Japanese caption was found through these feeds. The 10-item count was met, but only one item, unicouniuni3, was arguably Japanese-sphere in origin—and its caption was still in English. The rest were from English- and Spanish-language accounts.
  • Because this was an unattended run, shell-based alternative access methods such as curl, which would require approval, could not be attempted; the work was completed using only WebFetch/WebSearch.

Lemmy

Lemmy — Today’s Viral Videos

Research date: 2026-09-23 (period: the most recent 24–48 hours, mainly 2026-09-21 through 23)
Method: Cross-instance searches were conducted through lemmy.world/api/v3/search using keywords including viral video, viral clip, “went viral,” tiktok, and バズってる動画. Video communities !«メールアドレス», !«メールアドレス», and !«メールアドレス» were also checked directly in newest-first order. The same keywords were searched on lemmy.ml and lemm.ee; lemm.ee redirected its search API to join-lemmy.org and could not be used.

Communities
  • !«メールアドレス» (18,741 people) — A community dedicated to “interesting videos from the web.” Its rules prohibit political posts, advertisements, and clickbait titles, and require direct video links. Nearly all candidate “viral videos” found this time came from here.
  • !«メールアドレス» (9,657 people) — Humor-focused. No video posts appeared in the most recent 24–48 hours when sorted by newest; only videos from 9–24 days earlier were present.
  • !«メールアドレス» (2,912 people) — All displayed posts were popular posts from four months to two years ago; no fresh posts from the previous 24–48 hours were found, possibly because the community itself is inactive.
  • Keyword searches for viral video, went viral, and related terms found communities such as !bbc_rss, !technology, !fauxmoi, and !us_news. All were repost communities for news articles about a video becoming a topic, rather than posts containing the video itself.
Posts

Lemmy has no platform-native metrics such as views or likes; only post score (upvotes minus downvotes) and comment counts are available. The following are all posts made in !«メールアドレス» during the last 24–48 hours, ordered by growing score.

  1. “An illegally parked car obstructs firefighters. They route the hose through the car and spray water.” — Posted by Ajuy / 6 hours ago (around 2026-09-23)
    68 upvotes / 25 comments — The top-scoring and most-commented video in the community during this period.
    https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/97dc44d634ec.mp4
    (Original post: https://lemmy.world/c/«メールアドレス» )

  2. “SNL UK doesn't hold punches” — Posted by skhayfa / 2 days ago (2026-09-21)
    32 upvotes / 4 comments
    https://x.com/latenightercom/status/2101440988292276253

  3. “Spiderman gets arrested” — Posted by Ajuy / 1 day ago (2026-09-22)
    31 upvotes / 9 comments
    https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/846293759fe1.mp4

  4. “Scanning Light Field Display” — Posted by «メールアドレス» / 2 days ago (2026-09-21)
    22 upvotes / 1 comment — A technology demo video.
    https://youtu.be/npmmEEqhVgU

  5. “Why a map of the world’s languages is impossible | Map Men” — Posted by «メールアドレス» / 1 day ago (2026-09-22)
    17 upvotes / 0 comments
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX21ctsGhNc

  6. “Super Dave — Jumping off the CN Tower” — Posted by Alpha71 / 12 hours ago (around 2026-09-23)
    14 upvotes / 0 comments
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGos7T0RKn8

  7. “A massive explosion at an ammunition depot in Syria” — Posted by Ajuy / 1 day ago (2026-09-22)
    14 upvotes / 1 comment — Raw news footage.
    https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/163d53c59028.mp4

  8. “Miami’s bleak North American landscape (19 minutes)” — Posted by AviAdi / 2 days ago (2026-09-21)
    11 upvotes / 0 comments
    https://youtu.be/KAFzJ3r3xGY

  9. “A ball bounces… and then something bad happens” — Posted by «メールアドレス» / 58 minutes ago (2026-09-23)
    2 upvotes / 0 comments — It had been posted only recently, so its score was still low.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmJp8pARWrU

  10. “La Banda Maguey performs at La Fiesta del Pueblo in Raleigh” — Posted by Eric «メールアドレス» / 12 hours ago (around 2026-09-23)
    1 upvote / 0 comments
    (No video link; text post)

  11. “A wealthy French town: high-school students commute in electric golf carts instead of buses” — Posted by Ajuy / 1 day ago (2026-09-22)
    -5 upvotes / 2 comments — The only negatively rated post during the period, and one that drew debate.
    https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/a052fbcfb0b9.mp4

Signals
  • Lemmy is not a place where content goes viral. Even the top firefighter video during the last 24–48 hours reached only 68 upvotes and 25 comments, one or two orders of magnitude below what counts as a viral video on Reddit, X, Bluesky, or YouTube. Lemmy’s user base is small, and it does not structurally have a viral loop in which videos spread rapidly.
  • Almost all posts are reposts from other platforms. Links primarily point to YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), or imgchest MP4 mirrors. No videos originating on Lemmy itself were found; posters are closer to curators.
  • Ajuy was the most prolific poster. About half the posts in the period (4/11) came from one user, Ajuy, meaning one individual’s posting pace has a meaningful effect on the community’s supply.
  • It is more of a steady stream than virality. Searches for terms such as viral video mostly found reposted articles saying that some other video had become a topic, rather than a phenomenon of “today’s viral video” unfolding within Lemmy itself.
  • There was no Japanese-language content. An API search using the Japanese keyword バズってる動画 returned zero results. Lemmy appears to have almost no Japanese-language user base.
Limits
  • Lemmy has no video view-count metric. “Virality” is measured only through score and comment counts, which cannot be directly compared to the view-count-based measures used by other social platforms.
  • Only 11 videos were posted to !«メールアドレス» during the target period, so the requested 10-item quota was met numerically. However, the highest score was only 68, and almost none showed growth large enough to meaningfully call viral. This is stated explicitly here.
  • !«メールアドレス» and !«メールアドレス» were checked in newest-first order, but had zero new video posts within the target period. PublicFreakout displayed posts that were mostly months or years old, suggesting community activity may have stalled.
  • The lemm.ee search API redirected to join-lemmy.org and was effectively inaccessible. lemmy.ml could be searched, but only yielded reposts of news articles, not posts of videos themselves.
  • The “poster” field refers to a Lemmy account handle, such as Ajuy or «メールアドレス», and may not correspond to a real-world person or channel; Lemmy has a handle-based culture.

Recommended actions

  • Make YouTube, where video view counts are available, the center of the analysis, and use Reddit/Bluesky/X to supply contextual explanation.
  • Redesign X collection around video-focused search terms such as viral video and バズってる動画, rather than standard Explore trends.
  • Reassess Bluesky’s reliance on official trend feeds that are weak at video extraction, and consider other video-first collection methods.
  • Lower expectations for Lemmy as a source for detecting viral video, and check it only when major events occur.
  • For Japanese-sphere video virality, prioritize Japanese YouTube and X accounts, since Japanese searches across Reddit, Bluesky, and Lemmy all returned zero results.

Data quality notes

Many YouTube view counts came through third-party sites and likes were unavailable. X was not searched with video-specific queries, leaving only two or three confidently identified videos. Bluesky does not disclose view counts. Lemmy scores were too small to qualify as meaningful virality. On Reddit, seven of 12 threads focused on one incident, and Japanese searches returned zero results.