Trending This Week: Real-Life Bionic Heroes; Blue Steel's Back!

March 13, 2015

For The Collective Project: Robert Downey Jr. Delivers a Real Bionic Arm

For 8 months, members of University of Central Florida's Limbitless team (a group of students focused on producing affordable, 3-D printed bionic limbs for children with amputations) had been working on a specially designed Iron Man-themed appendage for a young boy named Alex who was born with a partially developed right arm. Yesterday, we had the privilege of witnessing Alex's much-anticipated introduction to his new arm, delivered by the world's most powerful bionic hero himself - Iron Man. The video, filmed by Microsoft as part of their Collective Project initiative, has earned more than 3.7m views and ~2k comments in less than 24 hours.


 Zoolander 2 - Maison Valentino Runway
 This week, guests at Maison Valentino's runway show in Paris were treated to a very special guest appearance by two of fashion's most infamous rivals: Hansel and Zoolander. Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller, the two stars of 2001's comedy "Zoolander," took to the catwalk together for the first time in more than a decade, a reunion that confirmed the release of the movie's sequel next year and that sparked a flurry of excitement around the web (1.5m+ views on YouTube, plus hundreds of thousands of shares, comments and likes across Twitter and Instagram). The nearly unanimous positive feedback from the bold marketing stunt bodes well for the aging (but still so hot right now) duo, and suggests that maybe there isn't much more to life than being really, really ridiculously good-looking.


Mean Tweets - President Obama Edition

For his latest edition of celebrities reading mean tweets, late night host Jimmy Kimmel invited one of the biggest celebrities of them all - President Barack Obama - to meditate on some of the criticism he's received in the Twittersphere (@Campaignrpoz: "A 30 rack of coors light is $23 now at Sun Stop. Thanks Obama."). In total, Kimmel's Mean Tweets clips have amassed a stupendous 300m+ views, and continue to be among the most buzzed-about and consistently popular segments from his show.


 Funky Flight Attendant

Adding to the 70k+ "Uptown Funk" covers, parodies, and homages that have been keepin' YouTube funky, this short dance tribute performed by one particularly coordinated WestJet flight attendant tickled the fancy of millions of viewers this week, the video of her in-aisle performance earning 5.5m+ views in little more than 4 days. The clip - recorded (vertically, smh) by the attendant's brother - gained quick traction through social media and blogs, first starting on Reddit then quickly spreading to sites like Mashable and Buzzfeed, the sum of which made up 60% of the video's views.



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